Fausta's Blog

A little while ago, I was asking, Assuming Assad asks asylum . . . will he go to Cuba, Venezuela, or Ecuador? One commenter asked about Bolivia, too.

Assad Is So Out of Vogue that the Russians are distancing themselves,

The Syrian dictator has yet to be pried from power, but with the Kremlin sending war ships for a possible evacuation of Russian citizens, it may not be long before the Assads are passé. That’s good news, isn’t it? In the Middle East, “yes” and “no” are rarely correct answers.

We can say this: Assad’s downfall would be preferable to Assad’s survival. As U.S. Central Command chief General James N. Mattis told Congress last March, regime change in Syria would represent “the biggest strategic setback for Iran in 25 years.”

Hugo Chavez, who had those weekly direct flights from Damascus and Tehran to Caracas, is now in Cuba supposedly recovering from his fourth cancer surgery, but delegating some duties “related to the budget, expropriations and government debt” to Maduro, his VP. With the prospect of a prolonged post-Chavez power struggle, it’s unlikely that Maduro is willing to be welcoming Bashar and Asma anytime soon.

Cuba has much to lose when Hugo’s gone, and, considering that Russia’s turning its back on Assad, what is there for Cuba to gain by taking him in?

Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Bolivia are possibilities, but only if Assad can line a lot of coffers. Enough coffer-lining to justify a lot of unwanted attention?

Asma and Cristina Fernandez are big Louboutin fans, but Argentina’s got enough problems; let’s hope Cristina doesn’t decide to jump that shark. She’s not that crazy, is she?

One thing is clear: any country who welcomes the Assads will be signaling that it welcomes Iran’s meddling in its affairs, too.

Of course, all of this assumes that Assad’s own people are going to allow him to get out of the country. Now that the top general responsible for preventing defections within the military has become a defector himself, it may turn out that the Assads may not be able to reach the airport alive.

Cross-posted at Liberty Unyielding.

…will he go to Cuba, Venezuela, or Ecuador?

The embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is considering the possibility to claim political asylum for himself, his family and his close circle in Latin America if he has to cede power, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

“Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister held meetings in Cuba, Venezuela and Ecuador over the past week, and brought with him classified personal letters from Assad to local leaders,” the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, reported.

Hmmm…Let’s think that one through:

Cuba would love to add a dentist to its roster of practitioners of “excellent free health care”. [CORRECTION: Merv advises me that Assad's an eye doctor. But what about those Marathon Man jokes, then?]

Venezuela could resume its direct flights to Damascus, so Assad has a non-stop to Caracas.

And Rafael Correa would certainly try to get a Vogue interview as follow-up to Asma’s Rose of the Desert feature. Now that Anna Wintour may become ambassador, the mag may go for it.

So many possibilities…

Indeed, the olden days when the world’s evil men could count on South American dictatorships offering hiding places may be back again.

Cross-posted at Liberty Unyielding.

Contradicting reports that he was traveling to Brazil for emergency medical treatment, after begging God for life, Chavez announced last night in a telephone interview that he’s heading back to Cuba tonight for more “radiation therapy“

He said the daily radiation treatments in Havana would help him continue what he calls a “battle for health and for life”.

He has only been in Venezuela since early Thursday morning, but must go back tonight?

According to Brazilian journalist Merval Pereira, the Venezuelan government wanted to vacate two floors of the Hospital Sírio e Libanês in Sao Paulo, install the Venezuelan army in charge of clearing all visitors to the hospital, and demanded a news blackout regarding medical updates.

Pereira says Chavez may be suffering of colon-rectal cancer with tumors in the colon, rectum and appendix, but this diagnosis is based on bits of information.

Venezuelan journalist Nelson Bocaranda reported yesterday that Chavez suffered burns from his latest radiation treatment, which has not been as on-target as it would have been in countries with state-of-the-art equipment, unlike Cuba. Chavez may have to undergo additional exploratory surgery.

In between cries to the divinity, Hugo didn’t waste time, and accused the USA of using terrorism to try to topple Syria’s Assad,

“I had been trying to talk with him for several days,” Chavez said of Assad, adding that the Syrian leader gave him a detailed rundown of the situation there during a half-hour call.

“Bashar told me that the political plans continue forward and that the security situation is improving, and he hopes and he’s sure … and let’s hope it’s the case … that with less bloodshed in the coming days, soon that brother Arab nation will be totally under control and will return to normality,” Chavez said.

