07 Thursday Feb 2019
06 Wednesday Feb 2019
Background / Motivation: https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-cuba-helped-make-venezuela-a-mafia-state (June 2, 2018) & https://www.insightcrime.org/investigations/drug-trafficking-venezuelan-regime-cartel-of-the-sun/ (May 17, 2018).
Here’s a shocker:
The “Grand Game” may be over, but the war between the Medieval of Mind and the Modern Possessed of Conscience and Empathy, the foundations of Democratic Humanism and the above-board distribution of power supporting the best reasoned rule-of-law has just begun.
Iran and other producers have opposed a tighter partnership, fearing it could be dominated by Saudi Arabia and Russia, according to officials in the cartel. Riyadh and Moscow are the world’s top two oil exporters. A Russian Energy Ministry spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request for comment.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/opec-pursues-formal-pact-with-russia-11549394604 (2/6/2019)
At times, it seems the world is a cesspool or a snake pit — or both.
While Moscow grabs all the energy reserves it can get, Washington boasts of North American Energy Independence. Man oh man, for now, that’s a neener of the first order.
Meanwhile down in President Maduro’s malaria-supporting Venezuela (2014), the Military has been given its two options — Mad Maduro or Good Guy Guaido — and the defections are climbing furiously out of the dictator’s morass.
(The story, what with Bloomberg’s “Tic-Toc” and much else in the Mainstream Media fray, has been moving too fast for BackChannels normally placid quasi-academic treatment, bibliography and all. Inline reference and plain old bald URL’s suit in the making of points).
Just so you know, Putin’s recent purchase of a part of Venezuela’s oil resources is part of his (Moscow’s) 49 percent stake in CITGO.
And what does Putin really want: a world beset and bloodied by a revanche in feudal absolutism wandering around intoxicated by supporting and conflicting medieval worldviews.
How does that look?
Have a glance at Syria — or Yemen.
So as we say in America, here comes the cavalry — or at least the food wagon.
Balushi would have done Maduro justice: “We don’t need no stinking humanitarian aid!”
Venezuela’s President on deck appears less proud about extensions of Yankee democratic good will while altogether more practical:
BackChannels will not beat the majors, but it may yet make some points. Herewith, three videos posted on YouTube within the last 24 hours –>
That last: political criminals!
For other glorious examples of Soviet Communist and post-Soviet socialist era success and the success of other feudal elites propped up by their mafia and military, BackChannels suggests spending time online involved with Syria — political disaster of the 21st Century! — and Zimbabwe (with Robert Mugabe gone, the state appears on the cusp of positive / responsible change).
BackChannels has heard Venezuela describe as ” a dictatorship of corrupt soldiers who traffic with oil, drugs and weapons. They have kidnapped the country. Maduro does not dare confront them and has been kidnapped in the government palace pretending to be president.”
Perhaps Venezuela’s now defecting soldiery will put a stop to her suffering at the hands of military and political criminals.
–33–
04 Monday Feb 2019
In the Party I was beginning to see many people of a different stripe. During the war period I saw how opportunism and selfishness engulfed many comrades. They wore expensive clothes, lived in fine apartments, took long vacations at places provided by men of wealth. There was, for one, William Wiener, former treasurer of the Party, manipulator for a score of business enterprises, who wore Brooks Brothers suits, smoked expensive cigars, and lunched only at the best places. There were the trade union Communists who rubbed elbows with underworld characters at communist-financed night clubs, and labor lawyers who were given patronage by the Party by assignment to communist-led trade unions and now were well established and comfortable.[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bella_Dodd
Communist Party USA leader Bell Dodd’s 1954 remark as relayed by Wikipedia may have special resonance today in the socialist’s disaster continuing to unfold — or perhaps preparing to fold — in Venezuela.
While it had been one thing to share Venezuela’s good fortune and wealth with the public, perhaps especially with massive revenues pumped out of the ground, it has been another for the socialist government to suppress the private ownership of productive ideas and resources while utterly failing to diversify a national economy with the intent to forestall a one-market boom-or-bust (it busted) disaster.
For BackChannels, the cite-quote-cite-quote method has grown tiresome, so the reader may take this post as a reference page but with the suggestion that Maduro’s now patently criminal junta — access the OCCRP and InSight Crime reports cited in reference — may choose to loot and flee the country having proven themselves unable to judiciously and responsibly govern the same — or, in the manner demonstrated by Assad in Syria, they may enjoy being carved up by similarly predatory trade partners.
