September 1, 2016 - A day of risk and danger in Venezuela.

The US backed opposition in Venezuela is taking a big gamble tomorrow morning by launching its "Takeover of Caracas" demonstration.

It's not a secret that Venezuela is in the grip of a rapidly deteriorating scenario of near run away inflation, serious shortages of medicine, medical supplies, food and personal hygiene items such as toilet paper. The government blames an economic war that it says is being waged by the United States and its Venezuelan oppositionist surrogates. Lots of people are saying that the situation is evidence that socialism is a failure.

I've been of the opinion that while Venezuela's leaders say that they are socialists (as also do some opposition groups) Venezuela is not and has not been a socialist republic. The main industry, petroleum extraction is owned by the government but (barely) functions with the participation of private enterprises such as Bechtel. The industry exists within a national and global market economy. While up until 2013, the time of much revered President Hugo Chavez' untimely death, Venezuela had been making strides in reducing poverty and economic inequality. Over the past three years that progress has been unraveling, and a government that has been in office for 16 years, ten of them boom time years cannot credibly blame all of the country's problems on a foreign power and domestic opposition. According to public opinion polls most Venezuelans reject this explanation and have little confidence in either the government or the US backed opposition.

Last December Venezuela had parliamentary elections in which the opposition coalition gained 56 percent of the popular vote and took control of the parliament ( National Assembly). Assembly President Henry Ramos promised that President Maduro would be out of office and the crisis would be on the road to solution in six months. Nothing of the sort happened. Venezuela's very liberal Constitution, a product of Hugo Chavez' leadership, allows for a citizen initiative to remove the President, but it has rules, procedures, deadlines. Because the opposition missed a deadline the recall vote if it takes place, will not result in a new election, but could result in the President being replaced by his Vice President. The opposition rejects this possible outcome and has called for a massive "Takeover of Caracas" to force a speed up of the process, although they have no program or candidates.

They're clearly playing with fire.

It's my deepest hope that things go peacefully in Caracas and throughout Venezuela. Whatever happens it must not become a pretext for more overt US intervention.

The Army Steps In In Venezuela

The Venezuelanalysis website has such a way with words: 

Venezuela has been hard hit by a severe economic crisis triggered by the collapse of global crude prices– the country’s principal source of export earnings–which has led to soaring triple-digit inflation as well as acute shortages of food and medicine.

Maduro has blamed much of the crisis on economic destabilization by foreign transnationals, who he has accused of lining their pockets with state dollars yet refusing to invest in production and imports.- This begs a comment. Who but the government is responsible for Polar and foreign transnationals getting cheap dollars from the government? 

The new mission is intended to combat the country’s “criminal” black market economy believed to be driving inflation and will be headed by the presidential military command under Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez.

Maduro further specified that the initiative will consist of six “micro-missions” dedicated to the production of seeds, animal protein, balanced food, cleaning and personal hygiene products, as well as the regionalizing of school meal menus and the supply of essential medicines.

In addition to promoting production and new mining activities, the Maduro government has also promised greater imports to offset the crisis’ impact on ordinary Venezuelans.

On Monday, the South American country received a much-anticipated shipment of 400 tons of food from Trinidad and Tobago as part of a US $26.9 million deal signed last month...

These six paragraphs tell us so much about the Venezuelanalysis's editors' estimate of their readers' intelligence. 

Back in April of 2013 petroleum prices were twice what they are now. Venezuelanalysis was reporting on government measures to combat food shortages including talks with the Polar Foods private food distribution giant that was receiving cheap dollars from the government in order to sell food cheaply to the Venezuelan people. 

The big news from Venezuela analysis is that the Army is taking over food production and distribution as well as "new mining." The Army's top general, Padrino López,  has been appointed virtual Co-President which hopefully is good news. That the government has made a deal with Trinidad and Tobago to import a dollar's worth of food per Venezuelan isn't significant.

I'm wishing General Padrino López good luck and success. And may the rains continue and petroleum prices continue to rise.

God comes through for Venezuela.

It's been a while since I posted here about events in Venezuela.  As some people know I am married to a Venezuelan who has family over there and that I visited and met them during the winter of 2014-2015. They aren't rich and things were pretty tight already but they were gracious and hospitable to me. I'm 70 years old and still able to put in 4 shifts of 12 + hours in a taxi. Because I get a modest Social Security and pension check I can happily work some of those hours to send food and vitamins their way, and those things are needed.

