Worldwide Nightmare Theatre, Empire of Chaos Enhanced and Expanded

[Dr Sardonicus]

Three minutes after, huh? The guy speaking in this article has Marco Rubio beat all to hell. The article came out a year ago.

He's an electrical engineer who worked on Venezuela's power grid for 30 years.

"In Venezuela, now more than ever, there is a very high chance of facing a national blackout; the possibility is greater than in any other country," stated Miguel Lara, an electrical engineer specializing in power systems, who for 30 years worked at the OPSIS, the entity responsible until 2004 for coordinating the operations and planning of the Venezuelan electrical grid.
<snip>
"Already the equipment has millions of hours beyond its recommended use, each machine has up to two years during which it hasn’t been subjected to maintenance checks; there are no economic resources for new investments, and there is no trained personnel capable of supervising necessary work."
<snip>
Lara explained that workers simply do not have the necessary tools or equipment. Inventories of spare parts have been depleted. The transport equipment has been dismantled, and workers do not have necessary safety equipment.

"To say that there is sabotage is an excuse that the regime finds to hide the neglect; our system was designed so that when taking out of service the most important power generation stations, nobody suffered from blackout, so that there would be no need for rationing of any kind, but all that has been lost," said the specialist.

[kladner]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51292.htm
by Paul Cochrane

British photojournalist Alan Gignoux and Venezuelan journalist-filmmaker Carolina Graterol, both based in London, went to Venezuela for a month to shoot a documentary for a major global TV channel. They talked with journalist Paul Cochrane about the mainstream media’s portrayal of Venezuela compared to their experiences on the ground.

Paul Cochrane (PC): What were you doing in Venezuela, how long were you there and where did you go?

Alan Gignoux (AG): We went in June 2018 for a month to shoot a documentary; I can’t disclose what channels it will be on right now, but it should be on air soon. We visited the capital Caracas, Mérida (in the Andes), Cumaná (on the coast), and Ciudad Guayana (near the mouth of the Orinoco river).

PC: How did being in Venezuela compare to what you were seeing in Western media?

Carolina Graterol (CG): I am a journalist, I have family in Venezuela, and I knew the reality was very different from what the media is portraying, but still I was surprised. The first thing we noticed was the lack of poverty. Alan wanted to film homeless and poor people on the streets. I saw three people sleeping rough just this morning in London, but in Venezuela, we couldn’t find any, in big cities or towns. We wanted to interview them, but we couldn’t find them. It is because of multi disciplinary programmes run by the government, with social services working to get children off the streets, or returned to their families. The programme has been going on for a long time but I hadn’t realized how effective it was.

PC: So what are Venezuelans eating?

CG: A vegetarian diet. People apologized as they couldn’t offer us meat, instead vegetables, lentils, and black beans. So everyone has been forced to have a vegetarian diet, and maybe the main complaint was that people couldn’t eat meat like they used to do. The situation is not that serious. Before Hugo Chavez came to power, Venezuela had 40% critical poverty out of 80% poverty, but that rate went down to 27%, and before the crisis was just 6 or 7% critical poverty. Everyone is receiving help from the government.

PC: So food is the main concern?

CG: The real attack on the economy is on food. When you have hyperinflation everything goes up in price, but food has become the main source of spending because this is the variable going up in price at exorbitant levels. Bills like water, electricity, public transport haven’t gone up that much and represent a small percentage of any family spending. This is why the distortions in the economy are not intrinsic, but caused by external factors, otherwise everything should have gone up, no matter what it is.

PC: Alan, did you lose weight in Venezuela?

AG: No! What surprised me was how many people are growing their own vegetables. It is a bit like in Russia, where everyone has a dacha. Venezuela is tropical, so it is easy to grow produce. Mango trees are everywhere, so you can pick a mango whenever you want.

PC: So there was a real discrepancy between the image you were given of Venezuela and the reality?

AG: Sure, there are queues for oil, but people are not dying of starvation and, as I said, poverty is no where near what it is like in Brazil. I wouldn’t say a harsh dictatorship, people were open, and criticized the government, and the US, but also Chavez and Maduro. The Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) have admitted they had made bad economic decisions. I thought it would be more repressive, and it wasn’t. People were not fearful about speaking out. I think Venezuelans blame the Americans for the situation more than Maduro.

PC: What do you make of the hullabaloo in February about US and Canadian aid being blocked by Venezuela?

AG: It is a Trojan horse, a good way to get the US in, and why international agencies were not willing take part in the plan. Instead there has been Chinese and Russian aid.