BackChannels’ humanism in relation to economic development would counsel the damping of dogma in the search for a good mix of private incentives for economic diversification x public policies and programs fit to constituent needs for “basics” plus psychological enthusiasm, fitness, and growth. From the same stance, the messianic self-aggrandizement associated with dictatorships would be viewed as damaging and limiting the greater public experience and potential for good things, starting with community-wide and personal security.
(For related exploration or some meditation on dictatorship, this blog offers portals for “Malignant Narcissism” and its own proposed concept, “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy“. Neither would differentiate between Far Left and Far Right authoritarianism or kleptocracy — and it would place both as more appropriate in the operating environments of the feudal world and fit to related medieval worldviews associated with “political absolutism” and sovereignty. Wherever placed x space x time, the absence of conscience looms large with dictatorships and the related criminality associated with power becomes glaring and, eventually, beyond bearing).
Bella Dodd, by the way, would renounce Communism toward the end of her journey and again embrace the Catholicism with which she had been born.
Aslund, Anders. “Venezuela is Heading for a Soviet-Style Collapse.” Foreign Policy, May 2, 2017.
Fox Business. “Venezuela is worse than the Soviet Union was: Lt. Col. Peters.” June 28, 2017.
Johnson, Keith. “How Venezuela Struck It Poor.” Foreign Policy, July 16, 2018.
Martin, Jorge. “US Tightens the Noose on Venezuela: Will the Coup Succeed?” Venezuela Analysis, February 4, 2019. On Venezuela’s travail (and America’s Far Right Imperialist Aggression) from the Marxist perspective.
OCCRP. “2016 Man of the Year in Organized Crime and Corruption”.
Venezuela Investigative Unit. “7 Reasons for Describing Venezuela as a ‘Mafia State’.” InSight Crime, May 16, 2018. Related off this article: “Venezuela: A Mafia State?” — A three-year project producing an eight-part series and full 84-page report. Herewith an excerpt from “7 Reasons . . . .”:
What is clear from our investigations is that the following institutions are staffed at the higher echelons by individuals we believe are, or have been, engaged in criminal activity:
The Vice Presidency, the Ministries of Interior (Ministerio del Poder Popular del Despacho de la Presidencia y Seguimiento de la Gestión de Gobierno), Defense (Ministerio del Poder Popular para la Defensa), Agriculture (Ministerio del Poder Popular de Agricultura Urbana), Education (Ministerio del Poder Popular para la Educación), Prison Service (Ministerio del Poder Popular para el Servicio Penitenciario), Foreign Trade and Investment (Ministerio de Estado para el Comercio Exterior e Inversión Internacional), Electricity (Ministerio del Poder Popular para la Energía Eléctrica), the National Guard (Guardia Nacional Bolivariana), the Armed Forces (Fuerzas Armadas Bolivarianas), the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (Servicio Bolivariano de Inteligencia Nacional – SEBIN) and PdVSA.The penetration of so many key institutions, and the fact that they constitute the state’s main organs in the fight against organized crime, means that Venezuela cannot even contain organized crime, let alone effectively fight it. With so many state actors with interests in criminal activity, be it fuel smuggling, the black market sale of food and medicines or the trafficking of cocaine, this factor alone suggests that Venezuela qualifies as a mafia state.
https://www.insightcrime.org/investigations/seven-reasons-venezuela-mafia-state/
Wikipedia. “Corruption in Venezuela”.
–33–
18 Wednesday Mar 2015
Tags
Ecuador’s president Raphael Correa will not meet with Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro this month, says a BackChannels source.
The decision, if true, follows on a rapid economic decline in Venezuela involving increasingly visible dictatorship and political repression and a kind of stink that devoted socialist leaders, either in heart or speech, may apparently wish to avoid.
Only three months ago, Maduro visited with Iranian president Hassan Rouhani in Tehran and then in Saudi Arabia with then Crown Prince Salman (twelve days later, the same would become King Salman) to navigate some way between opposition to the west and cooperation with Iran’s opponents in exchange for loans:
“We’re finalizing a financial alliance with important banks from Qatar that will give us sufficient oxygen to help cover the fall in oil prices and give us the resources we need for the national foreign currency budget,” Maduro said, adding that the two nations had also “strengthened the ties of cooperation to open paths for cultural and touristic exchange.”
http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/11157 – 1/12/2015.
