Your Eyewitness hates to say, “I told you so!”. But he DID tell you, dear readers (and policy makers), that Mad Maduro wasn’t to be trusted farther than you could throw him!! And with him clocking in at more than 280lbs – even though most Venezuelans have lost 43 pounds from starvation – you really can’t throw him an inch!! If Maduro were Pinocchio, his nose would be sticking into Essequibo – literally as well as figuratively!! So, what did he lie about this time?? Just that he would agree to free and fair elections if the Yanks remove the sanctions they’d slapped on him and his regime back in 2019, after he had blatantly rigged the elections!!
The Yanks and their allies – some sixty countries — had declared the Opposition Leader Guiado as “President of Venezuela”!! But we all know that with Maduro controlling the massive armed forces and almost all institutions, including the oil company PDVSA – through corruption and bribery – there was no way he coulda been dislodged. So, the Yanks and their surrogates went back last year to negotiating the aforementioned “free and fair elections” pact – this time in Maduro’s bestie Mia’s Barbados. And it seemed that the Yanks really believed him.
After they engaged in some prisoner exchanges, they took their foot off the sanctions pedal, and allowed Chevron and some European majors to start pumping oil as pay for their debt. This, of course, is just what Mad Maduro wanted – and expected!! He cynically counted on the central tenet of the US business class: “greed is good”; or, as we say, “money gaffa mek”!! Hadn’t that class already made America into a Rust Belt while they made more profits in China?? It didn’t hurt, of course, that the US was in a bit of a pickle for Venezuela’s heavy oil – after imposing sanctions on Russia for invading Ukraine.
And that’s what raised red flags for your Eyewitness. While we’re counting on the Yanks to “do the right thing” for democracy, we gotta remember that from how they backed Burnham’s rigging to keep out Jagan, democracy can be a very elastic concept!! So, we just heard from the US that they’re reimposing on Mad Maduro SOME of the sanctions they just lifted!! But surely, it isn’t coincidental that SOME of the sanctions NOT reimposed are on the oil production!! We’re told that those licences extend to April, so we’ll just have to let the oil keep flowing till then!!
So, where does that leave us and the congenital liar Mad Maduro?? Just that we shouldn’t get sucked into the nonsense that he wants a “Zone of Peace” in the Caribbean.
What he wants is a big PIECE of the Caribbean Zone!!
…and preparing
Back in Roman times, it was said, “Si vis pacem, para bellum”, meaning: “If you want peace, prepare for war”. Over in China, the venerable Sun Tzu, in his “Art of War”, had pretty much said the same thing: “In war, prepare for peace; in peace, prepare for war.” So, since the Argyle Declaration we and Venezuela signed onto says we’re at “peace”, it’s rather refreshing to see our Government preparing for war – to ensure there’s gonna be peace!!
During the approval of the line items, at the conclusion of the Budget process, it was revealed that the Government has allocated US$90 million to purchase “two aircraft, four helicopters, and accompanying equipment; Vertical Take-Off and Landing (VTOL), long-range drone systems; and a second Offshore Patrol Vessel (OPV) for the army”!! The drone systems are the going thing for modern armies, so your Eyewitness wants to know what happened to the 5 drones Public Security Minister Ramjattan had bought from that start-up company for US$80,000 each.
…Trinidad’s agony
Your Eyewitness isn’t enjoying Trinidad’s Rowley slowly swinging in the wind over Venezuela’s Dragon Gas Field being sanctioned once again by the Americans.
The lesson for us it that while, as Eric Williams said, “oil doan spoil” – it does run out!!
