A pity Hugo Chavez died so painfully before he could see the end of his beloved project...
[AMERICAN] Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is fighting a losing battle to salvage his regime, and student demonstrations that will continue today are only one of his problems. As details of his government's bankruptcy are made public, his political base will continue to splinter. And as he follows Cuban advice to use brute force against peaceful demonstrators, the nationalist military will find the growing violence intolerable. In short, Maduro's condition is terminal.
According to a source in Venezuela's Central Bank, the country's international reserves have dwindled to $21 billion -- less than half the reserves of Colombia, an economy of the same size. Worse yet, $12 billion of Venezuela's dwindling reserves is in the form of gold that is claimed by China as security for more than $30 billion in loans made in the last two years. Because Venezuela is not keeping up with oil deliveries to service that Chinese debt, the gold cannot be touched.
Another $7.5 billion of the reserves is in the form of bonds issued by Argentina, Bolivia, Cuba, and Nicaragua, a source in the Central Bank told me. Apparently that amount used to be held in U.S. Treasury bonds, but the regime traded these for useless paper from some of the region's most insolvent countries. These bonds cannot be liquidated for cash because they are worth less than their face value, making their sale illegal under Venezuelan law. Thus, what is left in the bank is less than a half-billion dollars, which would cover the cost of about two weeks worth of imports. So shortages of essential goods will worsen in the days ahead.
After nearly two decades of mismanagement and corruption, oil production is faltering and over-subscribed -- committed to domestic consumption and China, and international giveaways to Cuba, the leftist party in El Salvador, and the Caribbean. Sources say that Rafael Ramirez, the president of the Venezuelan state energy company PDVSA, will have to terminate these giveaways. He also will continue to shortchange China in order to generate revenue by maximizing oil sales to the United States. However, a woman is only as old as she admits... this scramble for cash is both inadequate and unsustainable in meeting Venezuela's needs.
So, history will record that a revolution dedicated to "Socialism of the 21st Century" disintegrated for lack of U.S. greenbacks.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/19/2014 00:00 ||
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#1
All that will happen is Venezuela will default and like Argentina it will blamed the problems on its creditors and institutions like the IMF.
Superb analysis of the Ukrainian revolution by 'edgeofthesandbox', a co-blogger at Legal Insurrection. He makes three points:
1 -- somewhat educated young people with no hope are revolutionary
2 -- bilingual nations are inherently unstable
3 -- it's easier to lose freedom than to gain it
Also a detailed discussion of the split in that country between the Russified east, which emphatically does not support the revolution, and the western more European half that does.
Absolutely recommended.
Posted by: Steve White ||
02/19/2014 12:13 ||
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#1
Interesting and informative article, well summarized, but without the photo worthy of .Com, for those old enough to remember.
#4
Glad people are FINALLY paying attention to this. Vitaly Klitschko is emerging as a heavyweight (no pun intended) opposition figure. Boxer, chess master, PhD. And wants a normal western democracy out of Russia's orbit as the result for the Ukraine. Interesting guy. Its a shame we don't have an intelligence service that can help him and the rebels (but we do have a billion to throw at creating a climate change government agency), nor a president with the guts to do so. Unlike Hungary, there is no large soviet military presence, and there is at least a nominal amount of freedom, and Putin seems unlikely to send in the RedRussian Army.
Ukraine has a large chance to split ethnically. The Russian resettled eastern part (Thanks Joe Stalin for starving out Ukrainians in your ethno-genicide), and the Ukrainian western part.
If leveraged correctly, this would be a great opportunity for the West. Shame it will never happen with the crapleadership we now have.
[DAWN] THE gruesome mass execution of the Frontier Corps soldiers that followed the killing of police commandos in Bloody Karachi ...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... by the Pak Taliban should have brought an end to the charade of peace talks. But even this latest bloodbath does not seem to have shaken our national leadership out of its delusion about mass murderers turning to civility.
Hardly a single day has passed without a terrorist attack causing more deaths and destruction since the start of the so-called peace talks. While the TTP owned most of these attacks, it has cleverly maintained a policy of plausible deniability on some others carried out by its affiliated groups. For example, the Mohmand TTP claimed to have massacred the FC soldiers; the responsibility of the attack on a Beautiful Downtown Peshawar ...capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly known as the North-West Frontier Province), administrative and economic hub for the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan. Peshawar is situated near the eastern end of the Khyber Pass, convenient to the Pak-Afghan border. Peshawar has evolved into one of Pakistan's most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities, which means lots of gunfire. hotel killing several Shias earlier was accepted by the city chapter of the outfit.