Recent related faux socialist grandstanding by President Correa:
. . . the US “Has ‘double standards’ and sustains good relations with absolute monarchies, without democracy” while Venezuela has to face the usual elites causing interference to see if they can destabilize the government. “When will they understand that Latin America has changed. Here you will find sovereignty, dignity, unity,” he said.
He called Washington’s position “a disgrace” and stressed that “Latin America must speak out in opposition to such arrogance, unilateralism and imperialism.”
Bloomberg Business comments:
Correa, who has long allied himself with Chavez’s socialist ambitions and declared three days of mourning to mark his death, is now deviating from policies that saw him use Ecuador’s oil wealth to finance record spending. Maduro’s refusal to break with the currency controls and gasoline subsidies embraced by Chavez is deepening concern that Venezuela, which gets about 95 percent of its export revenue from oil, will run out of money as soon as this year.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-01-15/bondholders-spurning-chavezs-venezuela-disciple-andes-credit – 1/14/2015.
Since late February, Maduro’s course in political repression has been making headlines: Washington Post – “Venezuela and Cuba: Partners in repression”; Yahoo! Maktoob News – “Venezuelan teen dies after being shot at anti-Maduro protest”; Wall Street Journal – “Venezuela Cracks Down on Dissent”; NPR – “Venezuela’s President Sees Only Plots as His Economy Crumbles”, etc.
From the NPR piece:
. . . in blaming the U.S. for nearly all his problems, Maduro is crying wolf, says Xabier Coscojuela, editor of the Caracas newspaper Tal Cual.
“I’ve lost count of the number of alleged plots to overthrow or kill the president,” Coscojuela says. “It’s something like ten over the past two years. But there is no credible evidence in any of these cases.”
The politician as feudal lord, “state capitalist”, or incredibly privileged socialist (or nationalist) has to enjoy the psychological fruit of his own excesses — none of these presidents (for life) live in shacks (or pass time at spinning wheels) — and the results in real politics of a state-enforced magical economics that turns out entirely piratical.
This too comes from NPR:
Simon Nobile, 72, runs the Capri pasta factory in the capital Caracas, which was founded by his Italian-born father in 1940. Capri’s two plants crank out 11 million pounds of pasta per month.
They could produce nearly twice that much. However, Nobile says a government policy designed to help the poor forces him to sell half of his inventory for just five cents a pound.
“There is no incentive because price controls mean that you lose money. So the more you produce, the more money you lose,” he says.
While “inclusion” numbers among the six primary global virtues promoted by this blog, it takes some careful planning to channel much needed cash to the floor of an economy and sustain that traffic across time.
It doesn’t happen by magic.
The process need not dehumanize, humiliate, or subjugate, but it may need to be responsive and responsible to labor involved and the many productive capacities and cultural and environmental boundaries of place.
The drop in oil prices was the deep voice of international capital speaking, which irrupted as if from nowhere and in counterpoint to the rhythms of local and visible Venezuelan politics. When international capital spoke, it dashed all the local plans, because the slow time-frame of the Bolivarian government’s plans for economic diversification and the turtle steps of the Venezuelan opposition’s march towards the upcoming elections suddenly were no longer viable.
http://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11264 – 3/11/2015
Chris Gilbert’s mention of “economic diversification” plays up that will-o’-the-wisp — there is always talk of it, but when one goes to find it, it’s less there than it should be — facing at least several autocratic governments reliant on mineral proceeds for fueling their economies.
In 2012 it looked like the politician’s spectacular career was winding down. Suddenly, he was back on top. People With Money reports on Tuesday (March 17) that Maduro is the highest-paid politician in the world, pulling in an astonishing $96 million between February 2014 and February 2015, a nearly $60 million lead over his closest competition.
http://en.mediamass.net/people/nicolas-maduro/highest-paid.html – 3/18/2015.
Chavez’s family now reportedly owns 17 country estates totaling more than 100,000 acres in the western state of Barinas, as well as assets of $550 million stored in various international bank accounts. Residents in the same region wait as long as three hours for basic provisions at grocery stores.
National Assembly Speaker Diosdado Cabello, a close confidant of Chavez and member of Maduro’s United Socialist Party, has allegedly amassed “a private fortune” through corruption and ties to regional drug traffickers. The Miami Herald reported accusations last week that Cabello received at least $50 million in bribes to overlook lucrative public contracts that were overpriced, according to a recent lawsuit.
