If Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez deliberately intended to sabotage his nation's economy, he would be hard-pressed to do anything different from what he is now doing to his country.
It has been widely reported that Mr. Chavez has been increasingly taking control of the oil, telecommunications and energy sectors, as well as the media. What has not been reported is the full extent of the corruption in Venezuela and how this ultimately will destroy the economy.
The financial scandal taking place is far bigger than Enron, and may ultimately even exceed the U.N. "oil-for-food" scandal, the biggest financial disgrace of all time. Venezuela has had a rapidly growing economy for the last few years, due to high oil prices, but the house of cards is about to collapse. The former Venezuelan representative to Transparency International, Gustavo Coronel, has documented how much of this corruption has taken place in a report published by the Cato Institute's Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity.
Forty years ago, Venezuela had become a functioning democracy and was experiencing solid economic growth, but beginning in the mid-1970s corruption increased. Partially as a result, Hugo Chavez was elected president in December 1998 on an anti-corruption platform.
#3
Approaching the mugabe model. Who needs economies when you are trying to use starvation as population control? The old Communist model of utopia. Curse you Chavez. You have lost it.
#4
He'll earn another sprocket for the collapse of his oil and telecom markets. The American companies should sabotage the phone and internet systems if they are nationalized, make sure they quit working
Posted by: Frank G ||
01/23/2007 7:20 Comments ||
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#5
Frank-
AMEN to that - if Chavez is serious, then a trusted AMERICAN manager needs to be sent down there first with a 'special' disc to upload into the system just before the handover. With a little judicious programming, all of our people can be back home before the system crashes.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
01/23/2007 9:21 Comments ||
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#6
If it's CDMA is it Lucent or Mot Equipment?
Is it pre or post IP backbone?
(It makes a difference...)
If it is "pre" then infect the transcoders.
Double passwords should still be the same... just ask. Also, the core mgmt should have an easy password.... hehe..
#7
It's not like the old days of wire and analog connections anymore. Then you just sent the local Army unit down to secure the building. Now all the gee whiz magic just made payback so much easier. Open season to 'Freak the Hugo'.
#8
Why bother. Just seize Citgo refineries and gas stations in the US. They are worth more.
Posted by: ed ||
01/23/2007 12:44 Comments ||
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#9
Since 2004, the Venezuelan Central Bank has transferred about $22.5 billion to accounts abroad by the Chavez government, and about $12 billion of that remains unaccounted for. It has also been reported that the gold reserves have been removed from the Central Bank.
#10
The only question is how much longer can Venezuela's economy glide before crashing with the price of oil down and their oil field infrastructure old and breaking.
Hat Tip: American Thinker
The new chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee is demanding he be kept apprised of covert technologies our intelligence agencies use to thwart terrorism. The legislation he's cosponsoring would compel the White House to provide regular reports on all current and future intelligence data-mining operations. Such a plan to trust Congress not to expose mechanisms which inherently demand obscurity would certainly be ill-advised regardless of its source. But this scheme was hatched by the Senator once voted least likely to keep a top secret -- Patrick Leahy.
As you may recall, Leahy was stripped of his Senate Intelligence Committee vice-chair during the mid 80's for making good on threats to sabotage classified strategies he didn't personally care for. During Ronald Reagan's own war on terror, the Vermont Democrat was aptly nicknamed "Leaky Leahy" for proving time and again that he would do absolutely anything to discredit the Republican President -- including revealing the most vital of national security secrets
In 1985, he was charged with disclosing a top-secret communications intercept which had led to the capture of the murderous Achille Lauro hijacking terrorists. That leak likely cost an Egyptian counterterrorist agent his life shortly thereafter. Then, in 1986, Leahy threatened to leak secret information about a covert operation to topple Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. When the details of the operation later appeared in the Washington Post, the mission was immediately aborted.
The loose-lipped liberal was finally forced to resign his post a year later when he was caught singing like a canary to an NBC reporter about classified information on the Senate Iran-Contra hearings. On his third strike he was out, but, unfortunately, the game was not over.
Data Mining for Democrats
Now somehow holding his own committee gavel 20 years later, Leahy has promised to uncover abuses related to his latest pet peeve -- the balance of privacy and security in government use of evolving investigative technologies. So it came as no surprise when his first target was the liberal-dreaded predictive analysis technique known as Data Mining (DM). On January 10th, hearings began to investigate both the efficacy and legality of applying the process to counterterrorism.
