Tuesday, October 11, 2016

A discussion with Francisco Toro on why I am anti anti Chavista

http://www.caracaschronicles.com/2016/10/11/vise-news/

I'm taking the liberty of skimming an article by Francisco Toro, that appears in Caracas Chronicles, a widely read English language anti Venezuelan government blog which he edits. I commented, he replied and here it is:

Vise News

Quico digs around in TodoChavez.gob.ve and brings the choice bits he finds to the readers of the New York Times.

By Francisco Toro -

October 11, 2016

131

It is a truth universally acknowledged that writers are never very happy with the headlines editors run over their articles. But every rule has its exceptions, and I think this is really quite apt. A taste:

For Mr. Chávez, this [putting the revocatorio article in the constitution] was partly a way to justify his role in history. In 1992, he had led a failed coup attempt against the democratically elected government of the day. It was a shabby affair: A few dozen troops machine-gunned the presidential palace in Caracas, the capital, while the president slipped out a side door and Mr. Chávez himself struggled to coordinate the revolt from the military museum nearby. The coup failed, but it propelled its leader to media stardom and eventually to the presidency.

Later, Mr. Chávez would argue that his revolt had been legitimate because Venezuela’s Constitution at the time contained no provision for getting rid of a catastrophically underperforming president.

“The Venezuela of ‘92 was so different from today’s Venezuela,” he said in a 2000 television interview. “Back then, all exits were blocked, totally blocked.”

Good clean fun.

Comments:

Very fine article, too!

I guess you nailed one reason why there are anti anti Chavistas who will never support the opposition, in spite of the mismanagement and failures of the present government, and that’s the Punto Fijo roots of the opposition.

The corrupt old regime especially after the Caracazo was a democracy for the elites, a divvying up of the spoils, sitting atop violence, repression and disappearances.

Your National Assembly leader, despised by his paymasters at the US Embassy in Caracas is the perfect mascot for this cause.

Dear God please help Venezuela, caught between a rock and a hard place just as Americans also need Your intervention in the “Democratic Election” of 2016.

Francisco Toro October 11, 2016 at 6:48 pm

Yeah, how could they *possibly* support people associated with a regime that introduced universal free public education through university level, nationalized oil, mandated profit-sharing by law, introduced universal free health care provision, created the Instituto Venezolano del Seguro Social, subsidized low income housing, mandated paid maternity leave, mandated severance payments, mandated vacation pay…peace with the neoliberals? NEVER!!

Reply
- Eugene WeixelOctober 11, 2016 at 10:00 pm
  
  No comment about the Caracazo, mass shootings of poor protesters or Punto Fijo, with its formalizing of a “one party with two wings” “democracy” or AD’s relationship with the US embassy. What a surprise!
  
  But just what the hell is the opposition’s plan? What are your differences with the government on the external debt? What do you propose to do about the $100,000,000,000’s skimmed through the multi tiered currency exchange rates and other forms of theft exemplified by Derwick and held outside of Venezuela?
  
  While I don’t personally have a position on the major mining proposal for the southern region I haven’t noticed an opposition position on it. It’s forgiveable for an individual who doesn’t live in Venezuela and has no expertise, but for a coalition that’s proposing to lead the country it isn’t.
  
  About Democracy – Marrea Socialista was denied the status of a legal electoral party and so could not participate in the National Assembly election last December. I am not an advocate for them but I appreciate their attention to the missing dollars. Maybe I missed what you or MUD had to say about any of that.
  
  From what I gather CLAP is indeed reaching people who are in need. I know people whose margin of staying alive is the CLAP food bag. I hope CLAP expands and improves and that efforts it’s making in food production increase and succeed.. What would you or MUD do right now in Venezuela to address the issue of hunger?
  
  Reply
- (CLAP is the acronym for the program in Venezuela that brings bags of low cost food to increasing numbers of Venezuela's households and is involved in food production, something that Venezuela does not have enough of- Eugene Weixel).
Charly October 11, 2016 at 9:54 pm

Eugene, my old Chavista friend, how have you been doing since the days of Oil Wars? Not a peep from this gang for a long long time now.

Reply
- Eugene WeixelOctober 11, 2016 at 10:05 pm
  
  I never described myself as a Chavista, but did defend the positive side of Chavez. I blog sometimes about Venezuela at https//Venezuela USA.blogspot.com.
  
  I hope life’s been treating you well.
  
  Reply

I didn’t know the revocatorio had its origins with the hero of the museo mlitar.

