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Things Not Going Well in Venezuela, 2.0

PittsburghTiger

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Fozzz

Fozzz 152

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7 hours ago, Iconoclast Texan said:

Is Panama better off now versus when we came into arrest Noriega when they were a narco state?

Why not focus on a more recent example like Haiti, where literal rivers of shit flow down the streets of Port au Prince while Martelly  jokes about the country being a latrine?

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Huckleberry
Huckleberry

Listen, @bad_teammate, this is a complicated situation and I actually do see the logic in both sides of the end result positions. But that's a lot more complicated topic I don't have time for right no

Johnny Sack
Johnny Sack

In this thread surly libs blame the US for the failures of socialism.  

EuroHorn
EuroHorn
David Dennison

David Dennison 17660

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6 hours ago, Iconoclast Texan said:

This article describes the hell and desperation caused by the Iranian Revolution. It should illuminate those like Fozz and RomaVicta on why overthrowing such a regime is so difficult despite widespread dissatisfaction and highlights the cruelty of those willing to allow such conditions to continue in order them to continue to spout platitudes about dialogue and constructive engagement despite decades worth of evidence to show that such actions lead to no change in behavior by these rogue regimes. No one disputed that apartheid South African government had to go. Why are the Venezuelan people not worthy of such liberation from their own tyranny?

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Iran Needs a New Revolution

Iranians are still suffering 40 years after the last one.

Eli LakeFebruary 9, 2019, 1:00 AM EST
He just told people what they wanted to hear.

He just told people what they wanted to hear.

Photographer: AFP/AFP

Bloomberg Opinion is marking the 40th anniversary of Iran’s Islamic Revolution with a collection of columns from around the world. 

Four decades ago, in the months leading up to the Islamic Revolution in Iran, the exiled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini made many promises. He spoke about respecting the rights of minorities, democracy and equality for women.

 

Western intellectuals like the late French philosopher Michel Foucault praisedKhomeini’s vision. In Iran, liberals and communists were happy to join with his followers to topple the corrupt regime of the shah. The charismatic Khomeini was saying what they wanted to hear.

Or, to put it another way: He was lying. Khomeini “was not locked into everything he had said” then, according to Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, the country’s first president after the revolution. Speaking in an interview this month, the former president said that Khomeini described the promises he made before he came to power as “convenient.” 

That’s putting it mildly. Soon after declaring himself supreme leader, Khomeini abandoned almost all of his public pledges. In his 2016 book “Democracy in Iran: Why it Failed and How it Might Succeed,” the professor Misagh Parsa describes the post-revolution government of Khomeini as “an exclusive state” that “rejected the promise of democracy.” 

 

The clerics and their enablers had a lot of work to do. They banned alcohol, and popular music on radio and television, and taking your dog for a walk in the park. They also launched a campaign of public cruelty, promulgating decrees to punish adulterers and other criminals with lashes and stoning. In 1988, there were mass executions of as many as 40,000 enemies of the state. Between 1979 and 2009 the regime arrested, imprisoned or killed at least 860 journalists, according to Reporters Without Borders. 

To this day, state television broadcasts coerced confessions. It was just last summer that Maedeh Hojabri, a teenaged gymnast, confessed to the crime of posting videos of herself on Instagram dancing without the required hijab.

The cruelty extends to Iranians living abroad. The regime has been known to send assassins to Europe to murder opposition leaders; former Prime Minister Shapour Bakhtiar, who briefly led a reformist government in the last months of the shah’s regime, was stabbed multiple times the chest in his Paris apartment in 1991. Just last week, Iran’s justice minister announced he would begin prosecuting the U.S.-based journalist and activist Masih Alinejad after she met with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. She, too, stands accused of encouraging Iranian women to share videos of themselves taking off their hijab.

 

Meanwhile, as the state built by Khomeini is persecuting its citizens, it is enriching its leaders. In this regard the Islamic Republic today is not very different than the corrupt regime it replaced 40 years ago. The army’s Revolutionary Guard, for example, also functions as a kind of criminal syndicate, controlling large chunks of the country’s economy. The current supreme leader and Khomeini’s successor operates a slush fund worth tens of billions of dollars, according to a 2013 Reuters investigation, built in part on assets the state seized from Iranian citizens.