CG: There’s not the chaos US and Trump were expecting. (Opposition leader and self-proclaimed president Juan) Guaidó is the most hated guy in Venezuela. He has to stay in luxury hotel in La Mercedes, an expensive neighbourhood of Caracas. They have electricity there, as they were prepared, so bought generators. That is why Guaidó went there, and has a whole floor of a luxury hotel for him and his family. While people are suffering Guaidó is trying on suits for his upcoming trip to Europe. It is a parallel world.

AG: You think Guaidó will fail?

CG: Venezuelans are making so many jokes with his name, as there’s a word similar to stupid in Spanish – guevon. And look at the demonstration in La Mercedes the other day (12 March), the crowds didn’t manifest. It is becoming a joke in the country. The more the Europeans and the US make him a president, the more bizarre the situation becomes, as Guaidó is not president of Venezuela! Interestingly, Chavez predicted what is happening today, he wrote about it, so people are going back to his works and reading him again.

[kladner]

Here we go. I fought the argument of The State of Israel versus Antisemitism a long time back in the comments on a news aggregation site called BuzzFlash. I am not equating the "the ethnocratic settler state" of Israel with Judaism and its practitioners. That conflation is ably promoted by the ones screaming about antisemitism at those who criticize and oppose the actions of the apartheid state
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/02...-are-owed-her/
by Andrew Levine

Rebutting the claim that anti-Zionism is a form of anti-Semitism is a tedious and frustrating endeavor – in part because those who think otherwise are willfully obtuse and determined never to change their minds. Engaging with them, even briefly, has given me a newfound respect for those who centuries ago took up the cause of convincing Europeans that, no matter how far they might go, they would not fall off the edge of the earth. It has also made me envious of Sisyphus. He had a similarly impossible task to perform, but at least he got good exercise and worked outdoors.

What would it take to get members of the American political class to concede this painfully obvious, easy to understand, and news to nobody point, and to get corporate media and public radio to stop promoting the contrary view? That would be no small feat. The Israel lobby, AIPAC and the others, conflate anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism persistently and obstinately. Our politicians are too beholden to them and too cowardly to challenge what they say, no matter how preposterous it may be.

Republicans have made unqualified support for Israel a wedge issue with which they think they can harm the rival duopoly party. Notwithstanding their own inclinations and their party’s history, they have morphed into hard and fast friends of the Israeli state. Well, not exactly; on TV yes, but in the real world, the one with Donald Trump in it, all friends are fair weather.

As a general rule, what Republicans say is not worth taking seriously even for a second, except insofar as they wield power. And then, it is the power they wield, not the power of their ideas, that makes taking them seriously worthwhile.
It is the same with Trump. On their merits alone, there is hardly anyone on earth whose words are more worthless.

Democrats are a tad better. But their party’s history with the Zionist movement and the natural inclinations of many of their members, both gentile and Jew, make their connections to Zionism, current or lapsed, principled or opportunistic, more interesting.
Even so, the views of most of them, or at least the views they are willing to express in public on Zionism and anti-Semitism are nearly as distressing as those of their Republican counterparts.

They are probably not quite as frozen in, however. Inasmuch as the ground is changing under their feet, they had better not be, even if only for their own good.
We can therefore take heart from the example of the deluded folk who, in the Hans Christian Andersen story “The Emperor’s New Clothes,’ were awakened from their cognitive and moral slumber by the innocent observation of a child too young to have succumbed to an illusion their elders shared about their emperor’s attire. Thanks to that child, they were able to see what was staring them in the face: that their Emperor was parading about buck naked, not in splendiferous finery.

Could Ilhan Omar, the newly elected Representative from Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District — and perhaps too, in time, other members of the One Hundred Sixteenth Congress’ “freshman class” — similarly cause their Democratic Party colleagues to wake up and see the world aright on the Israel-Palestine conflict, or on the connections between any of a range of views on the Zionist project and anti-Semitism?

This is not impossible; indeed, it is more likely than it would have seemed just a year or two ago that a refugee from Somalia, a young Muslim woman living in a Midwestern state, would be elected to Congress.

Representatives represent and, on Israel and Palestine, public opinion is no longer what it used to be. Outside Congress, the White House, and major media circles, Israel no longer gets the permanent get-out-of-jail free card that was formerly its “birthright.”

[kladner]

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/51299.htm
By Finian Cunningham

In a controversial snub to international law, the United States signaled last week that it is moving to officially recognize the Golan Heights as part of Israeli territory. If the US does so, then it forfeits any moral authority to sanction Russia over allegations of “annexing Crimea”.

Israel has occupied the western part of the Golan since 1967 as a spoil from that war. In 1981, Tel Aviv formally annexed the Syrian territory. However, the UN Security Council in 1981, including the US, unanimously condemned the annexation as illegal. The resolution mandates Israel to return the land to Syria which has historical claim to the entire Golan. The area of 1,800 square kilometers is a strategic elevation overlooking the northern Jordan Valley.