Anyhow, this is the basis of my interest in Venezuela.  I am a news and political junkie who's inclined to the left but but before I met my wife to be Venezuela was on the outer periphery of my personal radar. I had a vague knowledge that an ex military man was the leader there and that he was a populist of some sort.

Of course I wanted to know more now and came to see Hugo Chavez as a very popular leader who was doing things for the poor, and charting an independent foreign policy.

I visited in 2005 - 2006 and from what I saw there were contradictions. I felt, like I feel now, that the government was flawed, though there were good intentions on its part. I knew that if I were a Venezuelan I would not join the governing party, but I'd vote for it as the lesser evil against the opposition as it was and is constituted.

I became familiar with the group Marea Socialista through the website Venezuelanalysis. I became more or less convinced that they were onto something when they demanded a thorough, transparent and population based audit of money that had left Venezuela in spite of the fact that policies were supposed to block capital flight. I became fairly convinced that indeed, there had been a gigantic embezzlement and that at least a part of Venezuela's external debt had to be linked to unlawful transactions, and thus as odious debt that the people of Venezuela were under no moral obligation to pay it  off. On top of this they make an argument that is similar to this: Suppose your child becomes deathly ill and you take her to the nearest emergency room. You are told there that you must pay $500.00 on the spot in order for the hospital to start to give her treatment that could save her life. That very morning, however, you had received a notice that your last car payment was past due. If you do not pay it, you may be subject to repossession. Having been caught up in hard times, your bank account is at zero and your credit card has but $500.00 left. What would you do? Most sane people would worry about the car tomorrow and take care of the child right now.

The leaders of Venezuela are facing this situation: External debt is about as high as available reserves. There is potential collateral underground in the form of expensive to access and refine petroleum. natural gas, coltan, This is not readily accessible. In part because the President of the United States has laughably declared Venezuela to be a national security threat to the United States, and because in part due to United States efforts to end reliance on imported petroleum petroleum prices have tumbled. They seem to be on a slow upward incline now, but that's not at all certain, and China, Venezuela's most reliable lender of last resort, China, has closed the loan window. Meanwhile malnutrition for most and outright starvation for the very poor are present in Venezuela. The government blames the capitalists and the United States. They have a case in that the capitalists have been smuggling out of Venezuela both dollars and subsidized goods meant for Venezuela's poor and near poor populations.

The public, out of anger and disappointment delivered a punishing defeat to the governing party in legislative elections last December. This opposition crew is unsavory and really doesn't have the confidence of the public. Many however, are enchanted with a promise of "change" that is so non specific it can truly be said that the opposition has no strategy for the recovery of Venezuela's economy. It seems like the government is also at a loss and only the coalition around Marea Socialista seems to have even half an answer - track down embezzled hundreds of billions of dollars, recover all that is possible and hold off on repaying the external debt until 1- The given debt is proven legitimate and 2- The economy is in a viable recovery and hunger and lack of medicines no longer are the rule.

The country has apparently just come out of a long term drought. The Guri Dam, an engineering marvel, which supplies around 60% of Venezuela's electrical power had been dangerously low. Emegency measures, an excavation, took place. In my surfing and reading I had come across a high pitched warning that this excavation would cause a catastropic flood once the rains were to return. I didn't know whether to believe it or not, but out of caring for Venezuela I tweeted and FaceBooked and Google Plussed it out.

Thanks to God the prediction was wrong, whether malicious or not I do not know.

.http://venezuelausa.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-guri-dam-and-other-important-stuff.html

In the United States bridges have collapsed due to right wing economic ideology that calls all taxation theft and all government action, even to maintain a bridge, as waste and tyrany. And so in Flint, Michigan the right wing governor who knowingly gambled with the city's health in order not to spend what he deems money stolen from the rich to provide free water to people marked as "useless eaters."

Venezuela is not Michigan and Guri is not Flint.

The people who posted this video say that an excavation that has taken place or is underway in the drought stricken Guri Dam is likely undermining the Dam and that when the rains ultimately return there could be calamitous floods. I cannot judge nor assess the accuracy of the claim but it frightened me enough to want the leaders of Venezuela to be aware of the alleged risk. They have access to expert opinions while I do not. I wish there were more discreet ways of going about this but let's face it, an email, or a tweet, or a phone call from a New York City taxi driver will not likely get a response or a respectful hearing.

Petroleum prices are creeping up which is good news. The government is resisting by all available means a recall referendum called by a faction of the opposition (which has many leaders, and not so many followers). This is resulting in outcries of dictatorship, tyranny and lack of democracy. 

