Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

Archives for April 2017

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Venezuela: How many killed in the protests?

Caracas Chronicles reports on The assault on non-violence

The country is in such a mess that there are doubts about the official death toll for Monday. Most outlets talk about two confirmed casualties, while Avenida San Martín, on the West side of Caracas, was literally under fire. The current death toll for the protests rose to 31. Arrests, which numbered 1,365 through Sunday, have now swelled with dozens more. It’s been an episode marked by deinstitutionalization and repression, both allowed by None-budsman Tarek William Saab, discriminating murders by political affiliation and suggesting submission as the protesters’ best shot at facing dictatorship.

Why more deaths?

Runrun.es reported that at least 18 people were killed in El Valle on Thursday the 20th, in murky circumstances. A story that nine people died electrocuted out of the 11 initial circulated widely, but is highly unlikely according to experts. The truth is that it’s been four days and still no authority has bothered to offer an official account of the events on Calle Cajigal; they’ve simply repeated chavismo’s standard propaganda that any protesting dissident is a terrorist.

Maduro isn’t listening.

Things Are So Bad In Venezuela That People Are Walking To Brazil For Medicine

Why doesn’t the government change course?

Why We Have a Second Amendment: Venezuela Plans to Give Firearms to Loyalists So They Can Purge Growing Resistance; more accurately, the regime has been giving firearms to chavistas for that purpose.

UPDATE
Linked to by Designs on the Truth. Thank you!

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Cruz: Pay for wall with El Chapo’s assets

Does Ted Cruz read Prairie Pundit?

Back in February PP posted,

The government is trying to seize the assets of el Chapo estimated to be $14 billion. That is nearly two-thirds of the price of the wall right there. Mexico should go along with this because it would defund the criminal insurgency that is killing their culture. It would have the potential of being a win-win deal.

Now Sen. Cruz Introduces the EL CHAPO Act. BILL RESERVES BILLIONS IN POTENTIAL ASSETS FORFEITED AS A RESULT OF THE CRIMINAL PROSECUTION OF JOAQUIN ARCHIVALDO GUZMAN LOREA “EL CHAPO” AND OTHER DRUG LORDS TO PAY FOR BORDER SECURITY

The U.S. Government is currently seeking the criminal forfeiture of more than $14 billion in drug proceeds and illicit profits from El Chapo, the former leader of the Sinaloa drug cartel who was recently extradited to the U.S. to face criminal prosecution for numerous alleged drug-related crimes, including conspiracy to commit murder and money laundering.

“Fourteen billion dollars will go a long way toward building a wall that will keep Americans safe and hinder the illegal flow of drugs, weapons, and individuals across our southern border,” said Sen. Cruz.

Cruz tweeted,

Not only El Chapo’s assets but also those of his associates,

One cooperator, Juan Carlos Ramirez-Abadia, or “Chupeta,” 54, was a leading supplier of cocaine to Sinaloa and BLO through Colombia’s Norte del Valle cartel. He directed the production of business ledgers and was also prosecuted by Goldbarg. DEA agents helped obtain “the forfeiture of hundreds of millions of dollars” of Ramirez-Abadia’s purported billion-dollar fortune, U.S. authorities said when he was extradited in 2008 and remains under U.S. indictment.
. . .
Mayo’s son, Vicente Zambada Niebla, 41, agreed not to contest the forfeiture of nearly $1.4 billion — including cash, real estate, businesses, vehicles and other property — and cooperate with U.S. authorities while pending sentencing of 10 years to life in prison, a federal plea deal made public in 2014 in Chicago showed.

And then there are his relatives, who are living high off the hog.

Back in 2012 the U.S. Treasury Department put financial sanctions on El Chapo’s wife and son

The department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control said that it had designated María Alejandrina Salazar Hernández and Jesus Alfredo Guzmán Salazar, 26, under the U.S. Kingpin Act, which bars American citizens from dealing with them, and allows authorities to freeze their assets in the U.S.