Many Iranians now realize that their leaders are corrupt and inept. Nationwide protests and strikes began in December 2017 and continue. Ordinary Iranians, at great personal risk, frequently register their dissatisfaction with their rulers in marches, with graffiti and on anonymous social media accounts. Iranians abroad, exiled by choice or by necessity, are beginning to plan for what comes next. Some dissidents are calling for a national referendum on the powers of the supreme leader.

No serious person believes Iran is a democracy. And yet it is still possible to hear, in some quarters of Brussels and Washington, pleasant nonsense about the contest of ideas between Iran’s moderates and hardliners. Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, still sits for fawning interviews and pretends to be the envoy of a free country. 

 

It’s a con that goes back 40 years. On Feb. 16, 1979, the New York Times published a column by a professor of international law at Princeton. The depiction of Khomeini “as fanatical, reactionary and the bearer of crude prejudices,” he wrote, “seems certainly and happily false.” That op-ed was aptly titled, “Trusting Khomeini.”

Too many Western leaders continue to trust Khomeini’s successors. Even now, the European Union and former Secretary of State John Kerry are working to save the 2015 deal limiting Iran’s nuclear program. They believe the Iranian regime’s promise not to build a weapon when much of the agreement expires in less than 15 years. 

The good news is that millions of Iranians no longer believe anything this regime says. They have endured the terror, deprivation and cruelty unleashed by the Islamic Revolution 40 years ago. The least Americans and Europeans can do is defend and support them and their struggle for a democratic revolution.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:
Eli Lake at elake1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:
Michael Newman at mnewman43@bloomberg.net

When did we invade South Africa?

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David Dennison

David Dennison 17660

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42 minutes ago, Iconoclast Texan said:

Who has advocated for an invasion? I sure as hell haven’t and neither has the President 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/jul/04/trump-suggested-invading-venezuela-report

Google it. There's lots more where that came from.

Edited by David Dennison
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Fozzz

Fozzz 152

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The Republicans in Congress are insisting that military authorization be included in the new legislation they are trying to pass.  

Sanctions rarely work to implode a government, so they will likely need to intervene militarily openly or covertly via weapons/training.  Seeing how it is unlikely that Congress will sanction open military intervention, they may look to support some force in the region. However, unlike Syria where we could use a group like ISIS for this purpose, I’m not sure what force they could work with here. 

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David Dennison

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3 minutes ago, Fozzz said:

The Republicans in Congress are insisting that military authorization be included in the new legislation they are trying to pass.  

Sanctions rarely work to implode a government, so they will likely need to intervene militarily openly or covertly via weapons/training.  Seeing how it is unlikely that Congress will sanction open military intervention, they may look to support some force in the region. However, unlike Syria where we could use a group like ISIS for this purpose, I’m not sure what force they could work with here. 

Forever war continues!!!

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hpslugga

hpslugga 3984

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On 2/8/2019 at 11:52 AM, Iconoclast Texan said:

So Chávez and Maduro didn’t expropriate the means of production from private hands for the benefit of the masses? 

This is why I say that people such as yourself haven't the foggiest idea what socialism is: it's because you really do not know what it is.

The definition you posted is curiously vague, and even with its simplicity, you still failed horribly to comprehend it. It clearly states "the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole." From those last five words, you read that as "Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro," two individuals in a state of 31 million people. That's as irresponsible, not to mention rectally derived, as it is when right-wingers in the US say "Donald Trump speaks for all Americans."

Yeah, so they undertook a few expropriations here and there. That doesn't change the fact that, as an AP article from 2010 pointed out, "the private sector still controls [over] two-thirds of Venezuela's economy— the same as when Chavez was elected in 1998, according to estimates by the Central Bank." The same types of studies conclude that around 87% of the US economy is in the private sector. More on that later.

Back to the definition(s) of socialism. When looking at any term in search of its meaning, you do what any sensible person does and trace its origins. I'm about 95-99% sure that you're one of those people that associates its foundation with Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx, neither of which are even remotely close to true.

