Fausta's Blog

American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture

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Venezuela: Capriles barred from public office for 15 years

which means he can’t be a candidate next year, either,

Venezuela’s Top Opposition Leader Barred From Holding Office.

This shouldn’t come as a much of a surprise, since,

President Nicolás Maduro and his mentor and predecessor Hugo Chávez have barred dozens of popular opposition politicians for minor or trumped-up offenses in the past decade to help hold on to power, say international rights groups and constitutional experts. Dozens more have been jailed without trial or are on the run.

El Aissami had to do with it,

The move against Mr. Capriles comes after Vice President Tareck El Aissami blasted him on Thursday for leading antigovernment protests that led to clashes between police and demonstrators earlier that day. Mr. El Aissami called the protesters terrorists and compared them to coup plotters who briefly overthrew Mr. Chávez 15 years ago.

Venezuela Socialists’ election strategy? Block adversaries

A nearly identical maneuver was used ten years ago to halt the rise of former mayor Leopoldo Lopez, who in polls remains one of the most influential opposition leaders despite being jailed three years ago for his role in anti-government protests.

López is still in jail.

Street protests continue, but

No TV stations in the country carried the vast protests, with Globovision — the 24 hour news station — showing Argentina Falkland/Malvinas Islands history.

Capriles was tear-gassed today

Take 20 seconds to watch the video in this tweet. It shows a calm, colected Henrique Capriles walking down the street when suddenly, for no apparent reason, a tear gas canister is shot straight at his group.

That’s the dynamic at work in this week’s protests in Caracas. It really is perverse.

Brazil and the head of the Organization of American States (OAS) called on Monday for elections to restore full democracy in Venezuela.

Food crisis, violence prompt spike in Venezuelan asylum seekers in Canada. The number of asylum claims from Venezuela more than doubled last year from the year before as people struggle to find food and medicine in a tanking economy.

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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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Venezuela: CNN en Español off the air UPDATED

for daring to report on the passports-for-terrorists scheme,

Venezuela Takes CNN En Español Off the Air. Cable channel faces disciplinary proceedings from government after report on alleged sale of fake passports

The channel disappeared from all national cable providers minutes after the media regulator said it launched disciplinary proceedings against CNN en Español for “direct aggression against the peace and democratic stability of Venezuelan people.”

For many Venezuelans, CNN en Español had become the last independent source of news about their country, as the government steadily bought out, shut down or starved local media of resources.
. . .
Earlier this week, it was the only Spanish-language TV station in Venezuela to report on the U.S. sanctions against the country’s powerful vice president, Tareck El Aissami, for alleged drug trafficking. CNN En Español also implicated Mr. El Aissami last week in the fraudulent sale of passports to Middle Eastern citizens with links to terrorism.

ABC’s Nightline did a report, Venezuela: Descent Into Chaos (you can watch here) that I highly recommend, on the hunger situation. The reporter was held for 3 days.

Democratic socialism at work.

UPDATE
JC sent part 2 of the video,

[Post edited for missing HTML]

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Venezuela: US sanctions VP El Aissami over drug ties

U.S. Puts Venezuelan Vice President Tareck El Aissami on Sanctions List. Official, placed on Treasury’s kingpins list, allegedly aided drug traffickers (emphasis added)

Executive Vice President Tareck El Aissami and Venezuelan financier Samark Lopez were placed on the Office of Foreign Assets Control blacklist, the Treasury Department said in a statement Monday. The list freezes their assets in the U.S. and blocks U.S. companies and individuals from doing business with them.

Mr. El Aissami “facilitated shipments of narcotics from Venezuela,” while serving as Venezuela’s Interior Minister and then governor of the central Aragua state, said the statement. “He oversaw or partially owned narcotics shipments of over 1,000 kilograms from Venezuela on multiple occasions.”

For the Zetas, among others,

The Treasury department on Monday said Mr. El Aissami, as Interior Minister, was paid for using his control of Venezuelan air bases, ports and highways to facilitate drug shipments from Venezuela and Colombian druglords as well as Mexico’s Los Zetas drug cartel.

Alek Boyd has been reporting on El Aissami for years,

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CNN finally reports on Venezuela’s passports-for-terrorists scheme

I posted in 2015: Venezuela issuing passports, voter registrations, to Hezbollah & Syrians

In 2013: Hezbollah agent issued Venezuelan diplomatic passport.

I can spend all day linking to my prior posts on this topic.

