Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

Archives for March 2017

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Stephen Cohen on the Vast Russian Conspiracy: “The premise . . . is that the American people are zombies”

Prof. Stephen Cohen is one of the preeminent Russian scholars in the world. He is a frequent guest in the John Batchelor Show, most recently last Tuesday, when he discussed Dissent and the New Cold War.


Last night Cohen was in the Tucker Carlson show, also talking about the so-called Russian hacking false narrative. Read my post, Stephen Cohen on the Vast Russian Conspiracy: “The premise . . . is that the American people are zombies” to hear what he had to say.



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Mexico: State attorney general arrested, at the border, on drug charges

Like something out of Breaking Bad, only adding cocaine and heroin, the top law enforcement official in the state of Nayarit, busted on drug charges:

Mexican state attorney general arrested at U.S. border in San Diego on drug trafficking charges

Federal agents in San Diego have arrested the attorney general for the Mexican state of Nayarit on charges that he conspired to smuggle heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine into the U.S.

Edgar Veytia, 46, was detained Monday at the U.S. border in San Diego on an indictment handed down by a grand jury in New York, Ralph DeSio, a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said Wednesday.

The indictment was filed March 2 in the Eastern District of New York — the same jurisdiction where federal prosecutors have charged Sinaloa cartel commander Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán — and a U.S. magistrate judge in Brooklyn unsealed the charging papers on Tuesday.

Veytia allegedly was affiliated with the Sinaloa Cartel, and went by several aliases, including Diablo (Devil).

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Venezuela: the Supreme Court takes over the National Assembly

Undeniably, Venezuela is a dictatorship:

Venezuela Supreme Court Assumes Powers of Opposition-Controlled Congress

The Supreme Court, which is packed with allies of President Nicolás Maduro, ruled late Wednesday that the congress was in contempt of court for having sworn in three lawmakers from the remote Amazonas state whom the ruling party had accused of electoral fraud. The court said it takes over all “parliamentary capacities” until the conflict is resolved.

“Maduro now has all powers in his hands, without any checks and balances,” Mr. [Assembly President Julio] Borges said. “This is the action of a desperate man who knows the whole world is turning against him.”

Maduro and his regime have been doing this for a while; this  move only makes it official. As John Sexton points out,

As the country’s financial situation continued to deteriorate, the opposition party won 112 of 167 seats in the National Assembly in elections held in December 2015. However, before the outgoing socialists left office they helped stack the country’s Supreme Court with judges loyal to the socialists. The result was that even once the opposition took power in January 2016, nearly every effort they made to change the direction of the country has been overruled by the court.

Also remember that the chavistas banned Maria Corine Machado and other elected assemblymen, after assaulting them, indicting them and breaking their noses didn’t work.

Headline roundup:
Stripped of their powers, Venezuelan lawmakers accuse Maduro of a ‘coup’

Venezuela court effectively shuts down congress as opposition cries ‘coup’

Venezuelan president accused of coup after court strips lawmakers of power

Venezuela Muzzles Legislature, Moving Closer to One-Man Rule

Venezuelan Political Crisis Grows After High Court Dissolves Congress

US State Department, Lawmakers Condemn Venezuela Power Grab

Venezuela plunged into turmoil as top court muzzles congress

Venezuela ‘coup’: Alarm grows as court takes power

Earlier this week, the NYTimes editorial board was calling for humanitarian aid to Venezuela,

A more fruitful step for the international community would be to find ways to help alleviate Venezuela’s immediate problems. The most urgent issue is persuading the government to accept humanitarian aid by putting forward detailed offers of needed food and medicine. A growing number of Venezuelans are going hungry in a food shortage, and dying from treatable ailments in squalid, ill-equipped hospitals.

Perhaps the Times board instead ought to consider appealing to Venezuela’s vice-president El Aisami,

OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro stated that the United States Treasury Department has frozen nearly US $3 billion of Venezuela Vice-President Tareck El Aissami’s assets, “an amount equivalent to half the cost of the country’s 2012 food imports.”

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Mexico: Another news editor shot

Mexico is one of the world’s most dangerous countries for journalists.

Mexican news editor shot as attacks against journalists soar

A Mexican journalist was shot and injured early on Wednesday in the eastern state of Veracruz, the state attorney general’s office said, the latest in a spate of attacks against reporters in Mexico.

The 51-year-old news editor at La Opinion de Poza Rica, a newspaper in the violent oil-drilling city of Poza Rica in the drug-ravaged state, was shot outside his home early on Wednesday morning. The attorney general’s office in a statement identified him only as ‘A.A.G.’ but the State Commission for the Protection of Journalists named him as Armando Arrieta Granados.

The Committee to Protect Journalists keeps track of incidents, with Veracruz being the deadliest state.