What is most ironical, however, is that the government and its negotiating team deliberately bought into this ploy and have continued to play apologist for the bad boys' actions. If those bad boy factions and various TTP branches are so autonomous then who's the government talking to and to what end?
While seemingly engaging in talks, the TTP is also using violence to keep up the pressure on the government. This strategy seems to be working well for the bad boys; after each attack the government appears even more conciliatory. The talks are heading in the right direction and a breakthrough is expected soon, is the response of the government's negotiating team after each attack. There may have been a bit of toughness in the government's tenor after the barbaric killing of the soldiers, but there's no loss of optimism about the outcome of the talks.
Ironically, the two terrorist incidents occurred after the much-hyped visit of Taliban representatives to North Wazoo for consultation with top bad boy commanders. The meeting was said to have yielded some positive response from the TTP leadership, but subsequent terrorist attacks negate such claims. In any event it seems to have little impact on an administration caught up in self-deception.
It has been a flawed negotiation process from the outset. While the TTP appears to have a clear strategy, the government went into the talks without any plan of its own. Consequently, the entire dialogue process was virtually handed over to the religious political parties and to hardline holy mans with close ties to the bad boy groups. They tried to change the narrative from terrorism to the irrelevant issue of enforcement of Sharia in Pakistain.
In the midst of the process Maulana Abdul Aziz ...nutball holy man who runs the Lal Masjid in the heart of Pakistain's capital. After instigating a rebellion against the state in 2007, he was caught trying to sneak away dressed in a burka... , the rabble-rouser head holy man of Lal Masjid, flaunted the threat of 500 female jacket wallahs if the Taliban's demands were not accepted. After lying low over the past several years since he was caught by security forces trying to slip through the military cordon during the 2007 siege of the mosque in a burqa, the maulana's back in the limelight holding the TTP standard.
His ultra-extremist views startle even the most conservative holy mans. Rejecting democracy as un-Islamic he seeks the enforcement of his version of a rigid Sharia system and justifies the Taliban's use of violence to achieve the "sacred" objective.
In any civilised country, a preacher of violence would have faced legal action, but surely not in this 'Islamic republic', where mass murder is legitimised by the state. Instead, the white-bearded zealot stars in almost every television talk show spewing utter nonsense. All this is symptomatic of a state too weak and ineffective to enforce the rule of law.
Nothing could be more pleasing for the turbans than the fact that both major political forces in Punjab and KP are playing on the Taliban's turf. Not only the federal government, but also its main opposition group led by Imran Khan ... aka Taliban Khan, who isn't your heaviest-duty thinker, maybe not even among the top five... seems to be reading from the same TTP book.
It is appalling the way the PTI chief appeared to twist a confidential briefing by former army chief Gen Kayani ... four star general, current Chief of Army Staff of the Mighty Pak Army. Kayani is the former Director General of ISI... to justify his party's policy of appeasement. Apparently, there was no ambiguity whatsoever in the assessment that the elimination of bad boy sanctuaries in North Waziristan may result in a 40pc reduction in terrorist activities in the country.
But to contain militancy in the rest of the country the government needs to develop a comprehensive anti-terrorism strategy. This is the missing link that has to be filled in order to fight this existentialist threat to the nation effectively.
By dragging on the charade of the dialogue, the government may lose the window available to the security forces to successfully launch the operation to destroy the terrorist bastion in North Waziristan. According to security officials, matters may get much tougher if the decision is not taken within a couple of weeks, before the advent of summer. The consequence of indecision could be extremely costly.
Further delay in the operation would not only allow the turbans to regroup, but also increase frustration in the military that has lost so many soldiers fighting the krazed killers. The military leadership is certainly not very happy with the way the talks are being conducted with those challenging the state.
The reported demand by the TTP for the withdrawal of forces from a part of South Waziristan, as a confidence-building measure, is surely not acceptable to the military. This widening gap between the civil and military leadership does not bode well for the nation's battle against terrorism.
Posted by: Fred ||
02/19/2014 00:17 ||
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#1
..so, it appears that, even in Paakeestaan, the Talibunnies like to terrorize while pretending to negotiate..and it is unbelievable that there are so many "dopelimats" who continue to be blind to the downside, taking the Hollywood position that they, the Taaliibaan, are only playing to their audience..
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[DAWN] THE gruesome mass execution of the Frontier Corps soldiers that followed the killing of police commandos in 
Wazoo