Maduro said those who distort events in Venezuela are “on the side of the 1 percent.”
http://freebeacon.com/national-security/nicolas-maduro-fact-check/ – 4/2/2014.
The politics of foreign despots at a glance . . . the reason I find what I do (with simple search terms like “Maduro, wealth”, and a click of the mouse) is because I know the anchors of the image — the image of post-socialist now neo-feudal dictators AKA “malignant narcissists” — have their record in yesterday’s news and the factual data conveyed through it.
A joint new study by three leading Venezuelan universities — Andres Bello Catholic University, Central University of Venezuela, and Simon Bolivar University — shows that 48.4 percent of Venezuelan households were below the poverty line in 2014, up from 45 percent of households in 1998, before late radical leftist President Hugo Chávez took office and benefited from nearly a decade of soaring world oil prices.
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/andres-oppenheimer/article9311450.html – 2/4/2015.
Venezuela has some of the world’s largest proven oil deposits as well as huge quantities of coal, iron ore, bauxite and gold.
Yet most Venezuelans live in poverty, many of them in shanty towns, some of which sprawl over the hillsides around the capital, Caracas.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-19649648 – 3/11/2015
Poverty is no joke: no dignity; no freedom; no growth; no future.
Whether the “unit of analysis” is individual, family, or community makes no difference. The restraints and punishments (for political dissent) suffocate soul and spirit.
To redress grievance and repair requires some accurate — not paranoid — comprehension of involved economic, political, and psychological forces and variables, starting with the character of the leadership in place: as it stands today, the feudal-medieval principle continues to invite to its portals conflict and revolution, the differences between a 12th Century despot, a 19th Century czar, and a 21st Century dictator yielding the same result in economic and social modeling across geopolitical space and time.
However, social — and perhaps liberal, humanist, and socialist — expectations have changed markedly since medieval days, and people become simply more rapidly aware of their own potential — and the potential of where they live as a base for living and producing for themselves and others (at fair rates) — and equally apprised of real cultural, political, and social impediments to achievement, and those same may include a piratical nobility.
“We used to produce rice and we had excellent coffee; now we produce nothing. With the situation here people abandoned the fields,” says Jesús López, in reference to government-seized land that sits idle. “Empty shelves and no one to explain why a rich country has no food. It’s unacceptable,” adds the 90-year-old farmer from San Cristóbal, on the western state of Táchira, bordering Colombia.
http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2013/sep/26/venezuela-food-shortages-rich-country-cia – 9/26/2013.
The so-called “socialist” scapegoating of the west, the Jews, the capitalists, and so on simply runs into its own true common feudal Orwellian political reality: dens of thieves, after all.
According to this measure, the number of Venezuelans classified as poor shot up in the last year by 1.8 million people. Roughly 6 percent of all Venezuela’s 30 million people became poor in the last year alone. The situation is even direr when one looks at extreme poverty, i.e., the number of people whose income cannot even buy a representative basket of food and drink. In the last year alone, the number of extremely poor Venezuelans rose by 730,000. They now reach close to three million people, or roughly 10 percent of the population.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2014/06/04/poverty-shoots-up-in-venezuela – 6/4/2015 –i.e., published almost a year ago, and, for sure, things cannot have gotten better.
http://lainfo.es/en/2015/03/17/presidents-arrive-in-venezuela-for-alba-meeting/ – 3/17/2015
http://news.yahoo.com/photos/venezuelas-president-nicolas-maduro-center-addresses-leaders-during-photo-001757098.html – 3/17/2015.
# # #
15 Sunday Mar 2015
Tags
Waiting for me on Facebook: a rumor of war (grammar removed, ellipses added):
Venezuela . . . soldiers from Russia and Vietnam . . . training population . . . civil war . . . Ukraine . . . urban combat . . . confrontation in the jungle like . . . Vietnam . . . .
While Reuters reported yesterday on amped up Venezuelan military activity involving the mobilization of 80.000 soldiers and 20,000 civilians as part of a drill, and Dissident Voice has has issued a denial about anything being unusual, certainly nothing that would pose a threat to U.S. “national security and foreign policy” — that may be true, but it’s not so good for the people of Venezuela who have been impoverished by the privileged of the socialist class — Maduro has picked up the right to “legislate by decree” for the next nine months.
