CSI Venezuela

[Grey Fox]

So Maduro is requesting talks with the US with the goal of ending the unrest.  Because obviously Obama behind the Yanqui Fascist Imperialist plot to destabilize Venezuela and negate the wonderful gains made by Bolivarian Socialism.

Same tactic he takes with his opposition: make all kinds of false accusations, call them every derogatory name in the book.  Then in the next breath, request a "peace summit" with them.

That should be called the Steve Jobs strategy.

[Savonarola]

Maduro topples US backed fascist coup!  Unidentified generals arrested!  Let the show trials commence!

Venezuela arrests generals 'plotting coup'
President Maduro says three generals with opposition ties attempted to get Air Force to rise up against his government.

Three Venezuelan air force generals accused of plotting a coup against the leftist government of President Nicolas Maduro have been arrested amid a widening crackdown on the opposition.

The unidentified generals were in contact with opposition politicians and "were trying to get the Air Force to rise up against the legitimately elected government," Maduro said on Tuesday, in a meeting of South American foreign ministers.

"This group that was captured has direct links with sectors of the opposition and they were saying that this week was the decisive week," Maduro said.

The disclosure comes after more than six weeks of street protests that have left at least 34 dead.

The generals have been summoned before a court martial, Maduro said, adding that the plot was uncovered because other officers came forward to say they were being recruited.

Anti-government protests

Asked for details about the generals, a senior source told the AFP news agency that the information was "being handled only through Maduro's office".

It is the first time in 15 years of socialist government that generals had been arrested for alleged coup plotting, said military expert Fernando Falcon, a retired lieutenant colonel.

Massive protests in April 2002 resulted in Maduro's predecessor, the late Hugo Chavez, being briefly ousted - before he was restored to power for another decade.

Venezuela's government has been the target of near-daily protests fuelled by public anger over soaring crime, hyperinflation and shortages of basic goods such as toilet paper.

Demonstrators are also angry at Venezuela's close financial and political ties to Cuba, the only Communist one-party state in the Americas.

Maduro had earlier said he fended off a coup bid aided by the United States and other "fascists".

The president, however, still enjoys support among Venezuela's larger, poor population.

GUILTY!  GUILTY!  GUILTY!

[Savonarola]

Yesterday's fascists always win.   

Venezuela's disastrous course

(CNN)For a fleeting few years the South American nation of Venezuela and its histrionic late President Hugo Chavez made waves on the global stage. While he upended the country's economy and exploited class conflict at home, he blamed the world's woes on the U.S., insulted the American president at the United Nations, and exhorted other leftists in the region to challenge the prevailing economic model and follow his path to "21st century socialism."

Since Chavez died, the world mostly stopped paying attention. That, however, may soon change.

The stage is now set for what could become a major confrontation. Under pressure from a jailed opposition leader on hunger strike, the government finally set an election date. On December 6, Venezuelans will go to the polls to elect a new National Assembly. The stakes are enormous, and the possibility of serious turmoil is very real.

President Nicolas Maduro, Chavez's hand-picked successor, already warned that if the opposition wins, "very grave things will occur," saying a "process of confrontation" will be unleashed, vowing he will be first to take to streets to "defend the revolution."

When opposition candidates started trying to register for the election last week, they discovered that election authorities, loyal to the government, were already barring them from running for office. And the judiciary system will offer no relief.

As international human rights groups just reiterated, the justice system is nothing but a tool against government critics and rivals, with judges and prosecutors obediently serving the President's political objectives.

Still, the opposition is looking forward to winning this election as popular frustration with increasingly dire economic and security conditions turn a growing number of people against the regime. A significant number of Venezuelans, perhaps 25%, remains loyal to the legacy of the charismatic Chavez. But there is a very good chance that the opposition will try to launch a recall campaign against the hapless Maduro.

The ingredients for a crisis are in place: Anger, frustration, visceral enmity between two camps and a sense of unfair play. The only way to prevent a greater disaster is making sure that fair elections take place, opening a peaceful path, a political avenue for working across the country's deep divide.

But the prospects do not look good. The Venezuelan people have endured a catastrophic economic collapse that is sure to grow worse in the months ahead. If someone had set out to destroy the country they could hardly have done it more effectively than Chavez and his chosen heir, who has followed the same disastrous policies, driving the country into the abyss.

Venezuela has the world's largest oil reserves, but the country is essentially bankrupt. Last November it started importing, of all things, oil. There are shortages of practically every conceivable consumer product, from toilet paper to beer, from milk to antibiotics.