Chavez, who has long had an antagonistic relationship with the U.S. ­government, has repeatedly accused Washington of trying to stir up violence in Syria similar to the fighting in Libya that led to the ouster and killing of his ally Muammar Gadhafi.

“The pressure by the Yankee empire and its allies continues, trying to use arms to topple President Bashar Assad, using terrorism,” Chavez said, adding that such actions were responsible for the violence in Syria.

Chavez has been selling Syria diesel fuel.

Cross-posted at Real Clear World.

RELATED,
Columnist Tweaks Venezuela’s Leader

Vogue Mag recently did a puff piece on the fashionable Asma Assad, treating her as if she was married to a guy who invented laser surgery or something while running a wonderful country. Austin Bay pulls the rug right under Vogue’s kowtowing to the dictator’s wife,
Syria: Father-Son Dictatorship Remains in Vogue

Vogue described Mrs. Assad as “young and very chic — the freshest and most magnetic of first ladies,” who “is on a mission … to put a modern face on her husband’s regime.”

But prose lipstick and cosmetic patois cannot camouflage Syria’s blood-splattered legacy and its ongoing horror. Just as the Vogue article appeared in late February, Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution began to shake Mr. and Mrs. Assad’s regime. Two months later, Syria continues to quake. The regime has killed around 200 demonstrators since the end of February, though no one knows for sure, since Assad’s government has restricted access within the country.

Vogue kowtowing to Asma? Swank, baby. The BBC interviewing anti-regime protestors? Suddenly the Vogue mask drops and the Assad regime’s hard face appears.

That hard face has quite a history. Troublemaking in Lebanon, common cause with Iran and relentless war with Israel are part of that history. But the Assads’ longest-running war has been against the Syrian people. Hafez al-Assad, Bashar’s father, ordered the February 1982 massacre in the city of Hama. Regime security forces murdered between 7,000 and 20,000 people; Syrians I know claim that one day the mass graves will be excavated and the 20,000 figure will be ratified.

Bashar took charge in 2,000, after Hafez died. He was a fresh face with a bit of style. But like father, like son, the secret police remained employed and the jails remained filled. Like father, like son, the body count, inside and outside Syria, continued to mount. A U.N. investigation of the February 2005 assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri found evidence of Syrian involvement. Former Syrian Vice President Abdel-Halim Khaddam later told the German magazine Der Speigel, “I am convinced that the order (to kill Hariri) came from (Bashar) Assad.”

Under Bashar, Syria continues to arm Shia Hezbollah and Sunni Hamas. Hezbollah gives Assad a way to exert backdoor control over Lebanon. With Hezbollah and Hamas as allies, together Syria and Iran wage a war of political and economic attrition against Israel.

Bashar, like Hafez, wears the hard face well. Despite secret police intimidation and the mass deployment of security forces, however, demonstrations in Syria have not subsided. Still, 200 killed in 2011 isn’t 1982’s slaughter of 20,000. What gives?

Videos of the protests, taken by Syrian activists, are cropping up on the Internet. New media may have given Bashar’s regime pause. Bashar is clearly not repeating Moammar Gadhafi’s mistake of threatening the mass murder of dissidents. Bashar claims he will lift Syria’s state of emergency. It has been in effect since 1963 — again, like father, like son.

The Vogue article goes on to mention Asma’s “alliance” with the Louvre Museum, as if Asma herself had any personal resources to back up such “alliance”, other than her marriage to a dictator.

Over in Syria, another day, another massacre.

Fresh face on a dictator’s regime? It’s Vogue, babeee…

Brian Preston writes about Taqiyya: WikiLeaked Docs Reveal Syria’s Role in the Cartoon Riots
Orchestrated chaos to serve political ends. Plus: Taqiyya: The Movie!. Taqiyya means deception, and that it was,

The cartoon riots were a trick, perpetrated by unscrupulous imams and their backers, for the purpose of intimidating the West into adapting Islamist codes of speech policing, and for the purpose of generating fear and loathing of the West up and down that fabled Islamic street.  It all worked quite well, thanks in no small part to the Western media’s cowardly behavior throughout.