Recent world events are increasingly leading me to think that referenda are fundamentally bad things, and what better suits the purpose, and can better address problems of: (a) the election of lunatics who abuse their power, (b) fights over term limits, (c) battles between branches of government, (d) deferral of important and urgent decisions and (e) process issues around the referendum itself, a thing that is little understood, not normally supposed to happen, often ambiguous in its purpose, and easily manipulated- is British Parliamentary Democracy.

I know… not going to happen, ever. And yes, parliamentary democracies are increasingly latching on to the referendum, mostly I suspect so those governments can avoid the normal consequences of…parliamentary democracy.

While I obviously support the revocatorio in Venezuela because, what other options to change the government within the existing law are there?- over the longer term, I think it is a bad idea, and this regime has amply demonstrated why it is a bad idea, one that should be dumped along with all of Chavez’s other bad ideas and replaced with something more fundamental and structural in nature, when this agony is over.

Eugene, please put down the crack pipe!

NET. October 11, 2016 at 9:20 pm

He’s caught between a rock (“piedra”), and a hard place (trut)
Francisco Toro's reports and opinion pieces have appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post and other publications.

Friday, September 30, 2016

And now malaria...

I am a retired child protection social worker and a seventy year old New York taxi driver. I have a degree in Political Science from The College of Staten Island (Formerly know as Richmond College, City University of New York.)

I served in the United States Army from 1967 - 1969.

I live in Harlem and am married to a Venezuelan woman. I've visited Venezuela twice, most recently from November 2014 to February 2015 staying in the homes of a truck driver, a shoe store sales clerk, a taxi driver, and a construction laborer. I traveled by car from Caracas to Michelena on the Colombian frontier.

I feel qualified and driven to speak up for a change in the policies of the United States and Venezuela.

I follow publications and articles reflecting all points of view regarding Venezuela and I'm in contact with my wife's family who are having a difficult time in Venezuela. I am concerned about them and millions like them. It's now becoming apparent that malaria, a tropical scourge is making a comeback in Venezuela is which once had been a leading country in the eradication of this dread disease.

If I stole ten thousand dollars from you and then lent you a thousand dollars how much would you owe me? If your children were so hungry they couldn't do their school work what would you do first, pay your debt to me or buy food for your kids? Most sensible people would say that you owed me nothing, and that in any case feeding your children should be your top priority.

Venezuela is mentioned 241,000 times in the Panama Papers. While not every mention necessarily points to corruption it does indicate widespread capital flight, the very thing Venezuelan foreign exchange policy was said to be intended to prevent.

In 2013 an international consortium of journalists uncovered thousands of illicit accounts being used to conceal up to $32,000,000,000,000 from tax authorities worldwide.While NSA never revealed the details of this massive money laundering and tax evasion it's understood that the United States National Security Agency has the same information at hand.

Venezuela imports over seventy percent of the food and other items it consumes, making purchases with American dollars, and the government is the source of ninety-six percent of those dollars. Imports are expected to be valued at $15 billions this year, one fourth the level of imports in 2012.

To understand how hundreds of billions of dollars were embezzled and removed from the Venezuelan economy one has to understand the country's foreign exchange system. The national currency is ironically called the bolivar fuerte, (strong bolivar). What a bolivar is worth in dollars "all depends." The government has virtually all of the dollars there are in Venezuela because the national petroleum company (PDVSA) is responsible for 96 percent of Venezuela's exports. The government sells those dollars at different prices in bolivars according to the purpose the dollars are supposedly being used for. Currently most dollars are sold for ten bolivars each. These dollars are supposed to be used to import food staples, medical supplies and inputs for domestic agricultural and industrial production, all to be sold at cheap "fair prices." A lesser used rate that supposedly floats and is restricted is around 645 bolivars. Recently the black market price of a dollar in bolivars is reported to be around 1,025 bolivars to the dollar.

Venezuela's government owned Telesur English television network tells us that as of 2013, the year food shortages began to be a problem, $259,000,000,000 of these dollars were misappropriated, embezzled and brought to other countries, notably the United States. Other sources claim that up $475,000,000,000 have been embezzled through various corrupt schemes and sent abroad.

The inflation, the shortages and the spiralling violence that is being spurred on by hunger may or may not reach the level of a "humanitarian crisis" yet but they are on the path to just that. The unfolding malaria epidemic portends catastrophe in a country whose public health system is collapsing. and malnutrition stalks the land. Something must be done.

