Things are moving scarily fast in Venezuela.

1988: Ron Paul , a memmber of Congress at the time, accused the United States government of 

trafficking crack cocaine into the United States. 

  

Mena, Arkansas  was a drug smuggling hub under Governor Bill Clinton. 

http://redeyetaxi.blogspot.com/2015/11/chomsky-is-bit-disingenuous-when-he.html?m=

Noam Chomsky has jumped ship on Venezuela.

This is a television spot produced for the ongoing legislative election campaign.  Youthful Chavistas tell whoever needs to know that they are an organized battalion and that the Chavista movement is going to triumph "como sea", or "by any means necessary. "

 In order to hold on to a majority of the National Assembly the Chavista coalition needs to win 45% of the vote. Just as in the United States the electoral system gives more weight to rural votes than to urban votes. Ironically the system gives more weight to legislative election votes to citizens in pro Chavista strongholds while in the United States the system gives more weight to rural predominantly white states and districts,  favoring the Republicans. This is why New Hampshire has the same two United States Senatos  as does California with millions of more citizens than New Hampshire. More Americans voted for Democratic Congressional candidates yet the Republicans dominate Congress.

 Surely the United States government and media see the hypocrisy of criticizing the Venezuelan government and system. But I want to go further here.- Chavism was evolved through efforts to improve the lives of the poor and to open up political activity and effectiveness to the disenfranchised majority. In the United States it's widely acknowledged that 99 % of the people have no effective input on policies that affect them. Chavism also was about Venezuela and other underdeveloped resource exporting countries taking charge of their resources and getting the best possible prices for them. It's certainly produced a mixed scorecard . It's undoubtable that the United States mobilized considerable resources to end dependency on imported oil and that among the goals was the important campaign to weaken Russia,  Venezuela,  and Iran, and to collapse their economies.  President Maduro can be critcized for a lot of things but he's not lying when he points to economic warfare. Knowing all this does one willingly put the future of one's country, its sovereignty and future up to a vote? More likely one would fight like a wildcat win, lose or draw on the vote, for right against wrong.

Aporrea is a  pro Socialist Venezuelan website that critcizes but also supports the Chavista government. It broke the story (in Venezuela) about the two nephews of the President of Venezuela who were arrested last Tuesday for allegedly trying to smuggle 800 kilos of cocaine into the United States. That Aporrea carried the story straight from US sources  in itself is news.

I have said here that if it were up to me not one more Latin American cop, soldier, prosecutor,  judge, journalist  or innocent bystander would die for the United States' phony drug war. Recently there has been an increasing crescendo of accusations in the USA that the Chavista government has turned Venezuela into a "Narco State", an international drug smuggling hub. My first reaction is "pot, kettle,  black. " I do not know if President Maduro's nephews are guilty or are being framed. Either has some credibility. If they're guilty, then they can be blamed for trying to make money by sending cocaine, a harmful and illegal drug to the population that risks jail and worse to get their hands on it- the drug consuming American people. They also would be guilty of opening Venezuela up for attack on Venezuela by providing a pretext, as phony and hypocriticalas it be.

What's the real deal about the Venezuela-Colombia border crisis?

Venezuelanalysis.com/news/11482

I am writing this as an American who's spent time in Venezuela amongst regular people who were and are engaged in their life struggles. I care about these my friends who treated me with kindness and hospitality, and whose country, Venezuela, I have a special fondness for.   



http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/08/28/world/americas/colombians-flee-venezuelas-crackdown-on-immigrants.html?referrer=

Remember that movie Wag the Dog?

Well I don't know if pictures in the mass corporate Zionist media are staged. Were it to turn out so I wouldn't be amazed. Looking at the pictures I couldn't help but be reminded of the Hollywood tale of a false flag operation, a CIA-Hollywood production.

Do you remember the Kuwaiti baby incubator hoax? Almost the same except that a million or so people ended up dead.