Forbes looked into the assets amount last January (emphasis added),

The 33-page indictment against El Chapo, filed in 2016 at the U.S. Eastern District of New York, does not dissect the $14 billion. It simply says that upon conviction, the U.S. will seek forfeiture of any property or contractual rights derived from the continuing criminal enterprise, “including but not limited to at least approximately a sum of money equal to $14 billion in United States currency.”
. . .
In February 2014, OFAC issued a chart identifying 288 companies involved in Guzmán’s money laundering operations that had been blacklisted by OFAC between 2007 and 2014. The Guzman-linked companies, mostly located in Mexico, covered a broad range of areas including real estate, gas stations, construction and trucking companies, and furniture stores. Under the so-called “Kingpin Act,” American companies and individuals are prohibited from doing business with foreign company flagged by OFAC.

Gaddis said that the hard facts that back up the government’s assertion of the $14 billion figure lay in the reporting of DEA files, but they will only be accessible when they are made available to Guzman’s defense as discovery material during pre-trial proceedings.

Even half that amount would help.

Over in Mexico, a PAN congressman claims the assets  total US$161billion and belong to Mexico,

On Wednesday Congressman Jorge Ramos Hernández, from the National Action Party (PAN), claimed Guzman’s fortune amounts to at least $16 billion and must be ceded to Mexico to restore the damages caused by the trafficker’s illicit activities.

Related:
Via JC, Senator Ted Cruz proposes the El Chapo Act, enabling 14 billion dollars worth of assets from El Chapo and other drug lords to fund the border wall

UPDATE
Linked to by Silvio Canto. Thank you!

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Colombia: Russian-Armenian escapes from ELN

Voskanya Arcen Levoni got away:

Colombia’s second largest guerrilla group, the ELN, says a Russian-Armenian wildlife trafficker whom they had been holding for ransom has escaped.

The group said it had found Voskanya Arcen Levoni six months ago in the jungle region of Choco province collecting poisonous frogs.

The ELN stated it had begun negotiations for his release with the Russian Embassy.

But, it said, Mr Arcen Levoni had overcome his guards and escaped.
The ELN said the escape happened when the unit holding him had been transferring him.

During the struggle he had wounded five ELN fighters and then fled into the jungle, himself badly hurt.

At the time of Voskanyan’s heroics a convoy was actually on its way to release him at the request of the Russian embassy in Colombia. He has not been found yet.

But wait, didn’t the ELN promise to stop kidnapping people?

The group had sworn to suspend their kidnapping operations as a precondition of peace talks with the government which began in February.

However, Levoni was kidnapped six months ago, and

It is unknown how many Colombians and foreigners are currently held captive by the 1,500-men guerrilla army that has so far refused to give up kidnapping as a means to finance their organization.

So which report do you believe?

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Paraguay: The PCC’s great bank robbery

A gang of at least thirty men blew up the front of the Prosegur private security firm in Ciudad del Este, in Paraguay’s tri-border area, and made off with US$40million.

And that was just the start:
Huge robbery sparks gun battles in Paraguay and Brazil

After the robbery, the gang created a diversion by burning cars and attacking the local police station.

They escaped after a two-hour shootout that left one police officer dead at the scene after the company’s vaults were blown up.

Police believe they fled in several of the security company’s armoured trucks and then may have transferred their booty to waiting boats at the Parana river.

They were believed to have travelled 50km (30 miles) downriver to a region called Itaipulandia in Brazil, were they were intercepted by Brazilian police.

Brazilian federal police came across 12 men who exchanged fire and then escaped, Brazilian Globo website reported.

The BBC said there were fifty men, AlJazeera said up to 80 people may have been involved in the attack, and the Telegraph claims there were thirty,

Vladimir Jara, spokesman for Paraguay’s interior ministry, said they too believe the robbery was carried out by a Brazilian criminal organisation.
. . .
The city’s [Ciudad del Este] location means that cocaine from Bolivia flows down the river, before being distributed into the large Brazilian and Argentine metropolises.

At least 12 people managed to escape police at a third confrontation in Itaipulandia, also on the Brazilian side of the border.

Paraguayan police chief Luis Rojas said it was possible the attackers had help inside the police.

The above news video (in Spanish) attributes the robbery to Sao Paulo’s Primer Comando, Brazil’s largest organized crime organization, Primeiro Comando da Capital, or PCC, which was recently recruiting Colombian FARC members.

The PCC reportedly has consolidated control over the area’s drug traffic monopoly.

CNN also reports

Authorities believe the robbers were members of Primer Comando de la Capital, one of the largest criminal organizations in Brazil.