Finally, after all these years, CNN investigates: Venezuela may have given passports to people with ties to terrorism

One confidential intelligence document obtained by CNN links Venezuela’s new Vice President Tareck El Aissami to 173 Venezuelan passports and ID’s that were issued to individuals from the Middle East, including people connected to the terrorist group Hezbollah.

Yes, I posted about El Aissami’s role in 2013.

But back to CNN

The accusation that the country was issuing passports to people who are not Venezuelan first surfaced in the early 2000s when Hugo Chavez was the country’s president, interviews and records show.
A Venezuelan passport permits entry into more than 130 countries without a visa, including 26 countries in the European Union, according to a ranking by Henley and Partners. A visa is required to enter the United States.

Glad to see CNN is finally starting to pay attention.

UPDATE
Linked to by Pirate’s Cove. Thank you!

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Venezuela: Bleeding the country dry

Four headlines:

1. El Aissami goes at it:
Venezuela Arrests Opposition Lawmaker, Allegedly Finds Weapons in Vehicle. The arrest of Gilber Caro of the Popular Will party was one of the first actions by an anticoup command unit led by Vice President Tareck El Aissami.

Mr. Caro’s detention came one day after Venezuela’s opposition-controlled legislature approved a resolution declaring Mr. Maduro in abandonment of his duties. The leftist leader, polls show, is blamed by most Venezuelans for the country’s punishing economic crisis and a homicide rate that is among the world’s highest.

Mr. Maduro in turn blames his country’s problems on his political rivals. His recent naming of Mr. El Aissami, a hard-liner in the ruling Socialist Party, to the nation’s No. 2 post has been seen by analysts as a radical turn by his administration as it looks to fight off a recall drive.

2. ConocoPhillips Sues Russia’s Rosneft & Venezuela’s PDVSA for Fraud in CITGO Transfer

The Houston, Texas-based ConocoPhillips claims PDVSA fraudulently transferred 49.9% of Citgo Holding Inc. as collateral for a loan from Russia’s Rosneft PJSC, according to a lawsuit filed in federal court in Wilmington, Delaware. While the suit alleges the loan was for $1.5 billion, Venezuela has declined to confirm the amount.

LAHT has the originating complaint at the link.

3. Eight have plead guilty by now: 2 More Guilty Pleas in USA to Venezuela’s Billion Dollar PDVSA Bribery Scheme

Juan Jose Hernandez Comerma, 51, of Weston, Florida, pleaded guilty in federal court in Houston to one count of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) and one count of violating the FCPA.

Charles Quintard Beech III, 46, of Katy, pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to violate the FCPA.
. . .
BIG PICTURE

Venezuelan businessmen Roberto Rincon and Abraham Jose Shiera were arrested in Houston and Miami, respectively, by the U.S. authorities on charges of fraud and money laundering involving Venezuela state-owned oil company PDVSA in December of 2015.

Shiera resided in Coral Gables, a rich suburb of Miami, Florida, and Rincon lived in a $5 million mansion in The Woodlands in the metropolitan area of Houston, Texas.

According to a court order in the case, from 2009 to 2014, more than $1 billion was traced to the conspiracy, with $750 million linked to Rincon.

Rincon’s arrest has a symbolic importance for the U.S. due to his alleged closeness to former director of the Venezuelan military intelligence, Gen. Hugo Carvajal, who is wanted in the U.S. for drug-trafficking offenses related to the FARC and who was arrested in July 2014 in the Dutch island of Aruba.

The Dutch authorities subsequently released Carvajal, owing to his diplomatic immunity as a consul of the island, and he returned to Venezuela where he received the backing of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who called the incident a “kidnapping.”

In October, the U.S. also arrested and charged former Venezuelan police officer Pedro Luis Martin Olivares, another alleged collaborator of Carvajal, according to the Attorney General’s Office of the Southern District of Florida.

Rincon and Shieras pled guilty to the indictment which said five PDVSA officials, whom it did not name, received hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes made principally in the form of wire transfers but also through mortgage payments, airlines tickets and, in one case, whiskey.

4. Thor Halvorssen describes How Venezuela’s corrupt socialists are looting the country to death

I sued a group of Venezuelan criminals, accusing them of corruption in a Florida courtroom. The defendants starred in the most notorious case of sleaze inside Venezuela: the Derwick Associates case.

Imagine a group of 20-something American-educated Venezuelans who have never had any experience whatsoever in government contracting, let alone building power plants.

In 14 months, they obtained 12 contracts to build electric power plants for the government. They hired an American company to build nonfunctioning plants and then overbilled Venezuela’s government by more than $1 billion. These “Chavezkids” (Bolichicos) shamelessly bribed government officials.