In his opening remarks, Leahy complained that: "Although billed as counterterrorism tools, the overwhelming majority of these data mining programs use, collect, and analyze personal information about ordinary American citizens. Despite their prevalence, these government data mining programs often lack adequate safeguards to protect privacy and civil liberties."
These words betray a man investigating a process he doesn't understand. Even those dimly illuminated understand that in order to isolate the extraordinary, you first define the ordinary. Here's why. rest at link
#1
If a Republican president is using an intelligence-gathering technique effectively, he's against it. If a Democrat president does so, he's silent. Leahy is one of the most brutally partisan Democrats around, and that's saying something. And since he's from Vermont, there's no prospect whatsoever of getting rid of him, short of death.
Posted by: Jonathan ||
01/23/2007 14:58 Comments ||
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#2
Leaky Leahy would destroy this country if it would destroy the Republican President. He should be prosecuted for the past damage he has done. But dems obviously agree with him by having him Chairman of the Judiciary Committee.
Posted by: Alaska Paul ||
01/23/2007 20:50 Comments ||
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#3
I'll keep tabs when this geezer croaks and add him to my "Piss on their Graves" tour I'll take in several years when I retire.
This dude is such a farkin' RINO tranzi. Rights for Jihadis, eh? Methinks you need to leave the 'Pubs and join your fellow dhimmis.
Sen. Arlen Specter continues to campaign for giving habeas corpus rights to terror-war prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay.
The Philadelphia Republicrat is wrong.
The Military Commissions Act provides that noncitizen unlawful enemy combatants are not entitled to the writ of habeas corpus. A prisoner may not plead to a federal judge that his detention is unlawful.
Prisoners at Guantanamo are entitled to a process that is due under the circumstances. Hundreds of suspected terrorists have been released after their cases were investigated.
Prisoners of war typically are not entitled to habeas corpus. But Mr. Specter would give unlawful enemy combatants, who target civilians, greater legal rights even though the latter have rejected the laws of war. They do not wear uniforms and do not carry arms openly. This tactic treats civilians as camouflage, shields and fodder, subjecting them to great risk because it is difficult to distinguish between fighter and nonfighter.
Specter was quite angry over the defeat of an amendment giving habeas corpus rights to the Guantanamo prisoners. But he voted for the commissions bill anyway. Again, he calls for aiding terrorists -- after failing to record his principles in the vote that counted.
If the president must justify war-making to judicial officers, he will find his valid authority compromised and will be hamstrung in protecting the nation. But the NYT will say good things about Arlen and we know that is the most imprtant National Security issure, correct?
Sen. Hillary Clinton declared this weekend, " I'm in to win." Anyone who has watched her remarkable trajectory can have no doubt that she'll do whatever it takes to win the presidency. I wish she felt the same way about the war.
In fairness, Clinton, with her proposal for arbitrary caps on troop levels and hemming and hawing about her vote for the war resolution, has company on both sides of the aisle. Sen. Joseph Lieberman is the only national Democrat showing any courage on this issue. We Republicans -- with help from senators such as Chuck Hagel -- seem ready to race the Democrats to the bottom.
I'd like to ask the politicians in both parties who are heading for the hills to stop and reflect on these basic facts:
· We are at war. America faces an existential threat. This is not, as Speaker Nancy Pelosi has claimed, a "situation to be solved." It would be nice if we could wake up tomorrow and say, as Sen. Barack Obama suggested at a Jan. 11 hearing, "Enough is enough." Wishing doesn't make it so. We will have to fight these terrorists to the death somewhere, sometime. We can't negotiate with them or "solve" their jihad. If we quit in Iraq now, we must get ready for a harder, longer, more deadly struggle later.
#1
O'REILLY Radio Call-in [paraphrased] > "Its USELESS for our soldiers to stay and fight in Iraq + ME WHEN OUR POLITICIANS OR SOCIETY ARE NOT SERIOUS ABOUT WINNING. Better for Amer to get out than for our own GOVT to continue wasting our money plus the lives of our soldiers SOLELY FOR THE SAKE OF POLITICS. THE AMER PEOPLE WANT TO WIN, BUT FOR SOME REASON OUR POLITICIANS DON'T". O'REILLY went on later to say that AMERICA COULD USE SOME CRUSADERS IN WASHINGTON, PEOPLE THAT CARE MORE ABOUT DOING THE RIGHT THING BY THE COUNTRY = AMER PEOPLE, THAN NOT BEING BLAMED FOR ANYTHING FOR THE SAKE OF POWER = POLITICAL CAREERISM.