If Washington confirms its recent indications of recognizing the Golan as officially part of Israel, the development would mark an egregious flouting of international law.

But what’s more, such a move totally prohibits Washington from posturing with presumed principle over the issue of Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula which since 2014 voluntarily became part of Russia.

Those claims are, however, highly contestable. The people of Crimea voted in a legally constituted referendum in March 2014 to secede from Ukraine and to join the Russian Federation. That referendum followed an illegal coup in Kiev in February 2014 backed by the US and Europe against a legally elected president, Viktor Yanukovych. Historically, Crimea has centuries of shared cultural heritage with Russia. Its erstwhile position within the state of Ukraine was arguably an anomaly of the Cold War and subsequent break-up of the Soviet Union.

In any case, there is scant comparison between the Golan Heights and Crimea, save, that is, for the latest hypocrisy in Washington. While Crimea and its people are arguably historically part of Russia, the Golan Heights are indisputably a sovereign part of Syria which was forcibly annexed by Israeli military occupation.

The illegality of Israel’s occupation of Golan is a matter of record under international law as stipulated in UNSC Resolution 497.

There is no such international mandate concerning Crimea. Claims of Russia’s “annexation” are simply a matter of dubious political assertion made by Washington and its European allies.

[Dr Sardonicus]

US Threatens International Criminal Court

(Washington, DC) – The United States decision to impose visa bans on International Criminal Court (ICC) staff will imperil accountability for grave international crimes, Human Rights Watch said today. US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo on March 15, 2019 announced that the bans will apply to ICC personnel involved in the court’s potential investigation of US citizens and may possibly be used to deter ICC investigations against citizens of US allies.

The US action appears to have been spurred by a possible ICC investigation in Afghanistan that could examine conduct by US personnel and by a possible investigation in Palestine that would likely include conduct by Israeli officials. ICC judges will determine whether an Afghanistan investigation will be opened. The ICC prosecutor will decide whether to proceed with a Palestine investigation.

Meanwhile, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia took a page from the Mean Teachers' Playbook, If you don't like your grade, I'll lower it for you:

Radovan Karadzic: Ex-Bosnian Serb leader has sentence increased to life in prison

Ex-Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic has had his sentence for genocide and war crimes increased to life in prison.

Karadzic was appealing a 2016 verdict in which he was given a 40-year sentence for the Srebrenica massacre in the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

But United Nations appeals judges threw out his request and said his original jail term was too light given the gravity of his crimes and the weight of his responsibility. They extended his sentence to life behind bars.

[Dr Sardonicus]

In the spirit of interpreting historical events to fit the narrative of this thread...

As is made abundantly clear in the March 26 "This Day in History" post, the Madison Administration caused the 1812 earthquake in Venezuela, to provide an excuse for American intervention geared to preserve the Spanish colonial government. The very first instance of US foreign aid! Isn't it obvious? How can anyone in their right mind question it?

[Dr Sardonicus]

(moving this over from "Establishment Media Watch" thread.

Originally Posted by kladner

The US sending troops would be just a tiny bit different. There are agreements between Russia and Venezuela.

Of course there are. If I were in Maduro's shoes, I'd be asking Russia for a lot of help rebuilding the electrical system, but if he wants foreign enforcers instead, that's his call. He might find it more difficult to ask them to leave. They might ask him to leave.

In theory, Il Duce & Co. could be "invited" into Venezuela by the government it (along with the rest of SA) officially recognizes.

More likely, though, the US military would be invited in by nervous neighbors like Brazil (whose president recently visited the good ol' USA), or possibly Colombia.

[ewmayer]

Originally Posted by Dr Sardonicus

Of course there are. If I were in Maduro's shoes, I'd be asking Russia for a lot of help rebuilding the electrical system, but if he wants foreign enforcers instead, that's his call. He might find it more difficult to ask them to leave. They might ask him to leave.

In theory, Il Duce & Co. could be "invited" into Venezuela by the government it (along with the rest of SA) officially recognizes.

More likely, though, the US military would be invited in by nervous neighbors like Brazil (whose president recently visited the good ol' USA), or possibly Colombia.

Another victim of too much Rachel-Maddow-Show-kool-ade drinking speaks! That's right, because no country has invaded more other countries and installed friendly-to-itself regimes there in the past several decades than Russia, right? The evil Red Menace must be faced down by heroic friends of democracy like our own DrS!