A shopping expedition is an exercise in frustration and endurance. Venezuelans have to stand in line for hours in the stifling tropical heat in pursuit of products that are more often than not completely out of stock.

As his predecessor did, Maduro blames the shortages on the opposition, on his political enemies, and on the rich. But the real reason why the economy is simply not functioning is that the government has introduced wrong-headed policies that defy all logic.

What started as an effort to alleviate poverty -- the most worthy of goals in a poor country -- turned into a failed experiment in populist-infused socialism. The government expropriated businesses, tried to control prices and markets, and generally disrupted the mechanisms of supply and demand to the point where producing anything became unprofitable.

The first and biggest target of government intervention was the state-owned oil company, PDVSA, which was used by the Chavez government as a funding source for social programs.

What was once an efficient, profitable, well-run business became a political tool run by party loyalists. Instead of investing in maintenance and production, the government wrung out all it could from its oil firm, using cheap oil to buy the loyalty of Latin American regimes, and using the profits to finance a multitude of unrelated projects.

If done with more foresight it might have worked, but in the end it all came crashing down. This all started during the years when oil prices spiked above $100 a barrel, bringing oceans of money, none of which was used to expand production and maintain equipment. The government broke the piggy bank.

Oil production has collapsed. And, making matters worse, much worse, the world price of oil, the lifeblood of the regime and the country, has fallen by about half. The country's cash flow problems were already serious before oil prices swooned. They will only get worse now.

In a desperate effort to hold on to scarce dollars, the government has imposed a dizzying system of currency controls, with four different exchange rates. In 2003, the official rate stood at 1.6 Bolivars per dollar. A year ago the rate stood at 79 per dollar. Today you can get about 700 bolivars for a dollar on the black market.

The government also helped itself to the nation's hard currency reserves, using what is meant to be saved as the economic ballast to fund social programs. Now those reserves stand at record lows and the economy is about to crash into a wall.

The inflation rate is so high that authorities have stopped reporting the latest statistics. The last official report last year put it at 68%, but economists say it's now well into triple digits. The economy is in a deep recession. Again, no official figures are available.

What makes the situation truly perilous is the political polarization that Chavez and Maduro stoked with such gusto. The country is divided into two camps that despise each other. The depth of animosity makes divisions in Washington seem tame. For every problem, for every shortage, for every crime, for every failed policy, Maduro blames the opposition; he accuses businesses of hoarding and speculating to destroy his government.

Venezuela will make headlines in the coming months. If a total collapse ensues, the repercussions will be felt throughout the region and the hemisphere. The only way to prevent it is for the international community to demand fair elections. Maduro has already rejected international observers, saying, "Venezuela is not and will not be monitored by anyone." But there is still a way to prevent disaster if Maduro can be convinced to let democracy take its course.

We have a project in Venezuela that is handled out of our Brazilian office.  I've met some people who have worked on that.  They said that, even in large international hotels, fresh fruit and coffee (two of the principal crops of Venezuela) are rationed.

[Razgovory]

Rhetoric expands in relation to the injustice of one's cause.

That does explain talk radio.

[Valmy]

Yi from 17 months ago is burned by a fierce Raz retort!

[Duque de Bragança]

La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid. 

[Valmy]

Yesterday's fascists always win.   

I am so glad we never took the bait with Chavez. Best to just let nature take its predictable course.

[Valmy]

La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid. 

[derspiess]

Ooh!  Do me next!!

[Eddie Teach]

Yi from 17 months ago is burned by a fierce Raz retort!

It is Valmy from today who is associating him with talk radio. 

[DGuller]

Yi from 17 months ago is burned by a fierce Raz retort!

Good things come to those who wait.

[derspiess]

http://www.wsj.com/articles/venezuelas-food-shortages-trigger-long-lines-hunger-and-looting-1440581400

Money quote:

"The people that used to give us work—the private companies, the rich—have all gone," said Ms. Palma in La Sibucara, adding that she also occasionally traffics goods to get by. "It's not the greatest business but we don't have work and we have to find a way to eat."

[Valmy]

It is just horrible. Same shitty movie we have seen before with the same shitty ending. The same assholes running off with billions.

God I hate Latin America sometimes.