O Globo (link in Portuguese) confirms that eight suspects are under arrest. The O Globo article states there are fifty suspects, and that the eleven hostages had been released. Brazil’s Federal Police seized six rifles, ammunition, two boats and seven vehicles used in the assault.

This is the largest robbery in Paraguay’s history.

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Thank you

A brief note thanking all readers who purchase through the blog’s advertisements. Your support is greatly appreciated.

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The obligatory Argentinian with a stroller scuffle video

WATCH: Video Shows American Airlines Flight Attendant & Passenger Confrontation

I’m with Ben Shapiro on this: Another Day, Another Lawsuit Against A Major Airline For Bad Passenger Behavior. Enough.

I have two children under the age of four. We always travel with a double stroller. We have never attempted to put it on the plane itself, and if we did so and were asked to check the stroller instead, we would obey the command. But this woman apparently did not, then allegedly got rowdy before being clocked with the stroller in stupid fashion by a flight attendant. How is this the sort of behavior we want to promulgate as a society? We’re now incentivizing every person on every flight to argue with every annoyance, then sue based on the reaction from the airline. Those costs will be passed on to other consumers.

Enough.

We’ve had politics dominated by hatred for particular industries for years now. We’ve already destroyed the health insurance industry because we hate it but need it. Now we’ll target the airlines. Here’s an idea: If you don’t like how an airline acts, choose a different airline. Otherwise, we’ll just ruin all of them in a fit of pique.

Indeed.

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Venezuela: Rachel Maddow, please stop embarrassing yourself

Long-time readers of this blog have been reading about the festering disaster caused by Venezuela‘s communist leadership for well over a decade.

Back when I had my own podcast, I did several shows on the closings of radio and TV stations dating back to nearly a decade, and I’ve written countless blog posts and articles here and in other websites on the failing economy, government takeovers of private industry and oil industry corruption, and on the regime’s connections to the FARC, Iran, Russia and China.

Which is why I can’t decide whether this strikes me as ridiculous or expectedly stupid:

[Rachel] Maddow tried to claim on her show Thursday night that the streets of Venezuela had exploded with protests and marches in response to recent news surrounding a subsidiary of a major Venezuelan oil company that donated half a million dollars to the Trump campaign.

Newsbusters has the transcript.

Rachel, please, we know you’re not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but get a hold of yourself: People in Venezuela have been dumpster-diving for food since Obama was President. If you care to look, the link shows they were dumpster-diving in May 2016, before Trump was the GOP nominee  (which your own network reported in June 19, 2016).

Joel Hirst wrote eloquently on The Suicide of Venezuela exactly a year ago. Venezuelan bloggers, at great peril, have been writing about the country all these years. I have read and reviewed dozens of books on the subject, some by the people I link to in this post. Thousands of Twitter accounts report the multiple human rights abuses, every day.

Opposition leader Leopoldo López was arrested on Feb. 18, 2014 during a major demonstration, well over a year before Donald Trump declared himself a candidate on June of 2015. Back then I pointed out that this ain’t no velvet revolution. Rachel, you may not have heard of López, but he’s been held without a trial for over two years.

So, please, show some self-respect and inform yourself before scapegoating the latest American politician, and stop echoing the regime’s latest talking points.

And by the way, sanctions did not cause Venezuela’s economic collapse.

While you are at it, ponder this headline: Thousands march in Venezuela in honour of those killed in unrest. Again, to honor the dead, not Trump or your talking points.

The truth is, Venezuela shows what Communism is like.

Until you can figure that out, at least inform yourself.

Today’s links on Venezuela:
Venezuela Riots, Looting Claim a Dozen Lives

Eyewitness in Caracas, from Venezuela’s Mother of all Marches

Venezuela’s Tiananmen Square: Woman Stands In Front Of Armored Truck

UPDATE
Venezuela’s Socialist Hell (H/T Instapundit)

Venezuela’s previous president, Hugo Chavez, set the stage for the country’s destruction by spending Venezuela’s oil money on social programs designed to boost his popularity even as he set about wrecking the country’s assets, expropriating most valuable private companies, sometimes to turn them into bureaucracies and sometimes to give them to friends, implementing price and retail controls that ensured people wouldn’t have access to basic necessities and capital controls that caused inflation to rise, shutting down alternative voices in the media, Putin- and Erdogan-style, and winking at top-to-bottom corruption.

When global oil prices declined, the house of cards fell.

Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.

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