Now, to the incriminating doc concerning Syria.  At the time of the riots, it was fairly obvious that various and sundry despots around the Middle East were using the Danish cartoon controversy for their own ends.  Syria’s hands were bloody, as they tend to be in any crisis.
…
Here’s where the real taqiyya comes into play:

(C) xxxxxxx assessed that the SARG allowed the rioting to continue for an extended period and then, when it felt that “the message had been delivered,” it reacted with serious threats of force to stop it. He described the message to the U.S. and the broader international community as follows: “This is what you will have if we allow true democracy and allow Islamists to rule.” To the Islamic street all over the region, the message was that the SARG is protecting the dignity of Islam, and that the SARG is allowing Muslims freedom on the streets of Damascus they are not allowed on the streets of Cairo, Amman, or Tunis.

Notice the dual messages.  To the West, the riots were orchestrated and intended to send the West a message: Leave us despots alone or you’ll get nothing but chaos.  The Syrian Ba’ath Party had every incentive to send that particular message to a United States that had just toppled the neighboring Ba’ath dictatorship in Iraq.  Assad didn’t want to end up like Saddam.  To those who embodied the chaos, the rioters themselves, Assad sent a different message: We, the secular Syrian government, are your guardians from those nasties in the West.  Trust us to keep Islam pure.

Go read the rest of the article, while bearing in mind that the cartoonists are living in hiding.

I’ve been blogging about these flights for a couple of years – now apparently the flights have ceased:

Fox News has the report,
EXCLUSIVE: Venezuela Cancels Round-Trip ‘Terror Flight’ to Syria and Iran

Venezuelan airline’s “mystery” flight that shuttled among the capitals of three of the world’s most terror-friendly nations — Venezuela, Syria and Iran — has abruptly canceled its regularly scheduled departures amid accusations that it was used primarily to transport spies, terrorists and lethal cargo among the pariah counties.

“I am sorry, but we are no longer flying to Tehran and I do not know when the flights will resume. It was a flight that left Caracas on Tuesdays, but it no longer does,” Jenny Gil Romero, who handles international departures for Conviasa, the national airline that operates the flight, said in a message to FOX News.

Messages to the airline seeking further information went unanswered.

Romero’s comments came in response to FOXNews.com’s efforts to buy tickets on the regularly scheduled, 48-hour round trip from Caracas to Damascus to Tehran, then back again.

Intelligence analysts with both the CIA and Israel said that, despite the listing of the flight as a regular commercial route and a code share with Iran air — Flight IR744 is also Flight VO3744 — there was no way that anyone could buy a ticket and travel without being vetted by the Venezuelan or Iranian government. And without passport controls, flight manifests and other documents, it meant some of the world’s most dangerous men could travel without fear of being uncovered.

This is what the flights are about:

For the past three years, every other Tuesday, Flight VO3744 would roll out to a secluded loading platform at Simon Bolivar Airport in Caracas. Shrouded from public view and unencumbered by the normal exit procedures, a select passenger list would board the flight.

Over the next 48 hours, according to Western intelligence agencies, Venezuelan opposition figures and a former Iran-based spy for the CIA, the flight would carry illicit, lethal cargoes — such as explosives and possibly radioactive materials — and provide safe passage to terrorists, spies, weapons experts, senior Iranian intelligence operatives and members of both Hezbollah and Hamas.

Reza Kahlili, the pseudonym for an Iranian who the CIA has confirmed once spied for the United States as a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, told FoxNews.com these “special flights” have been “instrumental in creating an Iranian dominated worldwide terror network that now reaches the United States.” He said the flights were used to expand Iran’s efforts to create a base of operations in the Western Hemisphere.

Peter Brookes, a former Defense Department analyst and CIA employee now with the Heritage Foundation, said there was a steady stream of elite Al Quds officers from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard who were transported to Venezuela aboard the flight and took up positions in the Latin American country’s intelligence service.

“We can’t say for sure what is going on, but it is clandestine and secretive,” he said.

Intelligence agencies are known to suspect the flight may be part of Iran’s program to build nuclear weapons. Venezuela has large deposits of uranium, and — while raw uranium transport is unlikely by plane — an Internet page in Caracas used by airline employees stated that the flights carried “radioactive materials.” The page was quickly shut down after the allegation was made, according to El Pais, a newspaper in Madrid, Spain.

Experts and Venezuelan opposition figures also say the influx of Iranians, as well as Hezbollah and Hamas operatives, into Venezuela on the flight was to prepare for a retaliatory strike against the U.S. if there was an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

With so much at stake, does anyone expect the flights to have permanently ceased?

Anyone waiting for the State Department to add Venezuela to its list of states sponsoring terrorism, please stand in line.

From last night’s Hannity Show,

Of course if you’re a regular reader of my blog, this comes as no surprise.