The government insists that there are procedures to be followed and that the organizers of the referendum are not complying. I can't judge this kind of matter. What I know is a revolutionary wouldn't yield power to a counterrevolutionary just for losing a vote. A revolutionary feels obliged to fight for what they believe to be right and true and best for the workers and poor. 

Residents of rich pseudo democratic countries might not realize that losing an election and giving up power can have serious consequences, up to and including mass assassinations, and terror against the population segments that had supported the previous regime. In that light sane people might not be inclined to say "Oh, that's right, I lost a vote. Here are the keys to the Presidential palace. Please don't start a mass murder campaign." 

So politics's much more than a game or a horse race.

According to The Nation magazine Venezuela is "fucked" but not in the grip of a humanitarian crisis.

I'm glad that yesterday the Organization of American States rejected Venezuelan opposition lobbying for expulsion and sanctions against their own country. I felt that a vote against Venezuela under the rubric of the "Democratic Charter" could lead to actual military intervention, something that would not help Venezuela or its people.

Jeff Bezos, billionaire owner of The Washington Post and Hillary Clinton inner circle member and Alvaro Uribe recently hardliner right-wing president of Colombia have pushed for just this and oppositionist money grubber president of Venezuela's National Assembly Henry Ramos Allup has lobbied the United States Senate's Cuban Caucus as well.

Everyone who follows the news knows that Venezuela is in a serious crisis of shortages of food, medicine, medical equipment and thing necessary to keep the economy going like truck and bus tires, batteries and spare parts. It's easy to sympathize with calls for international humanitarian aid. Looking at history, for example recent events in Haiti which has been under foreign "humanitarian" occupation it's not difficult to understand the government’s reluctance to allow a humanitarian airlift of necessities into Venezuela.  The question of who would control the distribution of this aid isn't usually mentioned but today I saw

Bernardo Álvarez Herrera, ambassador, Permanent Representative of Venezuela to the OAS state on  television that Venezuela would accept "unconditional aid and is negotiating receiving aid front Trinidad and Jamaica.

Venezuelan's family and friends say that packages going to specific Venezuelans are being blocked by Venezuela’s Customs officials.

Churches and the Venezuelan community in Florida, which is predominantly anti government, are trying to get aid packages to Venezuelans.


It's understandable then, that opponents of intervention wish to combat what they see as exaggeration of the crisis. 

They (myself included) don't want to hear "we destroyed Venezuela in order to save it." A large section of the American people would enjoy a TV show featuring bombs destroying neighborhoods in order to assure the people there are getting enough to eat. This would be offset by images of US Marines giving out chewing gum and lollipops. Also, they (and myself) don't want to see the government’s credibility and authority undermined in favor of Venezuela's old regime opposition which offers no solutions of its own to the crisis and already lied to Venezuela’s increasingly desperate people last December, when they promised that if they win majority control of the National Assembly the crisis would be eased in six months. The opposition is fragmented and distrusted, while the government is widely disliked probably riven with hidden factions  and distrusted.


And so US progressive and anti interventionist Gabriel Hetland took to the pages of The Nation magazine

Hetland sings a simple (and merry) song about a government official who's getting excellent care of a sprained hand in a government clinic. He claims that the clinics are working normally. I was in Venezuela from November 2014 until February 2015.

Let me tell you a story about something that is happening now in a government hospital on a city I won't name in Venezuela.  Theres a father to be running around from one place to another getting a supper together for a mother to be who's been hospitalized. For months she's not been gaining weight though pregnant. She even started to lose weight.  She got a check up and was found to be anemic.  Her aunt who lives in New York City came to bring vitamin and mineral supplements for her, a pregnant neighbor and several relatives, children, who were not thriving.

Yesterday she started bleeding badly. Her spouse got her to the nearest free public hospital, as they have not much money or insurance.

The hospital doesn't feed the patients. The future father had to buy hypodermic needles and other equipment at a nearby pharmacy. He brought her a scant meal of coffee and an arepa with black beans. The nurses demanded he go back out to fetch something for them, they being hungry. So far it looks like mother and six month fetus are going to make it. He'll be coming three times a day to bring what food he finds to share with the mother to be and the nurses.

What's the food and medicine situation in Venezuela?

It's been too long since I've written a post about Venezuela.  Every time I start it seems something new is happening.  Yesterday there was a riot in La Vega, a working class district in Caracas. It was about food and people fired guns at National Guard troops (a cross between riot squad, border patrol and army light infantry). 

