A Caribbean… can of (corrupted) worms

We all knew that when folks are put on the stand to face the music, they’re gonna sing like canaries to save their necks. But exactly what tune they sing then, will  depend a great deal on the music they face – which in modern judicial proceedings means the charges that were proffered!! In the case of the just-renditioned Mad Maduro, when he was in the docks of a New York court in front of a 92-year-old Judge, the superseding Indictment document – which contains the Grand Jury charges against him, his wife at his side and “others” – claimed:
“…politicians along the ‘Caribbean route’ corrupted by cocaine traffickers, who would pay them for protection from arrest and to allow favoured traffickers to operate with impunity as they trafficked cocaine from Venezuela north towards the United States. Thus, at every step, relying on the producers in Colombia, nine transporters and distributors in Venezuela, and recipients and re-distributors on transhipment points north, the traffickers enriched themselves and their corrupt benefactors who protected and aided them.”
Well, how about that!! Mad Maduro had help from Caribbean leaders to facilitate his drug runnings!! And if the indictment can be as specific as detailing that there were “NINE transporters and distributors in Venezuela”, you can bet your bottom dollar they know EXACTLY which Caribbean leaders were getting their pockets filled. T&T’s PM Kamla – who’d been most forthright on supporting the US actions against Venezuelan drug smuggling that helped to bring her country to its knees – said, “I’m not surprised at all. As the story continues to unfold, I have no doubt that many “respectable” and “celebrated” people across all sectors of society will be exposed”!!!
She wasn’t only talking about politicians in her own country who’ve been very cosy with Mad Maduro and had attacked her viciously for her support of the US – but in the other islands in the (drug) stream!! We can have a clue as to who are these other leaders – not only by who were chummy with Mad Maduro – but islands where some of the transshipped drugs “fell off the boat” and circulated in their societies!!
This will cast a new light on relations between the US and the Caribbean – which ain’t only in America’s hemisphere, but literally is in their backyard according to the just announced Donroe Doctrine!! In Guyana, we know that we’re also a transshipment point through Region 1 – but know also that our politicians have an antagonistic relationship with Mad Maduro!
It’s the local criminals – who’re also involved with Venezuelan gold smuggling – who should be expecting orange jump suits!!

…and UN handwringing
As the fallout from Mad Maduro’s extraordinary rendition continues to roil the world, not surprisingly, the handwringing at the UN has reached such a level as to cause your Eyewitness to worry how the delegates gonna be able to sign for their sinecures!! The action is focused in the Security Council (UNSC) that’s supposed to be the only body that can permit violating the UN’s founding principle of “non-intervention”!!
But from the word “go” at the UN’s formation in 1945, the UNSC composition that gave automatic membership and a VETO over decisions ensured the inevitable periodic bouts of handwringing. To wit that the strong will do what they want and the weak – read the rest of the world – will suffer what they must!! So the UN Secty General moaning that the Venezuelan operation “risked undermining the very foundations of the international system and had set a “dangerous precedent” for global order” sounded quite risible.
Not even Venezuela’s Russian and Chinese allies with vetoes could do anything!!

…extradition
Over in T&T, Jack Warner beat a US extradition request by tying up the local courts with appeals. Over here, Sanction Man’s trying to follow suit!!
But Magistrate Judy told his lawyer she ain’t having “no kangaroo Court”!!