Welcome to this week’s Carnival of Latin America and the Caribbean. As the title indicates, it’s been a year since Mel Zelaya was thrown out of office. He and his teddy bear are also gone from his tin foil-lined room at the Brazilian embassy in Tegucigalpa.

ARGENTINA
Collateral damage

Cristina se reunió con empresarios antes del comienzo de la cumbre del G20

Seventy-five years ago today

BARBADOS
Barbados and Panama sign double taxation agreement

BOLIVIA
Bolivian Bottles Build Houses

BRAZIL
Brazil’s foreign policy
An Iranian banana skin
Lula has little to show for his Tehran adventure

Lula’s adventure in Tehran smacks of the overconfidence of a politician who basks in an approval rating of over 70% and who sees the Iraq war and the financial crisis as having irreparably damaged American power and credibility. But the United States is still Brazil’s second-largest trading partner. Although some American and Brazilian officials are keen to prevent ill-will over Iran from spoiling co-operation in other areas, it nevertheless may do so. The United States Congress may be even less willing to support the elimination of a tariff on Brazil’s sugar-based ethanol, for example.

Lula wants the UN reformed to reflect today’s world, with Brazil gaining a permanent seat on the Security Council. But by choosing to apply his views on how the world should be run to an issue of pressing concern to America and Europe, and in which Brazil has no obvious national interest, Lula may only have lessened the chances that he will get his way.

Lula skips G20 summit due to deadly Brazil floods

CHILE
Piñera’s (dis)approval

Entrevista a Josep Montaner, “El rol de la sociedad civil ha de ser activo en cualquier situación” Video in Spanish,

Josep Montaner _ Rol de la sociedad civil from Plataforma Urbana on Vimeo.

COLOMBIA
THOMSON: Santos sweeps to the presidency
Platform for security, stability and development win b

Good news from Colombia, but does Obama appreciate it?

Ros-Lehtinen: Recognizing Colombia’s presidential election and the U.S.-Colombia alliance Ros-Lehtinen Resolution on Colombia Elections Passes House

Will Washington treat Colombia’s Santos as an ally?

COSTA RICA
Father’s Day in Costa Rica

CUBA
When Learning Turns to Dust

“Cuba experts”

Ramiro on a hunger strike?

Syrian president due in Havana on Sunday

Interviews With Dr. Darsi Ferrer and Juan Juan Almeida

ECUADOR
UPDATE: Filmmakers Argue Against Ruling In Chevron Case

HONDURAS
A year without Mel Zelaya

More intromission by US Ambassador Llorens and G-16

JAMAICA
Mr Coke turns himself in

Jamaican drug lord captured

MEXICO
Mexican Violence Crosses Borders; Attracts Media Attention

Mexico Represents Single Biggest Drug Trafficking Threat to U.S.

NICARAGUA
Nicaragua’s Sandinistas accused of paying for power
Daniel Ortega’s ruling Sandinistas Front is using strong-arm tactics to limit opposition, observers say.

PANAMA
Washington Post on retiring to Panama

PARAGUAY
Journalists in the crosshairs of Paraguayan People’s Army

PERU
Peruvian Franken-Corn Defamation Case Update

Keiko Fujimori Leads Peru Presidential Poll, El Comercio Says

Keiko Fujimori says “I will be in the second round” for president of Peru in 2011

Peru judge rules Van der Sloot confession valid

PUERTO RICO

Students approve strike pact. Back in the olden days when I was a student at the UPR they were striking, too, but no one slept in cute little tents on campus. Either way, the strikes are a total waste of time.

VENEZUELA
Today’s podcast at 11AM Eastern: UN: Most of the cocaine going to Europe passes through Venezuela

The report launched by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) expresses concern about Venezuela due to the existence of cells of armed insurgent groups, such as the Bolivarian Liberation Front and civilian militias supported by the government.

WDR 2010 website. PDF file: full report.