Whats the altern for America > WMF.com = SCO-ASIAN LED WORLD MAY BE BEST FOR EVERYONE. Can you see ANTI-US US-WESTERN LEFTIES PUTTING ON COMMIE STATE UNIFORMS + WORKING FOR PENNIES/
CENTS-TO-THREE DOLLARS AN HOUR! Kerry his five mansions? Pelosi her Californey investments? Kennedy? Hillary? And now you know why Lefties, Marxists, + USSR-Commie Bloc ideos focus historically on EUROPE, now AMERICA-NORAM in place of Europe. FAILED LEFT > know LEFTISM-SOCILAISM doesn't work + results in REGRESSIONISMS > REGRESSION = USING MORE OF SOMEONE ELSE'S $$$ FOR OTHER THAN INTENDED. WOT > WAR agz forms of Fascism is in antithesis WAR FOR COMMUNISM; War agz Rightism is WAR FOR LEFTISM. WAR AGZ GOD-BASED SOCIALISM is WAR FOR SECULAR ATHEIST SOCIALISM; WAR AGZ FORMS OF CORPORATISM is WAR FOR GOVERNMENTISM???
#2
WOT > WAR TO THE DEATH, no matter how it appears to the contrary, no matter how much lead time passes in-between. RETREAT IS NOT AN OPTION FOR THOSE WHOM BELIEVE IN FEDERALIST, UNIONIST, CONSTITUTIONAL REPUBLIC = DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC,......FREE AMERICA, NO MATTER HOW MANY MUSHROOM CLOUDS RADICAL ISLAM UNLEASHES ON AMERICA. Not even for pro-USA OWG Global Socialists - remember, the Chicom plan to politely but necessarily eliminate 200Bilyuuhn Americans = Amerikans MAKES NO DISTINCTION BTWN US LEFTY vs US RIGHTY, US DEM vs US REPUB, US ALTERNATIST vs US CONSERVATIVE. ETC. KRAUTHAMMER > "Say it with me, US Lefties, you and yours will be gulagged + exterminated wid the rest of us". 9-11 > TWIN TOWERS COLLAPSING > Only issue is which US -ISM + BELIEVERS GET TO DIE FIRST.
A Muslim searches for the MMM:
The second half of Now They Call Me Infidel could have been subtitled, The Search for the Moderate Muslim. Two things surprised Darwish when she immigrated to the United States at the age of 30. First, the ease at which she was able to find a job with a kindly Jewish business owner, no less and the second, the degree to which radicals control American mosques.
Even though Muslim immigrant communities to the U.S. are well off enough to fund their own mosque and imams, most accept Saudi generosity in subsidizing their mosques. The agenda of these radical American mosques was to keep American Muslims in line, Islamize America and spread a radical Wahabi sect of Islam that even Egyptians find too extreme. Darwish decided to follow her friends advice and practice her religion in private.
The cold shoulder was among the more polite responses she received to her calls to her moderate friends. More often, she was called a traitor or regaled with conspiracy theories about the Zionists responsibility for the 9-11 attacks. She was forced to conclude that Radical Islam has declared war on America and on the West, and the majority of Muslims either support or make excuses for terrorism. When will an American news outlet do what Britain's Channel 4 did? When will we be told what's being preached in the supposedly "moderate" mosques in our country?
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
01/23/2007 08:03 ||
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To learn why a resurgent Taliban is fighting American and NATO troops to a military draw in Afghanistan, you have to go to the frontier region on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.
Our colleague, Carlotta Gall, did just that last month and what she learned led to a physical assault on her by Pakistani intelligence officials and five hours in custody for her photographer, Akhtar Soomro. The Pakistani agents broke into her hotel room and copied her notes and computer files. They then tracked down and questioned everyone she had interviewed in Quetta, a border city.
We now know why. Ms. Galls reporting has determined that Quetta is an important rear base for the Taliban, and that Pakistani authorities are encouraging and perhaps sponsoring the cross-border insurgency. That is a role that Pakistans president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, denies. But residents of the border area, opposition figures and Western diplomats point to specific cases of Pakistani involvement. Americans need to know more about this collusion and to demand better answers from General Musharraf.