Related:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/03/15/us-venezuela-maduro-idUSKBN0MB0XI20150315 – 3/15/2015
While Putin and Maduro met and moaned about oil prices back in January, I haven’t yet seen mainstream media mention of foreign military advisors or troops engaged with Maduro’s now undeniably obvious dictatorship, for rule by the leader’s decree is what dictatorships do. The news, however, turns up recent trade agreements between Venezuela and Vietnam involving “oil deals”, asphalt, and textile plants.
WASHINGTON – The Venezuelan government’s close ties to Cuba and Iran pose a real threat to its sovereignty, and to the security of the hemisphere, retired Brig. Gen. Antonio Rivero, a former insider in the government of Hugo Chávez, told Fox News Latino during a visit to Washington, D.C., this week.
Rivero held high-profile positions under Chávez – from 2003 to 2008, he was the director of the Civil Protection and Disaster Relief agency – until he refused to chant “Socialism, Fatherland or Death,” a pledge emblematic of the Cuban Revolution that was imposed unexpectedly as part of the official military salute.
Put together with Karen Dawisha’s work on Putin’s management of Russia, the reversion to “state capitalism” in both Russia and Venezuela — and for Iran, the Khamenei brothers appear to be a $60 billion duo — seems to line up with this blog’s emerging thesis that in the battle between the medieval and modern, neo-feudalism appears to be making its dismal autocratic and disingenuous (about empowerment of the people, human rights, and modification of the distribution of wealth toward social ends) mark.
# # #
25 Wednesday Feb 2015
Waiting to pounce on me from my inbox this morning: “Please report that Nicolas Maduro wants to visit Ecuador to seek international support . . . .”
My correspondent alludes to a source within Ecuador’s government: ” . . . the visit will be in April or June . . . .”
Is this really such a good time — a good year even — for travel?
With a country, one cannot simply water the plants, check the faucets, lock the doors and leave, and this is not such a good time for Nicolas Maduro for doing even so little as that.
Reuters reported Tuesday, “A teenager was fatally shot at an anti-government protest in the western city of San Cristobal on Tuesday, state officials said, exacerbating tensions in Venezuela amid an economic crisis and crackdown on the political opposition.”
Kluiver Roa was 14 years old. His father was reputed to be a member of opposition party Copei. Although an arrest was made, Reuters reporters found cause to call the crime scene circumstances — what actually happened — “confusing”.
Currency devaluation, plunging oil revenues, shortages — no wonder violence has broken out on the streets.
Camouflaged police smashed into the mayor’s office and carried him away . . . Mr Ledezma was on a list of people and foreign powers named by Mr Maduro last week as attempting to bring down his administration.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-31545963 – 2/19/2015.
Related:
Reuters. “Russia’s Putin, Venezuela’s Madura discuss oil markets: Interfax.” January 15, 2015; Pitts, Pietro. “Venezuela’s Asia Tour Backfires as Crude Extends Slump.” Bloomberg Business, January 16, 2015; Lee, Hailey. “Beijing still funds struggling Venezuela, for now.” CNBC, January 21, 2015.
Reliant on mineral wealth for wealth, the “Red Brown Green” arc of power’s extension into developing South American economies may be suffering from the same malady: the west’s intent to finish off the Soviet Empire.
It has been about 25 years since the Soviet dissolved without also dissolving the “perks” of the Party privileged and all of its direct associates, including associate leadership in distant states.
It appears the power mad — political species “Narcissus communist proto-fascist” — were dependent on climbing oil revenues — the miraculous abundance of “black gold”, and all of it theirs for the taking — for sustaining and growing both the functional and symbolic elements of power within their spheres of control, from state’s military equipage to the payouts in patronage that created the “nomenklatura”, which along today’s neo-feudal path appears to be a “Newest Nobility”, now rapidly deflating while being urged toward productive development investment — including investment in human development — and (gasp!) rule of law.
Financially strangling, the politically dying may be expected to put their people in their own place first, i.e., the privileged may be counted on to make themselves the last to give up privilege.
In the Awesome Conversation on Facebook, I often remind that Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe — another old Soviet tentacle — remains in power. What he has done to Zimbabweans, including the reintroduction of cholera in relation to withholding from a rival funds for water sanitation chemicals, seems of no account: in the “one man, one vote, one time” democratic ways of much of Africa, Mugabe will celebrate turning 91 this Saturday.