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Ecuador: Leftist mob attacks opposition’s presidential candidate VIDEO

A mob of Lenín Moreno supporters disrupted a soccer game Guillermo Lasso was attending, and attacked attacked Lasso and his family as they left the stadium.

Frances Martel reports,

A leftist mob, some have identified as paid agitators, violently attacked Ecuador’s center-right presidential candidate Guillermo Lasso and his family Tuesday night as they attempted to leave a soccer match in the nation’s capital, Quito.

The mob – reportedly armed with bottles, sticks, stones, and knives – jeered the presidential candidate and his family and injured police detail assigned to escort the family out of Quito’s Atahualpa Olympic Stadium where Ecuador’s national soccer team was facing Colombia’s for a spot in the 2018 FIFA World Cup. The crowd shouted, “out, banker!” at Lasso – whose pre-politics career was in finance – while making noise with vuvuzelas and hurling projectiles at the family.
. . .

“When we left the stadium, Alianza Paz [leftist party] militants began throwing bottles, sticks, and threatened us with knives,” Lasso said in a statement to the press. “All I could do was protect my wife with my body and receive the blows from the objects on my head.”

Lasso tweeted video of the incident,

The video clearly shows violent crowds pelting police officers and the Lasso family while hurling epithets at them. The younger Lasso accuses the government of socialist president Rafael Correa of hiring paid agitators to attack the family.

“My son Santiago narrates what we went through yesterday. The images speak for themselves. We don’t want this Ecuador for our children”

While the official surveys show Moreno ahead by five percentage points, 16 percent of their respondents said they were undecided.

Correa’s party has a lot riding on this election, as Mary O’Grady noted,

Mr. Moreno is Mr. Correa’s proxy in this election. A Moreno triumph is important if Mr. Correa is to be protected from the wide array of corruption investigations that his opponents are demanding.

Mr. Moreno would also act as a placeholder for Mr. Correa until the 2021 election, as Dmitry Medvedev was for Vladimir Putin from 2008-12. Legalized indefinite re-election would take care of the rest.

Correa vowed to annul the election results if Moreno doesn’t win next Sunday, through a maneuver by which the Ecuadorian Constitution allows him to dissolve the Executive and Judiciary branches and call for new elections.

In-country sources confirmed that OAS election monitors will not be allowed to be present at the electoral board headquarters.

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Venezuela gets worse

Johns Hopkins Prof. Steve Hanke tweets,

Venezuela: It’s Only Getting Worse – Oil Markets Daily

Summary

  • Venezuela’s oil production, according to secondary sources, stands at 1.987 million b/d.
  • With inflation rising and economic turmoil continuing, we expect Venezuela’s oil production to decline another 300k b/d this year.
  • Lower oil prices will continue to hamper high cost oil production globally, and our obsession over how much high cost production will decline is our main bullish long oil thesis.


Venezuelan Supreme Court Annuls Act of Congress, Parliamentary Immunity (emphasis added)

With the application of this ruling, the Supreme Court may annul any action of the National Assembly that violates Article 200 of the Constitution, which indicates that the deputies of the National Parliament “shall enjoy immunity in the exercise of their functions.”

Also, the ruling in question could lead to the prosecution of deputies for “treason to the mother country” in military courts, analysts report.

Over at the OAS,
Venezuela in showdown with OAS, U.S. over political prisoners

As expected, Venezuela pushes back against OAS suspension warnings. The Washington-based Organization of American States (OAS) has called for Venezuela to be suspended from the group unless it holds fresh elections. Ahead of a special OAS meeting, Caracas called the proposed move illegal

In this speech (5:30 into the podcast, in Spanish), OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro stated that the United States Treasury Department has frozen nearly US $3 billion of Venezuela Vice-President Tareck El Aissami’s assets, “an amount equivalent to half the cost of the country’s 2012 food imports.”

Post corrected for HTML error.



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Carlos the Jackal gets 3d life sentence

Following up on the prior post,

Carlos the Jackal, a notorious Venezuelan militant serving two life sentences, has been handed a third by a French court.

The self-styled revolutionary, whose real name is Ilich Ramirez Sanchez and is now 67, was convicted of a 1974 grenade attack on a Paris shop.

Ramirez threw a grenade into the shopping area, killing two and injuring 34 others, the court found.

He denied the charges and called the trial, 43 years later, “absurd”.
Born into a wealthy Venezuelan family, Ramirez studied in Moscow before joining a militant group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. He converted to Islam in 1975.
. . .

The self-professed “professional revolutionary” has been found guilty of four bomb attacks:

  • In March 1982, a bomb exploded on a train between Paris and Toulouse, killing five people and wounding 28
  • A month later a car bomb attack was mounted on an anti-Syrian newspaper in Paris, with one passer-by killed and 60 injured
  • On New Year’s Eve 1983, a bomb on a TGV fast train between Marseille and Paris killed three people and wounded 13
  • A bomb at a Marseille train station killed two
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