Your Eyewitness notes the US-Venezuela prisoner swap – ten Yanks for one Venezuelan!! Does that mean that a Venezuelan’s life is worth ten times that of an American’s?? Well, like with beauty, value is in the eyes of the swapper!! Mad Maduro feels that, to spring his guy, it was worth handing over ten Yanks and one fella named “Fat Leonard”. And if you’d thought that only Mafia hitmen had such monikers, then think again!!
But who was Mad Maduro’s guy, Alex Saab? He’d been apprehended on a US warrant in 2020, while making a fuel stop in Cape Verde en route to Iran. Mad Maduro swears he’s a Venezuelan diplomat, but, in reality, he’s a Colombian businessman who not only violated sanctions to ship food and building materials into Venezuela, but gave a whole new dimension to the old business saw: “buy low and sell high”!!
Pertinently, though, he dealt directly with Mad Maduro, and we can we sure the 1000% markups were shared with his buddy!! Yet Mad Maduro swears he’s for the small man – even as he conspired to deny them affordable food!! How low can one sink?? Clearly, not lower than Mad Maduro!
But what this exchange of prisoners shows is that venality knows no national boundaries. Fat Leonard’s from a Malaysian family that operates a huge shipping servicing facility in Singapore. Now, you may wonder what this got to do with the US, and why the US want him?? Well, with the US Navy projecting American power against the Chinese out in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, those ships have gotta be serviced. And what Fat Leonard did was to ensure HIS company benefitted in BILLIONS from those contracts by providing sex and other services to hundreds of US Naval Officers!! And he had tapes of their peccadillos to embarrass the Pentagon and the US Government!! With all that training, the flesh is still weak, innit??
But what does all of this have to do with us – apart from reminding us that our officials are also prone to weaknesses of the flesh, and we gotta watch them like hawks?? A lot, as it turns out; since the Yanks – whom we’re looking to protect us from big, bad Mad Maduro – are making nice with him!! As even Associated Press reported: “The deal represents the Biden administration’s boldest move yet to improve relations with the major oil-producing nation and extract concessions from the self-proclaimed socialist leader.
The largest release of American prisoners in Venezuela’s history comes weeks after the White House agreed to suspend some sanctions, following a commitment by Maduro to work toward free and fair conditions for the 2024 presidential election.”
We gotta assume that, like good realists, the US are gonna be playing both sides against the middle to further THEIR interests!!
…within the old revolutionaries
The recent death of that old war-monger (war criminal?) Kissinger reminded us of the old revolutionary days, when Burnham and Jagan cozied up to leftist movements across the world – against the “rapacious, running dogs capitalists”!! Ah…they wore their ideals on their sleeves – which for Burnham was easy, since he could always point to Jagan if he annoyed the Yanks! Jagan was his safety blanket!!
Your Eyewitness wrote about Burnham allowing Cuban planes ferrying troops to Angola to support the MPLA rebels – and being pulled up by Kissinger!! Well, look how things turned out!! After MPLA took over the Govt from the Portuguese imperialists in 1975, they were led from 1979 to 2017 by rebel leader José Eduardo dos Santos. The denouement is that his daughter Isabel dos Santos – who became Africa’s first female billionaire – just lost an appeal to freeze up to 580 million pounds ($735 million) of her assets in a lawsuit at London’s High Court.
So, who became the “running dog capitalists”??
…of power generation
Even as some are still kvetching – rightfully – about the constant blackouts that threaten to make a mockery of our “festive” season, others are criticising the Government for not freezing the gas-fired generation plans on hold!! Go figure!