As much as the dramatic fall in oil prices is blamed for Venezuela's crisis the shortages began in 2013 when oil was still worth $100 a barrel. This was the year that President Hugo Chavez died and Nicolas Maduro succeeded him. 2012 was Venezuela's most prosperous year. Imports of all goods was at $60 billion. The embezzled money, at its lowest estimate is the equivalent of over four years of imports in a country that imports 70 percent of what it consumes. This clearly would've contributed greatly to the crisis. Amnesty International says "Unless those in power do a drastic U turn in the way they are handling this dramatic crisis, what is already an extremely serious situation will turn into an unthinkable nightmare." This statement was made before the threat of malaria arose. "Those in power" now includes not only the government, but the political opposition and major stakeholders like the United States and China. If the government of Venezuela wants to continue denying that the situation is a crisis and refuses to request assistance this simply must be gotten around. Lethal ovitraps can be used to kill the mosquito that carries not only malaria but also dengue fever, yellow fever, chikunguya and a new threat, mayaro fever.

Venezuela owes billions of dollars to American citizens and to China. Venezuela still is a major exporter of oil and an estimated 100,000 Chinese expatriates live in Venezuela.President Obama ought to revoke his official claim that Venezuela constitutes a threat to American security. This incredible claim helps to isolate Venezuela in financial markets. It also lends credence to allegations that The United States is hostile to Venezuela and is waging an economic war against Venezuela. The U.S. should also "out" Venezuelan money that is sheltered in the United States. Much of this money is ill gotten and there is a proposal that this money should be taxed by the Venezuelan government.

The United States could and should offer unconditional emergency shipment of medicines and staple foods. Concern that such aid will be misused is legitimate but right now a neighboring country of thirty million people is facing an imminent humanitarian crisis. If initial shipments are abused the aid can be discontinued. At the least insecticides, lethal ovitraps and mosquito netting could be sent through private channels without the government needing to acknowledge the aid.

Both China and the United States should do whatever possible to avert an "unthinkable nightmare."

Monday, September 19, 2016

I'm not a celebrity like Sean Penn, Michael Moore, Jeremy Corbyn and Naomi Campbell but I'm someone who praised Venezuela's late President Hugo Chavez. I've read and heard so much like the New York Post opinion piece below that I feel compelled to reply on my own behalf.

A few little words in defense of socialism before I take up my personal apologies to Venezuela. Venezuela is not and never was a socialist country. The deformed type of socialism that once existed in the USSR with all of its warts raised a backward and illiterate rural empire into the power that did 90 percent of the fighting against Hitler and in so doing is probably responsible for the fact that Karol Markowicz is alive today. But some people are incapable of even the slightest display of gratitude.

About Venezuela. I am married to a Venezuelan woman and I've traveled to Venezuela twice. I've spent time with some of her family and friends, humble working people, most recently during a three month visit during the winter of 2014 - 2015. Things were pretty tough then and things are very much worse now.

I most appreciated Chavez because I knew that during his presidency the material lives of poor working Venezuelans improved a lot I also appreciated the fact that from a Venezuelan and Latin American point of view he stood up for self determination. I always thought and often said that Venezuela had the right to rule itself and even make its own mistakes. And those it most certainly did.

To bring Markowicz and others up on some facts, there are privately owned banks in Venezuela. The petroleum industry was nationalized long before Chavez won his first free and fair election for the presidency. Private contractors, including Bechtel, have been active participants in the petroleum industry all along. Most of the economy outside of oil is in private hands.

One thing Chavez campaigned on was the issue of corruption. I felt and saw evidence during my first visit in 2006 that this was a battle that he had far from won but frankly I was incapable of grasping just how serious the problem of corruption was. It's been the unmaking of the populist aspiring to be socialist experiment in Venezuela.

When Chavez died in 2013 oil prices were at around $100 a barrel. This is also the time when nuisance shortages of food (but not the widespread hunger of today) began. By nuisance I mean you might have to stand on line hoping to buy some beef and some pasta and end up settling for chicken and yucca or rice.

Shortages today are much more serious as oil prices, which the government and the economy depend on have not recovered and might never return to the days of $140 per barrel. In those days there was enough to build houses, open clinics and import food to be sold cheap with plenty left over for connected people and companies to steal. Or maybe it was the other way around- plenty to steal with lots left over to share with the poor and needy.

The Venezuelan opposition movement is rooted in the corrupt old regime. Venezuelans voted for them to punish the government, not out of trust.

Many Venezuelans still revere Hugo Chavez' memory yet disapprove of the current government that rules in his name. The largest voting bloc is "neither nor" not too different from our own country.