Reading of the global concern for around a thousand deported Colombians and supposedly five thousand more who are said to have self-deported had been among five million or so residing in Venezuela I couldn't help but ask why and how five million Colombians are living in Venezuela in peace as legal residents and even as citizens. 

Poor Colombians have no human rights in Colombia! Farmers and ranchers pay paramilitaries to chase them off their land. Union activists turn up dead. 

Why and how could insurgent groups function for fifty years if things were even reasonably fair in Colombia? Where's the love for poor Colombians living in Colombia?

I don't know if there have been legal violations of process in the deportations of not. Two things though I do know:

Smuggling and other activities harmful to Venezuelans and Colombians residing in peace in Venezuela had been going on with increasing harm being done.

Also, paramilitarism, an unwelcome import to Venezuela, the same that makes a mockery of human rights in Colombia itself threatens all law-abiding people in Venezuela, be they citizens, legal residents, tourists, business travelers, foreign students or even people who are not legally in the country but otherwise law abiding. 

It has not been the practice of the Venezuelan government to round up and deport undocumented immigrants en masse nor to threaten to do so.

It's reported that the lines at stores and pharmacies and the shortages of food, medicine and personal hygiene products are abating. This would suggest that the border closure and deportations had a good effect. I would suppose, as Venezuelan Army Colonel Raga said, there's much corruption in Venezuela. I think just about everyone who lives in Venezuela or who follows the situation there knows that. So, perhaps, in some way the shutting down of the border puts the ball in those individual's court. The President, after all now has the issue of smuggling and paramilitaries front and center. By the way, Colonel Raga names several names. I have no way of forming an opinion about them and if I did, I'd keep it to myself. That's stuff that Venezuelans will sort out. 

Venezuela has undertaken a feat that has never happened before: Becoming a socialist country not born in violent revolution or war.

Looking around the world many people see that capitalism is kaput as far as being able to meet the needs of a growing number of billions of human beings on this earth yet the global capitalist class, yearning for a world without people (except for themselves) is weaponized in horrible ways that couldn't be imagined less than a hundred years ago. If Venezuela could cut the Gordian knot it would bring hope to millions around the world.

Nicolas Maduro Is Not Donald Trump

Venezuela is in an emergency situation and it called for emergency measures.

Venezuela is a nation of around 27,000,000 people that is dependent on oil exports for most of its government revenue and foreign currency needed for importing almost everything that's consumed in the country.

Since the election of Hugo Chavez in 1998 the government has made efforts to assure all Venezuelans have their necessities met. In spite of serious problems with corruption and inefficiencies and instability caused by the determination by the United States to overturn the government utilizing various means including the funding of opposition groups the living standards of the poor and near-poor were improving overall until the recent months since the collapse of oil prices. Venezuela has a complex monetary system that was intended to stop capital flight and facilitate the import and sale of low cost staples, medicine and personal hygiene products. It worked more or less well until the recent oil price collapse.

Neighboring Colombia has suffered through decades of insurgency and repression and its economic policies are neo-liberal. These factors have resulted in a large and growing Colombian population of around five million people living in Venezuela, where they've been afforded resident and citizen status.

Given the availability of cheap food, personal hygiene products and nearly free gasoline, as well as a wrinkle in the monetary system that's not hard to game Colombians as well as others have been involved in smuggling of contraband. Millions of people inside Colombia survive by informal work in the transportation and sale of items meant to go to people in Venezuela.

Venezuelans have been suffering long lines at stores where they don't always get the cheap items that they are looking for. Inflation is also eating away at the socialist type programs and living standard gains.

Last week three Venezuelan soldiers were shot while engaging in an anti-contraband operation at the border. That incident apparently was the straw that broke the camel's back. President Nicolas Maduro ordered the closure of the border and deportation of Colombians believed to be involved in contraband activities.

Some commentators have likened these steps (around 1,000 deportations out of a population of around 5,000,000) to the Nazi persecutions of the Jews. President Maduro is widely being compared to racist US demagogue Donald Trump. Trump brands all Mexicans as criminal and calls for revocation of citizenship of hundreds of thousands of people who are born in the United States and who are US citizens according to the constitution. Clearly the comparison to Nazism is outrageous and false as is the comparison of President Maduro to Donald Trump.