Things are not good and they're not getting better.  Most Venezuelans do not have enough to eat, in an oil and mineral rich country governed by people who call themselves socialists. The food shortages started in 2013 soon after the death of President Hugo Chavez when oil, the mainstay of the economy was selling at $100 a barrel. Since then then the price crashed to around $21 a barrel and is now hovering around  $40 per barrel. 

                     

I was pretty amend angry when I made this video a few days ago and I'm angrier now.

Some of you know my wife is Venezuelan and has family there, people who I spent three months with during the winter of 2014 - 2015. I saw first hand the disconnect between the actual lives of Venezuelans and the Cheerful Charlie reports on state TV and websites purporting to express solidarity with Venezuela  ( and presumably it's people.)

Venezuela is a Bizarro sort of place. People who don't have enough to eat have cell phones with Facebook and Whatsapp, so we stay in touch. My wife's people are just short of absolutely desperate. My wife spent a week there after bringing vitamin and mineral pills to her people, two of whom were pregnant, losing weight and anemic.

So when my wife saw Eva Golinger minimize the problem on RT she nearly flipped out.

Https://actualidad.rt.com/actualidad/209100--venezuela-hay-mas-colas-comprar-barato-que-protestas

Poor Venezuelans rummage for edible garbage in Barquisimeto. 

This photograph was taken in a supermarket in New York City during the hurricane Katrina crisis in 2011. It was first published as "illustrative" of a food crisis in Venezuela in 2013. In 2013 the price of petroleum was still over $100 a barrel.  There were nuisance type food shortages at that time. A shopper might be looking for pasta, for example, but have to settle for rice. Since then the shortages have reached crisis proportions, even if opponents of the government have been exaggerating the situation for years.

It's true that people with enough money can have fruits and vegetables. The problem is that most Venezuelans don't have much money. 60% of Venezuelans are working in the formal economy. 40% of those workers earn minimum wage. 22 minimum wages can buy enough food  (excluding all other expenses ) for five people.

These are official Central Bank import figures for Venezuela. Note that Venezuela imports most of its food. In 2007 27,670,659 Venezuelans consumed 570,000 tons of meat. That's around 19 kilos each. In 2015  31,495,633 Venezuelans supposedly consume 590,000 tons of meat. That's around 17 kilos.  But these numbers don't tell the story. A gigantic portion of the subsidized imports, around a third according to President Maduro was beingsmuggled out of the country,  mainly to Colombia  The official and legal border crossings have been closed for months. Yet I can report that family members who live in the border states of Tachira and Zulia  are, like their neighbors, in desperate search for food, especially protein rich food, and that meat and other food is now resmuggled from Venezuela to Colombia then back to Venezuela at prices most cannot afford. 

There is a new plan, announced by President Maduro,  called CLAP, under which the community councils and communes are bringing bags of food door to door. Rioters in Caracas haven't noticed them yet. Residents far from Caracas, in that country some elitists call "Weeds and snakes" ( something like "flyover country"), in Tachira and Zulia and doubtlessly other places too, are awaiting that knock on the door and the appearance of some friendly communards with some much needed eggs, flour and pasta.

As long as the Government and Opposition agree that paying the debt comes first above all else things can only get worse.

Counterpunch Magazine and Jeff Blankfort give voice to pro US coup propaganda against Venezuela.

If you Google my name with Venezuela you'll find that I've been critical of the Chavista government going back for years, but I've always maintained an opposition to United States intervention and I've defended the good and progressive things they've done.

It's beyond argument that Venezuela is in a state of collapse and that the government is responsible in major part for the misery of the Venezuelan people and the loss of the positive advances towards ending poverty that Venezuela made between 1999 and 2013. However there appears to be a campaign underway to make a pro US reversion to the old regime that the Chavista political revolution had ousted from power acceptable to progressives outside of Venezuela. Hand in hand with this campaign is a campaign to humiliate, discredit, intimidate and neutralize non Venezuelans who supported or defended the Chavez movement.

At bottom the campaign aims to identify socialism with the Venezuelan catastrophe and discredit socialism for another generation.  I don't know if Jeff Blankfort and Counterpunch magazine understand that in pushingPEDRO LANGE-CHURION forward this is what they're doing.

Lange-Churion has very valid criticisms of the Chavista movement and government. I've put several of the same criticisms out myself. The problem is in the possible alternatives and next steps. This is where he is doing harm and Counterpunch along with Jeff Blankfort have helped him so far.

Revolutions are messy. They are said  to even eat their children.  It's also been said that revolutions aren't tea parties. So, any revolution is marked with error, even crimes. They should be avoided unless they are necessary. By the 1990's one was necessary in Venezuela. Hugo Chavez and a group of soldiers around him picked up the challenge.