Although no less than Vladimir Putin has called Mugabe a dictator (at least once and back in 2009), which is sayin’ somethin’, the point is the worst of national leaders, truly despots, have long demonstrated their possession of the means, wherewithal, and will for remaining in power to the natural end of their lives.
As our “malignant narcissists” appear to reject criticism, eliminate rivals, and cultivate a ceaseless “narcissistic supply“, one must expect politically geological aftershocks — or revanch birth pangs — basically kicking (whether leaving the world or coming into it) from the Fall of the Soviet Union and the latest squeeze on the oxygen supply that is cold hard cash at the wellhead.
The regime’s favourite charge to level at hostile politicians is plotting to overthrow the government, often in conspiracy with the United States. But it is the president, Nicolás Maduro, who is staging a coup against the last vestiges of democracy. Venezuelans call it an autogolpe, or “self-coup”.
BackChannels Library. “Russian Section.”
BBC. “Venezuela police raid arrests Caracas mayor Antonio Ledezma.” February 19, 2015.
Dawisha, Karen. Putin’s Kleptocracy: Who Owns Russia? New York: Simon & Schuster, 2014.
Newzimbabwe.com. “Putin rebukes ‘dictator’ Mugabe. December 11, 2009.
Wikipedia. María Corina Machado.
“He is alive, as long as nations are alive and struggle for consolidating independence, justice and kindness. I have no doubt that he will come back, and along with Christ the Saviour, the heir to all saintly and perfect men, and will bring peace, justice and perfection for all.”
Sofer, Roni. “Israel: Ties to South America aiding Iran’s nuclear program.” YNet News, May 25, 2009.
Posted to YouTube 2/11/2015.
Posted to YouTube 5/8/2014.
# # #
24 Monday Mar 2014
Posted in Asia, China, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Eurasia, Politics, Regions, Russia, South America, Ukraine, Venezuela
To Russian and Syrian officials and their supporters, the Syrian war and the standoff over the Crimean Peninsula are essentially part of a single, larger battle, against post-Cold War American unilateralism.
When Putin’s Russia pledged $10 million to Syrian relief while spending $52 billion to host the winter games in Sochi, it told the world unmistakably what it was going to be about: the greatness of the Great Leader.
Why shouldn’t Bashar al-Assad continue what he’s doing while “encouraging” votes to reelect him as their Great Leader?
Why should Vladimir Putin halt the expansion of either mafia enterprise or Russian hegemony in Crimea?
* * *
Six documents stamped with the seal of the Venezuelan army show that as far back as December 2001, agents of then president Hugo Chavez — Maduro’s mentor — sought to build a paramilitary. What is more, the recruitment efforts targeted military bases in order to incorporate army personnel into this non-uniformed militia. In other words, the Chavez government was looking for trained professionals who could handle weapons.
I read the above in hard copy at the coffee shop an hour ago, so it has been out today, Monday, March 24.
Venezuela’s axis may be counterpoised to Russia, as I recall the note of a South American friend: “You can see the oil rigs of the Chinese from Miami.” [1]
The business would seem to come along with the way of doing business – or perhaps dictatorships simply understand one another in the way of crooked and sociopath elites:
The challenges facing most of the Caribbean nations are neither unique nor entirely isolated. They include high unemployment and migration levels, unsustainable levels of government debt and increasingly high costs of energy. In fact, the high costs of energy have led some small Caribbean island nations to join Hugo Chavez’s radical ALBA (Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas) in exchange for cheap Venezuelan petroleum. When a powerful nation such as China comes on the scene and offers loans, credits and investment, local actors take substantial notice, especially when the traditional hegemon, the United States, seems preoccupied elsewhere.
Menéndez, Fernando. “China Comes to the Caribbean.” China – U.S. Focus, January 25, 2014.
To spell in schematic, “Putin-Assad-Khamenei” and “Putin-Yanukovych” (so sorry it didn’t last) seems to me perfectly sensible, and then to suggest a similar but Chinese-oriented path for Chavez seems not unreasonable.
The line may be missing a dot or two, but the dots are there and whether intentionally among the Bond-villain set — in the post-00s of the 21st Century, these already have their nukes — or unconsciously by way of the anomic lust for money that produces the policy that pipes out Sudanese oil while ignoring the Darfur Genocide, for example — hardly matters: free Europeans say “hello” to the new old bosses, the old familiars, the kind that talk kindly while select suspect associates are thrown off the roofs above their heads and the children of their constituents are barrel bombed into dead certain compliance with their will.