[Savonarola]

When I was in Colombia at the beginning of August some of the Colombians had joked that Trump was a gringo Maduro.  Last week (when I was back in Colombia) Maduro sealed the border with Colombia and trail-of-tearsed illegal Colombian immigrants back to Colombia.  Now I'm not sure if Trump is a Norteamericano Maduro or Maduro is a Venezuelan trump. 

[citizen k]

Venezuela's President Starts to Look Desperate
Sept 14, 2015 2:49 PM EDT
By Mac Margolis

Deporting immigrants at rifle point, reigniting long-settled claims to a neighbor's oil reserves, sending soldiers instead of groceries to depleted supermarkets -- just when you'd think Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro could go no further to turn his country into an outlaw state, the leader of the Bolivarian Republic has trumped himself -- criminalizing dissent.

On Sept. 10, a circuit court condemned Leopoldo Lopez, the Maduro regime's most charismatic critic, to nearly 14 years imprisonment for inciting violence during last year's street demonstrations.

Technically speaking, Judge Susana Barreiros's ruling was the act of the independent Venezuelan judiciary. Yet during the lengthy trial, Lopez, a 44-year-old Harvard-trained economist and former Venezuelan mayor, was barred from presenting physical evidence and allowed to call only two defense witnesses -- direct violations of Venezuelan due process -- and the media was locked out of the courtroom.

The prosecution, on the other hand, summoned more than 100 witnesses, and though none placed Lopez at the scene when violence flared, Barreiros gave him the maximum sentence.

The trial was described as "a travesty," by Human Rights Watch, a "political lynching," by former diplomat Diego Arria and a "farce" by Lopez's attorneys, while U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry worried aloud over the apparent "use of the Venezuelan judicial system to suppress and punish government critics."

Take your pick; the Lopez conviction was anything but a surprise. In the revolution Hugo Chavez built, nearly 70 percent of judges hold temporary posts, meaning essentially they serve at the pleasure of the country's political bosses.

Fealty starts at the top. The 32 justices of the Supreme Court are elected by the Venezuelan National Assembly, where thanks to a decade and a half of gerrymandering the governing United Socialist Party rules. A study published last year showed that in more than 45,000 sentences handed down by the Supreme Court from 2004 to 2014, the government never lost a case.

Judges defy the Palacio Miraflores at their own risk. Consider Maria Lourdes Afiuni, who presided over the case of Eligio Cedeno, a prominent banker who was accused of corruption by Chavista prosecutors and jailed in 2009.

The United Nations human rights commission called his imprisonment arbitrary. Afiuni agreed and ordered Cedeno released, whereupon she was promptly jailed, allegedly tortured and sent to trial, which is still ongoing.

So perhaps it's no mystery that Barreiros -- a junior judge handpicked to replace Afiuni in the 28th circuit -- chose to ignore the international cry to free Lopez, lock down the courthouse and dispatch the regime's most caustic critic to a military prison until 2029. Her 40-page verdict was ready in less than two hours.

What other way to go when Venezuela's second most powerful leader, National Assembly president Diosdado Cabello, had already given his verdict? "I don't agree with just 11 years," Cabello declared on nationwide television, on the eve of the Lopez verdict. The final sentence? Thirteen years, nine months, seven days and 12 hours.

Clearly, the harsh sentence was calculated to intimidate the government's fiercest rivals -- those Maduro hasn't already arrested or banished from politics, that is -- ahead of the crucial Dec. 6 parliamentary elections. But with Maduro's approval ratings scraping bottom, he risks looking less fearsome than desperate.

Just two years ago, Lopez was a compelling but hardly unifying figure, viewed with envy and distrust among the fractious opposition. "Arrogant, vindictive and power hungry," a U.S. diplomat reported in 2009, in a secret cable released last year by WikiLeaks.

Last year Ramon Jose Medina, then deputy leader of the main opposition bloc, the Democratic Union Roundtable, accused Lopez of provoking his own arrest to gain notoriety, though he later apologized.

Lopez's cachet soared when he led the largest anti-government demonstrations Venezuela had seen in a decade. By jailing him Maduro converted the official "monster" into a martyr. Now public outrage over the sham trial stands to convert him into a national lightning rod.

Never has Chavismo looked so vulnerable. Whether Venezuela's sniping opposition leaders can holster their differences and ride the prevailing anger to victory at the ballot box is a separate question. Keep your eyes on the Venezuelan street, where the next round of protests is scheduled for Sept. 19.


http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-09-14/by-jailing-leopoldo-lopez-venezuela-s-maduro-looks-desperate?cmpid=yhoo