How long… for Maduro??

Over the last few years, as you Dear Readers know, your Eyewitness has been paraphrasing Henry II’s exasperated cry – “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?” – the treasonous Archbishop Thomas Becket!! In your Eyewitness’s case however, substitute “turbulent dictator” Mad Maduro! By now, he thought Chávez’s ex-bus driver successor would’ve been long gone – after Trump put him in his sights!! But in his second iteration, after some clearing of the (deep?) throat, Trump II is more than making up!!
Now as a Guyanese who bleeds our five colours – it’s quite a sight!! – your Eyewitness is a realist who considers Mad Maduro our existential external enemy #1!! No ifs and buts about that!! And so will EVERY Venezuelan leader be – unless they decide to abandon their claim to our Essequibo! This sword of Damocles gotta be removed from over our heads!! So Trump dispatching his armed-to-the-teeth flotilla of warships in his “War Against Drugs (WAG) to take on – and your Eyewitness hopes, to take out – Mad Maduro, warmed the cockles of his heart!! Go Trump!!
Now from that same real-politik standpoint, your Eyewitness understands the US wanna to control those 300 billion barrels of oil sloshing under Mad Maduro’s Venezuelan territory. Whoever controls that oil has a head start to head off the challenge from China and India to be the #1 superpower from the next decade. China itself hasn’t been bashful in stepping up to the crease to bat for the madman economically and militarily!! They’re taking up almost 80% of their all-weather ally’s oil – and just installed a new Billion-dollar oil rig to push production just below one million bpd!! That’s a literal lifeline!!
Now, no one should say the US hasn’t given Mad Maduro opportunities to come good. Didn’t Trump and Biden encourage free and fair elections only to be kicked in the teeth with Mad Maduro’s fraudulent 2018 and 2024 “re-elections”?? The US had first implemented sanctions against Venezuela back in 2006, taking on then strongman-leader Hugo Chávez’s obduracy on terrorism and drug trafficking. These were expanded to cover human and civil rights abuses in 2014. These sanctions designated state officials, including Mad Maduro and his close associates. It also limited financial transactions and placed controls on the oil and gold trade with Venezuela.
The US has seen that the carrot’s never gonna work against dictators like Mad Maduro. They only understand the stick – a BIG STICK!! The US gonna have to ratchet up the pressure from taking out drug-running boats to taking out the Big Enchilada holed up in Miraflores Palace!!
Mad Maduro’s bluff and bluster against us and T&T because of our leaders’ firm support of the US must be condemned!!

…Sanction Man in Parliament
Seems that Sanction Man is going to Parliament and will be diligently following the advice of the droll comedian WC Fields, who once famously suggested: “If you can’t dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullshit.” He probably figures since it worked for him during the elections campaign to cripple PNC/APNU at the knees, by hiving off all the PNC’s scrapeheads – it’s gonna work in Parliament!!
But he should be advised that Parliament ain’t the same as parachuting himself into depressed neighbourhoods and playing Father Christmas with his ill-gotten gains!! Or wearing designer glasses and tooling around in Lambos. But who’s gonna tell him that? Doggy and Fatta?? They thought THEY were “fit for purpose” for those hallowed halls!! But maybe Sanction Man will prove the sceptics wrong.
Didn’t his father say he was “bright” because he could memorise licence plates and telephone numbers??

…onions in Guyana
Your Eyewitness just read that one enterprising farmer is having a shot at producing onions in our Dear Land of Guyana. He wonders how he’s gonna deal with that crop’s requirement for a cool climate to be “successful”. But then we were assured that we’ve been successful with that other temperate-zone crop – wheat, haven’t we??