The government is unwilling to admit just how bad things have gotten for fear that it would open the door to a foreign (United States) takeover.

This video, produced by government television explains in English the root of the disaster - a major embezzlement of hundreds of billions of dollars. In 2013, when things were starting to get bad $259,000,000,000 had already been embezzled. The video skips over the fact that government officials had to be in cahoots with private sector crooks for the embezzlement to have succeeded. To understand just how serious the embezzlement is realize that Venezuela imports almost all of the food and other things it consumes. 2012 was the last really good year and imports were valued at $60 billion This year imports are expected to be valued at $15 billion. A hallmark of a socialist or "communist" society is central economic planning, and almost non existent crime. Venezuela turned communism upside down.

OPINIOH ollywood’s Chavez-cheering stars & Venezuela’s victms

By Karol Markowicz

June 5, 2016 | 9:32pm

Hugo Chavez and Sean PennPhoto: Reuters

As sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, Hollywood stars will take insanely dumb political positions and suffer no repercussions because of it.

But few positions are quite as backward and awful as their support for a political system that has been discarded by nearly every country that has tried it and continues to cause extreme suffering by those unlucky enough to still live under it. I’m referring, of course, to full-fledged socialism.

As Venezuelans scream “we want food” in ongoing protests roiling the country, it’s important to remember how many of our celebrities plumped for the corrupt regimes that led to the starving people in the streets — celebrities who were, are and will continue to be free and well-fed.

Sean Penn was pretty much Hugo Chávez’s BFF, praising him at every opportunity. When Chávez died, Penn mourned him and said, “Venezuela and its revolution will endure under the proven leadership of vice president [Nicolas] Maduro.”

And so it has. Maduro has continued Chávez’s policies with results that would only surprise people like Penn.

Michael Moore, who never misses an opportunity to stick his fingers in a dictatorial pie, always talked up the way Chávez allegedly shared his country’s oil profits with the people. After meeting Chávez, he tweeted, “He used the oil $ 2 eliminate 75% of extreme poverty, provide free health education 4 all.”

In 2007, Naomi Campbell interviewed Chávez for British GQ, calling him a “rebel angel” and praising Venezuela’s social programs.

“I am amazed by what I have seen here in only 24 hours,” Campbell was quoted as saying after visiting the new Children’s Heart Hospital in Caracas. “It’s marvelous to know and see what is being implemented here in Venezuela.”

Where’s Campbell now? CNN reports violent crime is rampant and gunshot victims are sitting in filthy hospitals with no medical supplies. One victim of an armed robbery had a “makeshift surgical drain, made from an empty gallon bottle, [that] draws fluid from his lungs. All the supplies, from gauze to syringes, had to be purchased out of his pocket.”

Where’s Michael Moore touting this free health-care? Did the armed robbers get the free education, or what?

You’d think that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Commie-and-socialist-loving dummies would rethink their support for an ideology that leads again and again to mass violence, mass oppression and mass starvation. But no, they keep on spouting their nonsense as if they haven’t been proven wrong at every turn.

It’s particularly painful for people like me, whose family survived the Soviet Union, made it to America and have to hear these know-nothings, lucky enough to have always lived in freedom, pontificate about how awesome people have it in countries like Venezuela and Cuba.

They get to fly home on their private jets having seen exactly what the dictator of the hour wanted them to see and then spread the ludicrous message that a system that’s an abject failure is actually a success when you look at it in the right light.

While he’s not a Hollywood celebrity, David Sirota’s 2013 article in Salon, titled “Hugo Chávez’s economic miracle,” should not be forgotten, either. In it, Sirota suggested the United States follow Venezuela’s example and nationalize the oil and bank industries.

“Chávez became the bugaboo of American politics because his full-throated advocacy of socialism and redistributionism at once represented a fundamental critique of neoliberal economics, and also delivered some indisputably positive results,” Sirota gushed.

Ronald Reagan said that freedom and democracy “will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history,” but he may have underestimated the usefulness of Hollywood idiots.

Sirota and his friends need to look the people of Caracas, dehydrated because they have no water, in the face and tell them about these supposed positive results. The people of Venezuela are owed something from these people.

As Penn, Moore, Campbell, Sirota and many others sleep in their comfortable beds in free countries, they should spare a thought for the people they left to live under the boot. An apology is the least they could do.

Wednesday, August 31, 2016

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.

Thursday, July 14, 2016

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.

Saturday, July 9, 2016

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.

Friday, June 24, 2016

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.