There are many reasons that things are now going badly for the American-backed Afghan government. America shortchanged Afghanistans security in its rush to invade Iraq. European allies have inexcusably failed to provide NATO with enough soldiers to carry out the expanded Afghan security mission it took on last year and have imposed hobbling restrictions on the activities of those they did send. The government of the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, is rife with corruption, and the regional warlord allies it depends on to control outlying areas are even more thieving as well as shockingly brutal.
These problems all need to be addressed. But the positive results will be limited as long as Afghanistans much more populous and powerful neighbor, Pakistan, provides rear support and sanctuary for the Taliban insurgency.
It is simply impossible to believe that this support takes place without the approval of the Pakistani military, the countrys dominant institution for a half-century.
Pakistan is now the third-largest recipient of American foreign aid. Yet more than five years after 9/11, the Bush administration has still not been able to secure Pakistans active and consistent support against the Taliban. The very least Washington should be demanding of President Musharraf is that he enforce an immediate halt on Pakistani military support for the Taliban insurgents who are crossing the border and killing American troops.
Posted by: john ||
01/23/2007 06:27 ||
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#1
Islamabad delenda est.
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
01/23/2007 7:21 Comments ||
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#2
So much for the rogue elements within ISI.This is Government policy with Perv in charge of It!!!
January 23, 2007: Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki has been recognized as a capable politician. But there was always doubts about his ability to stand up to the more aggressive Shia factions. Last Fall, for example, he "exercised Iraqi sovereignty" by ordering U.S. troops to halt operations against al Sadr militias in Baghdad. Maliki needed Sadrs support because Sadrs political party controlled about 30 percent of the Shia members in parliament.
Noting that the Americans actually obeyed Malikis orders, the Sadr militiamen stepped up their attacks on Sunnis. In the last two months, this has led to Sadrs men moving into Sunni neighborhoods of Baghdad, and going door-to-door, ordering Sunni families to flee the city, or die. This was too much even for some of the Shia political parties, and was anathema to Sunnis inside, and outside Iraq. Saudi Arabia made noises about sending troops to Iraq. Baghdad has been a Sunni Arab city for over a thousand years. It was the capital of the first Islamic empire ("caliphate.")
Three interesting things have happened since President Bush announced plans to "surge" U.S. troops.
First, al Qaida appears to be retreating from Baghdad. A military intelligence officer has confirmed to Richard Miniter, editor of Pajamas Media, a report in the Iraqi newspaper al Sabah that Abu Ayyub al Masri, the head of al Qaida in Iraq, has ordered a withdrawal to Diyala province, north and east of Baghdad.
Mr. al Masri's evacuation order said that remaining in Baghdad is a no-win situation for al Qaida, because the Fallujah campaign demonstrating the Americans have learned how to prevail in house to house fighting, Mr. Miniter said. "In more than 10 years of reading al Qaida intercepts, I've never seen (pessimistic) language like this," he quoted his intelligence officer source as saying.
Second, the radical cleric Moqtada al Sadr, whose Iranian-subsidized militia, the Mahdi army, is responsible for most of the assaults on Sunni civilians in Iraq, is cooling his rhetoric and lowering his profile. "Mahdi army militia members have stopped wearing their black uniforms, hidden their weapons and abandoned their checkpoints in an apparent effort to lower their profile in Baghdad in advance of the arrival of U.S. reinforcements," wrote Leila Fadel and Zaineb Obeid of the McClatchy Newspapers Jan. 13.
Third, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki is putting more distance between himself and al Sadr, upon whose bloc of votes in parliament he had relied for political support.
Last Friday al Sadr ordered the 30 lawmakers and six cabinet ministers he controls to end the boycott of the government he ordered two months ago. AP writer Steven Hurst described this Monday as "a desperate bid to fend off an all out American offensive." Despite this, Mr. Maliki consented to the arrest that same day of Abdul Hadi al Durraji, al Sadr's media director in Baghdad. Mr. Sadr said Saturday some 400 of his supporters have been arrested in recent days.
The first development is more of a problem relocated than a problem solved, because Baghdad's gain from al Qaida's departure will be Diyala's loss. A strategic withdrawal makes good sense from al Qaida's point of view. It's better to live to fight another day. The intelligence officer who was Mr. Miniter's source thinks Mr. al Masri is a more formidable opponent than was his predecessor, Abu Musab al Zarqawi who (ironically) met his end after an encounter with an F-16 in Diyala province.
But leaving Baghdad gives the government and the Americans the opportunity to assert control in the contested neighborhoods, which will make it difficult for al Qaida to return. And because the media play up events in Baghdad more than events anywhere else in the country, it means al Qaida will be leaving center stage.