And what did they do with the stolen money? They used US, Canadian and Andorran banks to launder and conceal the cash.

Read the whole thing.

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Venezuela’s new VP’s Hezbollah connection UPDATED

Emili Blasco, author of Boomerang Chavez: The Fraud That Led to Venezuela’s Collapse, reports that Nicolás Maduro’s new vice-president is none other than Tarek El Aissami, who, as you may recall has been tied to the Cartel of the Suns and to Islamic networks. El Aissmi was a key figure as Hugo Chávez allowed Hezbollah, Hamas and al-Qaeda to use Venezuela as a bridge to other Latin American countries.

Blasco asserts that El Aissami’s ascension blows the pretense of dialogue with the opposition (link in Spanish), and that

“El cambio sitúa a El Aissami como número dos del Gobierno, restando poder a Diosdado Cabello, quien, aunque fuera del Ejecutivo, se venía considerando como el segundo hombre fuerte del chavismo.”
[my translation: The change places El Aissami as number two in the government, subtracting power from Diosdado Cabello, who, even not in the Executive branch, was regarded as chavismo’s second strongman.]

There’s also the issue of succession, as the country becomes more unstable,

“Con este nombramiento, el exministro de Justicia e Interior y hasta ahora gobernador de Aragua se coloca en excelente posición para la sucesión de Maduro en el caso de que en el chavismo se produjera un relevo. Si debido a la crisis económica y humanitaria de Venezuela, Maduro se viera forzado a dejar el poder, su vicepresidente le sustituiría hasta las elecciones presidenciales de finales de 2018.”
[my translation: With this nomination, the former Minister of Justice and Interior and current governor of Aragua is in an excellent position as Maduro’s successor would chavismo need an heir. If Maduro was forced to leave office due to Venezuela’s economic and humanitarian crisis, his vice-president would serve until the 2018 presidential elections.]

The WSJ explains:

The governor takes the vice presidency amid a push by the opposition to oust Mr. Maduro through a recall referendum, which polls show the highly unpopular president would likely lose if it were to take place.

Mr. El Aissami would assume the presidency if a referendum takes place and Mr. Maduro were to lose, although the proposed vote is tied up in courts amid government allegations that the opposition used fraudulent signatures in its petition.

El Aissami is not the only cabinet member who the U.S. is investigating on drug charges. Hugo’s brother, Adán Chávez, was named Minister of Culture, and Néstor Reverol, the current interior minister, last year was indicted on drug-smuggling charges by the U.S., highlighting, in Blasco’s opinion, Venezuela’s emergence as a narcostate.

UPDATE
Essential listening on El Aissami (h/t The Tower):

Update 2
Must-read: Venezuela’s New VP is a Suspected Drug Smuggler with Ties to Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah

The Wall Street Journal reported in 2014 that while El Aissami was its governor, Aragua was home to the explosives company Parchin Chemical Industries and the drone-makers Qods Aviation, two companies owned by Iran’s military and sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council for their involvement in the Islamic Republic’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs.

After Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif visited Venezuela last August, Emanuele Ottolenghi, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, speculated that one of the reasons for the trip was to shore up Iran’s ballistic missile program. Ottolenghi cited a recently-discovered contract between the two countries to jointly produce solid rocket fuel.

RELATED:
From Nov. 2014: The Iran-Cuba-Venezuela NexusThe West underestimates the growing threat from radical Islam in the Americas.
From August 2016: [Iran’s foreign minister] Zarif Leveraging Latin America Trip to Boost Iran’s Ballistic Missile Program

Cross-posted at WoW! Magazine.



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Bernie supporters, stop calling it “democratic socialism”. Call it what it is: Communism.

As you may know, I follow Venezuelan news every day. As in everything else, the headlines follow trends, and the latest trend in Venezuelan news is “democratic socialism.”

Some of it has to do with Bernie Sanders, whose platform actively promotes the so-called “democratic socialism.”

According to Wikipedia,

Democratic socialism is a political ideology that advocates political democracy alongside social ownership of the means of production, with democratic management of enterprises within a socialist economic system. The term “democratic socialism” is sometimes used synonymously with “socialism”; the adjective “democratic” is often added to distinguish it from the Marxist–Leninist brand of socialism, which is widely viewed as being non-democratic.

Which, in practical terms,  means that communism is palatable if everybody votes for it so nobody has a right to complain. Your rights to private property and self-determination are done for either way, no matter what color lipstick that pig wears.

It’s like being a little pregnant.