The Venezuelan revolution never was complete. It didn't smash the capitalist state. It didn't dispossess the Venezuelan one percenters. It booted them from political office, and instituted reforms based on the money pouring in from Venezuela's oil sales. It also turns out that it allowed Venezuela to try to challenge United States policies and hegemony. This was Chavez ' cardinal sin. He lobbied to revive OPEC and had some responsibility for the recovery of oil prices. He threw a lifeline to revolutionary Cuba. He set out to build a parallel organization to the Organization of American States that wold exclude the USA. (UNASUR). He strove to build a trade bloc in an effort to break the economic headlock the United States holds in Latin America. He invited Russian forces to visit and dock in Venezuela and moved to have China, not the US, be Venezuela 's first trading partner. He kicked the corrupt Drug Enforcement Administration out of Venezuela  ( they have the run of neighboring Colombia which is where the cocaine comes from and where cocaine production continues to increase.) He took the Venezuelan Embassy out of Tel-Aviv and sent the Israeli Embassy packing. He defied sanctions against Iran. He refused to accept a United States ambassador who had publicly insulted the Venezuelan armed forces. PEDRO LANGE-CHURION calls these "antics" that enamored the international left.

Fast forwarding, Chavez died (or perhaps was murdered). Before he died Chavez named Nicolas Maduro to take his place. Oil prices collapsed and the effects of an ongoing embezzlement of hundreds of billions of dollars started to bite.

Maduro has been floundering. Millions of Chavistas abstained or spoiled their ballots in the legislative  elections in December 2015. The opposition, much the same personnel of the old regime and the "misguided " in Lange-Churion's words US backed coup of 2002 and the insurrectionary economic sabotage of 2003. These are the people who Lange-Churion and Jeff Blankfort want to dress up as a broad coalition spanning center-right all the way to "socialists." Jeff Blankfort amazes me in this. I didn't think.I knew a more intransigent opponent of US imperialism and racism.

The leader of the opposition bloc in the Venezuelan legislature is Henry Ramos-Allup. Lange-Churionand Blankfort want us to see Ramos-Allup as a "socialist", which I suppose if you consider Henry Strauss-Khan  and Tony Benn (late edit- Tony Blair, may God forgive that error) socialists Ramos-Allup might count for one also.

Venezuela is a color conscious country to the point of illness. Every shade of skin color has its own name and children in the same household are in many cases treated differently based on skin color. So, it shouldn't surprise that Venezuelan rightist ( like the fake socialists) found it hard to accept a man of color, Hugo Chavez as president.  This is similar to the Republican Party here that never accepted the fact that a Black Democrat beat them in two elections.

Hugo Chavez had had the remains of Venezuela's founding father, Simon Bolivar,  exhumed to try to determine the cause of his death. Bolivar has always been portrayed as a man of solely European background. The study found, however, that Bolivar's features pointed to African ancesters. The new official image of Bolivar acknowledged this.

When the oppositionists took over the National Assembly the first order of business was to remove the portraits of both Bolivar and Chavez, the first President of color and revered by the majority of Venezuela's people, who also are of color, as the first modern leader who both resembled them and cared about them.

Ramos-Allup was outed by Wikileaks as someone who often pestered the United States Embassy in Caracas to give him money. His associates often did the same and also pestered for visas and college scholarships for their families.  If the recall referendum succeeds this year the president by default will be none other than Ramos-Allup.

The opposition has not been able to accomplish a mass mobilization since the Chavistas lost the legislative elections and they have offered no program to address the situation of hunger, inflation, collapse of the medical system.

Barack Obama has twice signed proclamations labeling Venezuela an imminent threat to United States security.  A drug smuggling case against nephews of Celia Flores, wife of President Maduro is unfolding in New York.  THE COCAINE COMES FROM COLOMBIA AND THE US DEA HAS THE RUN OF COLOMBIA! I shout this because the US isn't going to forgive Chavez' "escapades" and wants a pretext. Venezuela is rich not only in petroleum but in gold, diamonds and coltan, a mineral needed for smart phones, tablets and computers. In keeping with its doctrine of "full spectrum dominance" the US would want the power to cut off any other country, China for example, from access to coltan.

The Guardian Comments on Venezuela's Plight and I Respond

People dying in what were once well-equipped and efficient hospitals, killings every day in the streets, queues for everything outside the shops, angry demonstrations in the capital – that is Venezuela today. How has a rich and once promising country reached this pass?

President Nicolás Maduro last week

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