The lowered profile of the Mahdi army will only be a problem postponed if decisive action isn't taken against al Sadr and his militia. "Mookie," as the troops call him, can only be relied upon to behave when he is terrified. So success hinges on the attitude of the Iraqi government.
Mr. Maliki's turnaround on the Mahdi army "was puzzling because as late as Oct. 31, he had intervened to end a U.S. blockade of Sadr City, the northeast Shiite enclave in Baghdad that is headquarters to the militia," Mr. Hurst wrote.
Two Iraqi government officials told him Mr. Maliki had dropped his protection of the Mahdi army because U.S. intelligence had persuaded him it was infiltrated by death squads, the AP reporter wrote. "Al Maliki realized he couldn't keep defending the Mahdi army because of the information and evidence that the armed group was taking part in the killings, displacing people and violating the state's sovereignty," Mr. Hurst quoted one of those officials as saying.
But Mr. Maliki would have to be blind, deaf and dumb not to have recognized from the get go that the Mahdi army is one gigantic death squad. I suspect Mr. Maliki is only seeing the light now because President Bush finally is applying some heat.
Mr. Maliki has tried to walk a line between the Scylla of the Americans and the Charybdis of the Iranians, but the steps he's taking now will be difficult to retrace. "He knows that his personal risk increases with each Shiite militia commander he arrests, and eventually he will pass through a door through which he cannot return," said the Web logger Tigerhawk.
Though they may turn out to be fleeting, the troop surge, though barely begun, already is producing beneficial results. Efforts to write it off in advance as a "failure" are, at best, premature.
#1
I wish they would stop calling it an 'effing "surge". The delta in the number of troops is relatively small. The important and effective change is in the No More Mr. Nice Guy political ROE.
Too bad Maliki was unable to break out of traditional arab tribal mode and become Iraq's George Washington. He did deserve to be given the chance, maybe just not such a long one.
#2
given that we 140,000 or so troops, spread everywhere from Mosul to Tikrit to Baghdad and Anbar, the addition of 21000 more entirely in Baghdad and Anbar, and mainly in Baghdad IS a surge.
Even NPR acknowledged today that there were fewer kidnappings/killings going on - again, looks like Sadr is trying for the low profile.
The real question is - can we use the next 18 months to achieve real gains politically in Iraq, in rebuilding, etc, so that when we finally do have to reduce troops numbers, the Sadrists and insurgents cant simply come back as strong as ever.
#3
I would tweak your question, lhawk, to say can/will we use the coming months to actually establish security and credibility in key select areas by killing people, detaining people, and breaking the will of anyone who resists order/the new order - oh, and also political progress and some reconst. in some areas to help cement the deal.
Petraeus stole my line and encouraged me, then deflated me and reminded me of what seems a serious problem in the brass, in his Senate testimony, more or less in consecutive sentences. First - it's what we do with the troops, more than the numbers (finally, someone adding some adult supervision to this painful discussion); second - we're going to focus on protecting the populace, not killing insurgents. So what happens to the "insurgents"? Do they evaporate, become butterflies in the spring, move to Mars, what? The bulk of them, and the key ones, sure aren't going to get on board with the new program, if you're talking Sunni areas or any areas with a robust criminal element.
The "there is no military solution to military problems" disease has ravaged much of our senior brass, it seems, esp. in the Army. Stop the madness, I say. Iraqis know better than "small war" experts now to secure their neighborhoods - kill/capture/intimidate enough bad guys to give the majority confidence they can rat out the f**kers, join the police, whatever. Short of that, in the areas where most of the violence occurs, we're dooomed to failure or overly costly and partial success .....
#4
Rebuilding, LH? How many times and in how many cities? This rebuilding strategy seems ill thought out; a few misplaced bombs can drop a newly built facility as easily as it can an older one. So then what, we rebuild it and they take it down again, ad nauseum? Don't we imagine the "insurgents" are aware of this? Certainly al Qaeda is as one of their supreme strategies is to chip away at us economically.
Seems to me that rebuilding should be conditional.
#1
I encourage all of you to be from amongst them, to begin to cultivate ourselves for the time that is fast approaching where the tables are going to turn and the Muslims are going to be in the position of being uppermost in strength, and when that happens, people wont get killed unjustly.
He is either very right or very wrong in his assessment of the future. Either way, a lot of people are going to get killed.
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.
