Now, your Eyewitness understands that government’s mightn’t be in a position to let their citizens have the complete scoop when it comes to dealing with foreign states. But he’s real confused about what’s on the agenda of the “Joint Commission of the Foreign Ministers and technical persons’ of our Mudland and Venezuela when they meet in Brasilia today. The said meeting was agreed to -pursuant to the Argyll Declaration signed by our Pressie and Venezuela’s Mad Maduro – and was supposed to address matters “as mutually agreed”.
As far as the Declaration, the matters “mutually agreed” were basically to agree to disagree!! We maintained that Venezuela’s Border Controversy about the 1899 Arbitral Award will be decided by the ICJ – which the Venezuelans reject as not having the jurisdiction to make any such determination!! The Venezies, on the other hand, have annexed our entire Essequibo, west of the River and gave the offshore Oil Companies, three months to vamoose!! In the meantime, the Governor appointed by Mad Maduro over Essequibo is supposed to be receiving bids for drilling!!
From where your Eyewitness sits – here in Demerara listening to the Opposition’s wanna-be leaders undermining Aubrey in the Budget debates – it looks like a classic case of an irresistible force meeting an immovable object!! Now from the word go, the Venezies – even before Mad Maduro -never wanted any court to decide matters: for the simple reason they haven’t been able to come up with a single legal reason why their outlandish claim can stand!! As such, they’ve always insisted on these bilateral “negotiations” where they figure they can literally throw their (military) weight around to bully us into making concessions!!
So your Eyewitness returns to the agenda today in Brazilia. Surely the two teams won’t be trying to stare each other down, or engage in arm wrestling? Or is it once again to be set by default by the interlocutors – Ralphie Boy of St Vincent or maybe the host Lula?? The danger, of course, is those interlocutors have their own countries’ interests that will always trump ours. And while Lula’s a whale compared to the minnow Ralphie, Mad Maduro can always make Lula an offer he can’t refuse- from the 300 billion barrels of oil he can swill around!! He’ll be killing two birds with that stone since he’ll pre-empt the US’ decade-long frenzied attempts to control that oil!!
Anyhow, back to our delegation’s remit. Since there’s nothing Mad Maduro can possibly offer us – such as even withdrawing his “annexation” which is illegal according to international law, to begin with – and since our Pressie has declared that we’re simply waiting on the ICJ, some firm handshakes all around is about the most that should be offered!!
…of (annexing) minds
Russia’s been Venezuela’s strongest ally in South America since Chavez decided he was a born-again communist who’d have the working class and peasants – his parents were peasants – take over Venezuela’s wealth. After a couple of failed coups, he was elected on this populist line and set about moulding his nation in his vision in 1999. Up to then, the US was backing the governments this meant taking on the US along with the old ruling strata. And Russia loved it, since in addition to Cuba tweaking Uncle Sam’s beard, they now had an oil-rich Venezuela!!
From what we can now see, the friendship didn’t just include purchasing billions of dollars of Russian-made weapons – but also adopting Russia’s strategy of waging hybrid warfare in the grey zone. In this case, using all sorts of tactics to intimidate neighbours and eventually finding “reasons” for expropriating them.
It is not by coincidence that Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 was followed by Mad Maduro’s revanchist program for Essequibo!!
…stumbler
Your Eyewitness was intrigued to see the US 1st Security Force Assistance Brigade training our GDF personnel. They’ll “advise and assess the operations of the GDF training corps and engineer battalion, maintenance, and warehouse operations.” A military base definitely in the offing!