Because the Colombian government doesn't care about its own people many are in dire straits with the loss of contraband trade.

There is a humanitarian crisis in Colombia and those who claim to care ought to be organizing relief and pressing for international aid for the Colombian people.

Economic War In Venezuela (and Colombia).

Venezuelanalysis.com/putanalysis/11462

Things are hard in Venezuela. There's no serious doubt about this. Inflation is at record levels- in fact it's been months since the National Bank has published statistics. Venezuela's government is a self proclaimed socialist one and opponents of the government and its ideology of Chavismo say that Venezuela is a case study of the impossibility of improving the lives of the majority through a collectivist system.

Shortages of staples and medicines, as well as personal hygiene products such as toilet paper and toothpaste force people to wait on long lines, at the end of which they might or might not find what they're looking for.

What seldom gets mentioned is that neighboring Colombia, which does not claim to be a socialist country in any way, (quite the contrary) is also mired in economic malaise. In truth many of the same causes are at play and the two countries fates are tied together like Siamese twins.

Venezuela is a major global petroleum producing and exporting nation. Columbia is not a petroleum power on the scale of Venezuela, but petroleum production and the production and export of commodities are important to Colombia.

Commodity prices in general and petroleum prices perhaps most of all have been falling rapidly lately. Venezuela in particular experienced a petroleum boom that allowed the Chavista government to expand socialist type programs like subsidized food and housing, even while capital was draining out of the country and food self sufficiency as well as industrialization remained as slogans and goals towards which little if any progress was made.

Living standards of Venezuelans have deteriorated over recent months. But as Venezuela has sneezed, Colombia has caught a cold, or maybe pneumonia. You won't find lines for food and other necessities in Colombia, as the market rations food and the government doesn't subsidize food prices like the Venezuelan government does (or more recently, as the Venezuelan government tries to do.)

According to the Venezuelan government around thirty percent of the staples, personal hygiene products and medicines it subsidized is smuggled into Colombia, where it is sold for more than the subsidized price but less than the market price. Poor Colombians have come to depend on the smuggled goods coming from Venezuela. Thousands of Venezuelans and Colombians, (4 - 5 million of whom live in Venezuela) make their livings from the trade in smuggled goods. An end to this trade would be catastrophic for thousands, maybe millions of people on both sides of the border. Yet along with the lucrative trade in smuggled gasoline (Venezuelans get gasoline for their cars virtually for free,) the contraband trade is bleeding Venezuela and also disrupting legitimate business in Colombia.

Aggravating the contraband goods trade is the black market in dollars. Venezuela's government makes available dollars for importation of staples and medicines at the price of 6.3 Bolivares fuerte per dollar. Other importers are supposed to get dollars for 12 Bolivares fuerte. On top of this there exists a supposed market driven legal exchange called SIMADI that theoretically makes dollars available to Venezuelans for a moving price that's currently around 190 Bolivares fuerte per dollar.


Historically it's been large businesses, many of them foreign owned multinational corporations, that get the cheap dollars. People who are called "plugged" also get these cheap dollars and use them fraudulently on the black market, which presently pays out over 600 Bolivares fuerte per one dollar. According to the Venezuelan government then, someone who earns 6,300 Bolivares fuerte has earned $1,000 while those Bolivares fuerte are fetching around ten dollars on the black market. The opportunity to steal is flagrant. Around $300,000,000,000 (yep, three hundred billions of dollars) have found new homes outside Venezuela over the course of the past ten years while workers are keeping their children alive with Arepas (a Venezuelan corn flour bread) and sugar water instead of milk.

Smugglers convert the Colombian pesos they get for dollars as well. This makes the sale of millions

of dirt cheap litres of Venezuelan gasoline incredibly profitable. There are virtually no legitimate gas stations in the Colombian border region.

So here is a puzzle for a genius to solve.