And then we get DrS's notion of democracy: the people of a nation majority-voting peacefully to elect their own leadership? That's not democracy. Nope, a bunch of neocon think-tankers in DC - the kind DrS agrees with on most foreign-policy issues while blushing modestly and stating unironically "gosh, I'm no neocon - I'm a liberal!" - getting POTUS to recognize some hand-picked US puppet trained at a special US 'Uni' for such things as the 'legitimate' president of said nation: *that* is democracy. And the US arm-twisting its poodles in the region to sing the same chorus in unison, that legitimates the deal.

One of which countries, Brazil, has done the right thing and installed its own US-friendly puppet, who happens to be an actual fascist. So "we tortured and disappeared some folks" - it was for their own good!

Meanwhile, it seems a few US poodles are having second thoughts about their earlier tail-wagging recognition of Greedo - we may just have to threaten the Krauts with the same "democratization" treatment we're applying to VZ to get them back in line.

[Dr Sardonicus]

I see ewmayer is ranting his delusional beliefs about what I think. The idea did occur to me that perhaps Maduro called in the Russians because he was getting nervous about his own military's loyalty.

So, you don't like Brazil's prez. Neither do I. Like him or not, though, he's still Brazil's prez. He met with CIA director Gina Haspel during his recent visit to the USA. So I think it's entirely possible that he and the Admin were discussing military, ah, options WRT Venezuela.

BTW, I heard an amusing report on Neocon Public Radio the other day. It was about Venezuelans camped out across the border in Colombia. Venezuelan military personnel fed up with Maduro are staying in resort hotels that normally would be occupied by Venezuelan civilians, but which have no business since few Venezuelans can now afford to take vacations, let alone stay in resorts.

The Colombians, it seems, are keeping a very close eye on these folks. They have to stay on the premises 22 hours a day, and have to sign out and back in for their 2 hours off site. The Colombians don't want 'em setting up military training camps or staging military operations against Venezuela from their territory. As one Colombian official put it, "The guy they want to overthrow is in Caracas. Caracas is 500 miles from here." The Venezuelan soldier ex-pats say they need more weapons and more money. Civilian ex-pats who say they want to take up arms and charge back into Venezuela seem to have no idea what they would be getting into.

So I seriously doubt the Colombians want US troops in their territory having anything to do with operations in Venezuela.

BTW, Venezuela has been having more major problems with its power grid. More "cyberattacks?" Or a neglected and mismanaged system continuing to crumble to bits?

The Admin's oil sanctions are really starting to bite. I had once held out some hope that the consequence of increasing oil prices might help Venezuela, but no such luck. Venezuelan oil production is dropping fast. And it's going to get a lot worse, fast. Ordinary Venezuelans are going to suffer a lot as a result. This policy could result in Venezuelans hating us Yanquis with an all-consuming fervor.

[Dr Sardonicus]

Originally Posted by ewmayer

One of which countries, Brazil, has done the right thing and installed its own US-friendly puppet,

And here I thought they'd held an election. Well, two elections, since there was a runoff. Oh, never mind, you don't like the outcome, so, ipso facto, the election wasn't legitimate. If you want to compare the situation with the result of the 1932 election in Germany, fine by me. But the folks guilty of "installing" Bolsonaro are the Brazilian electorate. What's your remedy -- genocide?

But, of course, Maduro's re-election, which featured the exclusion of some opposition candidates, boycotts by others, the threat of stopping food subsidies to anyone who didn't "vote right," and the lowest turnout in many years, was beyond reproach.

Oh, yes, the benevolent teddy-bear Russians. According to this December 12, 2018 piece in ewmayer's favorite news source

Moscow is gearing up to establish a long-term military presence in Latin America and the current mission of the Tu-160 strategic bombers to Venezuela is part of this plan, Nezavisimaya Gazeta writes.

According to military envoys, Russian authorities have made a decision (and Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro did not object) to deploy strategic aircraft to one of Venezuela’s islands in the Caribbean Sea, which has a naval base and a military airfield. Ten years ago, Russian experts and Armed Forces commanders had already visited the island of La Orchila, located 200 kilometers northeast of Caracas. Venezuelan laws prohibit the setup of military bases in the country, but a temporary deployment of warplanes is possible.

Maduro "did not object." Of course he didn't. They made him an offer he couldn't refuse

[ewmayer]

Another link on the same hypocrisy kladner featured above:

Pompeo flounders on why annexation is good for the Golan but not for Crimea | The Guardian

Under intense questioning about why the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights was good but the Russian seizure of Crimea was bad, the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, told senators that there was an “international law doctrine” which would be explained to them later. It turned out there was no doctrine. The state department’s clarification of Pompeo’s remarks contained no reference to one, and experts on international law said that none exists.