______
Related on BackChannels: “Draw Near, the Next World Order — China and Russia Hang Together.” March 3, 2014.
# # #
20 Thursday Feb 2014
Momento que policia de venezuela matan estudiante y modelo Génesis Carmona ! – YouTube – 2/19/2014.
* * *
Once-defiant Venezuelan TV goes quiet amid opposition protests | Reuters – 2/19/2014.
Cameras Taken At Gunpoint In Venezuela – 2/20/2014.
* * *
. . . since 2005, Venezuela has purchased more than $4 billion worth of arms from Russia.[1] In September 2008, Russia sent Tupolev Tu-160 bombers to Venezuela to carry out training flights.[2] In November 2008, both countries held a joint naval exercise in the Caribbean.[3] Following Chavez’s two visits to Moscow in July and September 2008, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin arrived in Venezuela to pave the way for a third meeting within five months between their two presidents.
Russia–Venezuela relations – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – as viewed 2/20/2014.
* * *
This, however, was a significant improvement over media coverage of the violence during the Feb.12 march (see David’s comments in the Financial Times).
That day when the student’s protests turned increasingly violent, private television stations stopped their live coverage of the incidents. Globovisión, the news channel that used to be considered the main pro-opposition media but is now owned by a business group said to be close to the government, had initially given ample – but not live – coverage to the protests. But as soon as violence erupted in the afternoon, they switched to a fashion program.
How are Venezuela’s media covering the protests? – CSMonitor.com – 2/19/2014
* * *.
From a correspondent within the awesome conversation (2/20/2014):
The government of Venezuela is very stronger, have many people that support them and the soldiers have many business in the government.
The media try to present that the government are on the brink of fall, but this is not true, only the soldiers can make a Coup State, and the soldiers give support to the government.
China is the first investor in Cuba, at the end, Venezuela is a poor country also, Venezuela can’t give support to Cuba, they send a single ship of oil to Cuba per week, nothing more, and Cuba give assistance to Venezuela with health aid, doctors and assistance to the poor people, at the end Cuba is a poor country also…
China have many investments in Cuba, they are install offshore oil platforms in Cuba in the offshore of Miami, the people can see the oil platforms of China from the coast of Miami.
China invest in Nicaragua and other countries from the Caribean Sea, they will never allow a Coup State in Venezuela, because this can damage their business with Venezuela government, and China have many influence over U.S. government to keep the peace in the region.
The military force in Venezuela have business with oil, and sell oil to China… the military force can make a Coup State only, but they give support to the government to make business with China…
Venezuela, what this means, the soldiers, send twenty oil ships per day with oil to China and U.S., to sell oil to China and U.S.
They are friends and make business together…
American influence / (Chinese+Russian Influence) : god = capital, patronage, return.
That above I would call the newest world order.
Where people would appear to want a political voice, a say in their fate, some guarantees about dignity, freedom, and human rights, The Money has no conscience, no moral code other than to drift where it pays to go or otherwise directly into piratical networks.
No wonder Putin did not want Khodorkovsky running Russia’s oil business. And China? China’s quietly going about its business with banking, manufacturing, and mining, and it too seems immune to criticism.
* * *
(Reuters) – Venezuelan security forces and demonstrators faced off in streets blocked by burning barricades in several provincial cities on Thursday as protests escalated against President Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government.
Venezuela protests rumble as demonstrators, troops face off | Reuters – 2/20/2014.
* * *
His wife, Lilian Tintori, placed a crucifix around his neck. He climbed down into a crowd gone wild with chants of ¡Sí, se puede! (Yes, we can!) and proceeded to turn himself over to the authorities . . . .
Leopoldo Lopez, the Venezuela Opposition’s New Hero – Businessweek – 2/20/2014.
Leopoldo Lopez, the Venezuela Opposition’s New Hero – Businessweek
Related: BBC News – Venezuelan opposition leader Lopez ‘to stay in custody’ – 2/20/2014.
Genesis Carmona : The Two-Way : NPR – 2/20/2014.
* * *
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIqG8jeCiZo – 2/20/2014.
*
Maduro asked the minister of Communication and Information, Delcy Rodríguez to inform CNN that “an administrative process has begun to take them off the aire if they do not mend their ways.”
Related: Maduro: If CNN do not correct reports, they are out of Venezuela – BuenosAiresHerald.com – 2/20/2014.
# # #
BackChannels 