Yesterday John Hinderaker posted on THE TRAGEDY OF DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM (emphasis added),

The Times does a good job of describing the disastrous state of health care in Venezuela–there is much more at the link–but never mentions the cause of the disaster, democratic socialism.
. . .
For a more perceptive analysis of Venezuela’s problems, see this excellent roundup by AEI’s Mark Perry. Among other headlines: “Hungry Venezuelans Hunt Dogs, Cats, Pigeons as Food Runs Out.” That is what happens under Bernie Sanders’ democratic socialism. Currently, inflation is running at stratospheric rates, and Venezuela can no longer afford to buy the paper needed to print more worthless currency.

The Washington Examiner explains how Venezuela is ‘democratic socialism’ in action, and concludes,

In recent years, polls have shown that younger Americans have become less wary of socialism. Many of them now “feel the Bern” in the current presidential elections. They were still children, or not even born yet, when the Berlin Wall fell. They have had few opportunities to see socialism in action because (for good reasons) there have been few new experiments with it in the time since.

They need to be told the full story of Venezuela, so that they can see how even a democratically elected socialist regime can bring a once-prosperous country to its knees. The unbending Maduro is giving them a unique chance to see it all play out in real time.

I hope they will listen. However, I am skeptical.

Almost ten years ago hundreds of emails and comments rained down abuse on me when I reported that Hugo Chávez declared himself a Marxist, because, after all, he was a self-proclaimed “democratic socialist” and I could not understand the difference.

Here’s the thing: I was quoting Chávez’s own words to the National Assembly, (starting at 0:16 in the video)

“Como ya le dije, pues, y entonces dije, bueno, yo además de cristiano, yo no soy sólo cristiano, yo soy un revolucionario, ¡y también soy marxista!”

(My translation) “As I told him, then, I then said, well, in addition to being a Christian, I’m not only a Christian, I am a revolutionary, and I am also a Marxist!”

As for Venezuela’s failure, true Bernieskees will assert that Maduro failed to follow Hugo’s stellar policies, as a former friend insisted two years ago, and that’s why things went wrong.

And let’s not forget the ones who think thins are bad in Venezuela because their currency exchange system is a mess, and after all,

Venezuela isn’t quite as socialist as many people assume.

As I said, Venezuela’s just a little pregnant, in their eyes.

THE OAS IN THE NEWS:
The OAS has a new Secretary General, Luis Almagro, following former Marxist José Miguel Insulza‘s retirement last year. Almagro is taking a hard line on Venezuela:
OAS Head Blasts Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro. Former Uruguayan Foreign Minister Luis Almagro says leader verging on becoming ‘petty dictator’.

Mr. Almagro said he was considering applying the OAS’s Democratic Charter to Venezuela, as requested Monday by New York-based advocacy group Human Rights Watch, and earlier by Venezuela’s opposition-led Congress.

As I explained last Saturday, were the OAS to declare that Venezuela had violated its Democratic Charter, the country could be expelled from the OAS [See OAS Democratic Charter], which would mean pariah status for the country that Hugo Chávez envisioned leading the Hemisphere.

Maduro called Almagro a CIA agent, and Almagro hit back,

Mr. Almagro accused Mr. Maduro and his allies of stealing public money and called on him to release “the people you hold prisoner for their ideas.” He also urged the Venezuelan president to stop subverting the opposition-run parliament.

“You will never be able to give back the lives of children who have died in hospitals because they did not have medicine, you will never be able to free your people from so much suffering, so much misery, so much distress and anxiety,” Mr. Almagro wrote.

The secretary general exhorted Maduro to allow the referendum to take place this year, arguing that “when politics are polarized the decision must go back to the people.” To continue resisting a vote, which Mr. Maduro seems determined to do, “would make you just another petty dictator, like so many this Hemisphere has had.”

Mr. Almagro is expected to convene a special session at the OAS to discuss the erosion of democracy in Venezuela. Adhering to democratic principles is a requirement for membership in the OAS, which was established in 1948.

Of course, Maduro could take the same attitude Evo Morales had when Evo declared himself a Marxist seven years ago,

(My translation:) “One can not understand that anyone would be expelled from the OAS for ideological reasons. I am a Marxist-Leninist, too, so what? Are they going to expel me?”

However, since Maduro no longer has money to buy himself the love of other heads of state as Hugo used to, the OAS decision may actually carry some weight. It certainly opens the door to other leaders to take on Maduro, not only at the OAS but also Mercosur and Unasur.

IN OTHER MADURO NEWS,
His wife’s nephews are scheduled to be tried on drug charges on November 7 in Mahattan. They claim the 800 kilos of cocaine belonged to Diosdado Cabello and Tarek El Aissami.

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