Syrian president meets with Chavez in Caracas

Revolutionary Rot, But News It’s Not: AP Ignores Venezuela’s ‘Battle for Food‘, also at BizzyBlog

Como el paternalismo crea dictadores

A radical shift to the radical left in Venezuela

Ollie Loves Hugo & Hugo Loves Ollie

Le Monde criticizes the selling out of Venezuela to Cuba, Chavez gets revenge by taking away a minor farm of Diego Arria and Letter from Diego Arria to Hugo Chavez

VenEconomy: Venezuela Dominated By & Split Up Into Ghettos

Commie Despot Renegs On Debts, Seizes Oil Rigs

Today’s Video: Oligarchs vs. Bolivarians

Maria Conchita Alonso on Oliver Stone’s South of the Border (VIDEO)

HUMOR
My cousin sent this, Por que Cuba No fue a el Mundial Los Pichy Boys

The week’s posts and podcasts:
How about, Sayonara, Citgo?
Venezuela to nationalize U.S. firm’s oil rigs
Venezuela’s fast-track doctors
Jamaica: Dudus Coke in the can
Mexican gangs’ lookouts in Arizona
Rum war?
Obama Secretary of Labor: Illegals Have a Right to Fair Wages VIDEO
In Silvio Canto’s podcast.
In Rick Moran’s podcast.

I’ve posted that South of the Border tanked in Caracas, and will tank here. Well, if you read this review, you can understand why,
To Chavez, With Love
Oliver Stone’s mash note to the dictators of Latin America.

While the film’s major focus is on Mr. Chávez, it also covers Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Brazil’s Lula da Silva, Argentina’s Cristina Kirchner, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, and Fidel Castro’s younger brother, Raul. By Mr. Stone’s lights, all of these heads of state should be celebrated for daring to take on our country, the imperialist giant. “It is the big story that hasn’t been told,” Mr. Stone said. “These leaders are being trashed as dictators because our leaders don’t like them.”
…
The film depicts the ups and downs of Mr. Chávez’s rise to power, including his failed 1992 coup. It recounts how he was saved from death by armed forces loyal to him, and was brought back to power in large part by Gen. Raul Baduel. The general is shown discussing the role he played in Mr. Chávez’s restoration.

A small detail Mr. Stone conveniently leaves out is that in 2009, Gen. Baduel, who Mr. Chávez had appointed as defense minister, was stripped of power, indicted for corruption, and imprisoned because he had opposed Mr. Chávez’s attempts to institute constitutional changes that would transform Venezuela into a formal dictatorship.

What Mr. Stone and his writers have presented is a standard far-left narrative that is part of a long line of propaganda films, a modern American version of the old agitprop. There are no dissenting voices in this film. Nor is there any mention of the fact that Mr. Chávez has closed down television and radio stations that disagree with him and arrested dissenting political figures.

Another sin of omission: Mr. Stone makes no mention of Chile, which in the 1970s embraced economic liberalization and successfully reduced poverty much more than Mr. Chávez has managed to do in his own country. As writer Tariq Ali argued after the film ended, even under the recent socialist government Chile did not make the kind of structural Marxist changes that he and Mr. Stone believe is necessary for real change. Thus moderate leftist countries south of our border simply don’t count as “progressive.” Perhaps that’s why the filmmakers only praise those regimes that use their elected office to quickly institute an end to all limitations on their power.

Those interested in the truth about Latin America should save their money when “South of the Border” opens this weekend, and rent Ofra Bikel’s “The Hugo Chavez Show” from Netflix, or watch it for free on the PBS Frontline website instead.

Speaking of which, here’s FrontLine’s The Hugo Chavez Show, and the first part in YouTube,

While we’re watching movies, Syria’s Assad is on a state visit to Venezuela.

UPDATE
Alek Boyd:

The bit in the [New York Times] article that caught my attention though, was this:

Instead Mr. Stone relies heavily on the account of Gregory Wilpert, who witnessed some of the exchange of gunfire and is described as an American academic. But Mr. Wilpert is also the husband of Mr. Chávez’s consul-general in New York, Carol Delgado, and a longtime editor and president of the board of a Web site, Venezuelanalysis.com, set up with donations from the Venezuelan government, affiliations that Mr. Stone does not disclose.

For years I have been following the activities of Gregory Wilpert, arguing that he was nothing more than a paid propagandist, for I was convinced that, unless some benefit was derived, no one with a right mind would risk reputation defending Chavez so passionately, as Wilpert has done. Then I found out that the site he edits was registered and set up by Chavez’s Consul in San Francisco, and it was further revealed to me that Wilpert was married to a chavista: Chavez’s Consul in New York. I got to admit, some fanatics, Wilpert included, did write to me to say that my expose of Wilpert’s connections meant nothing. I guess now that it has been printed in the New York Times I can feel vindicated.

Sing it!

“Yalla, yalla, ya!”

From LATMA, the folks who brought you We Con The World, Via Daled.