Socialism's foundation was best articulated in 1649 with the publishing of a pamphlet entitled The New Laws of Righteousness by Gerrard Winstanley, one of the founders of The Diggers, which was an anarchist movement in England during its First Civil War. The overarching principle of the Diggers' vision of society in New Laws was that there "shall be no buying or selling, no fairs nor markets, but the whole earth shall be a common treasury for every man." Here's where you need to start paying attention: "there shall be none Lord over others, but every one shall be a Lord of himself." 

That's a call to anarchism.

Taxonomically, the first published uses of the term "socialism" came with a flurry of literatures in the late 18th-early 19th centuries (Charles Fourier, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Louis Blanc, Henri de Saint-Simon, Robert Owen, and a host of others that Marx/Engels decried as "utopians"), but they were all based on the ideas that New Laws put forth. The point being, Engels and Marx are correctly viewed within the socialist community as being a couple of perverted johnny-come-latelys with outlandish ideas. In fact, Mikhail Bakunin once wrote of Marx "the instinct of liberty is lacking in him" and that "he remains from head to foot, an authoritarian." 

So let's take Winstanley's concept, fuse it with the one you posted, and see if we can detect even the slightest hint of contradiction:

"There shall be no buying or selling, no fairs nor markets, but the whole earth shall be a common treasury for every man, the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole, there shall be none Lord over others, but every one shall be a Lord of himself."

I see no contradiction there...at all. In fact, I see repetition. Those two definitions are talking about the same thing, which was actually best articulated by Sylvain Maréchal when he longed for "the communal enjoyment of the fruits of the earth" and the elimination of "the revolting distinction of rich and poor, of great and small, of masters and valets, of governors and governed," and so it goes right through the pre-Leninist period. In fact, even Marx' writings made it clear that the societal order he envisioned was one of statelessness at the very end of the revolution. Yet from that one definition you posted, let alone from the ones with which I've been familiar for quite a long time, you read the exact opposite. What's particularly comical is that you do it because you read into that definition things that it does not say, and then you didn't read what it did say. So you read in between the lines, but didn't bother to read the lines.

Socialism and statism are like oil and water. That having been said, states have introduced ways to incorporate socialist elements in them, to be sure. But to call that "socialism" or even "pure socialism," as I've seen some right-wingers screaming about, is just partisan masturbation and you're beyond reason if you think it passes as a "coherent world view." 

Furthermore, the US is one of those nation states that incorporates socialist elements. The USPS, Medicare, Medicaid, the military, Social Security, etc? Who do you think funds those? We do. 

I'm going to close this with a trump card that I teased earlier: 

Venezuela's economy is around 70% based on its private sector. You call that "socialism."
The US economy is around 87% based on its private sector. You call that "capitalism."

Quote

That is a textbook definition of socialism as witnessed above. 

Except it's not, you've been absolutely wrong about absolutely everything you've said about this issue in general, and what @hayden_horn said earlier is absolutely correct: what's happening in Venezuela is fascism, and it's getting uglier with each passing day.

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David Dennison

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1 hour ago, LowPressure said:

Venezuela is a great example of why everyone should be leery of Gov solving anything...and why you never give up your guns.

That said, I don't think we should intervene with any military activity.

Is it even worth pointing out that there are plenty of examples of government solving lots of things?

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hpslugga

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29 minutes ago, David Dennison said:

Everyone? Are you sure?

Again it wouldn’t even matter if he could prove that stupid cartoon was 100% accurate as Venezuela isn’t a socialist state in the first place. Starting with the premise of “given that Venezuela is a socialist state” is like saying “given that the moon is made of green cheese.” I suppose that sentences like those provide a mechanism towards some sort of measure of physical and/or emotional gratification to the person uttering them, but they never end well in terms of actual discourse. 

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Hugo Stiglitz

Hugo Stiglitz 23245

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Posted (edited)
4 hours ago, workswithseed said:

 So are we saying socialism and fascism can be in the same boat?

They absolutely can be.  Our perception of fascism being only far right is misguided IMO. 

Fascism is unique because it takes ideas from the left like revolution/radical change and marries them to the extreme nationalist authoritarian style of governing found mostly on the right.

Edited by Hugo Stiglitz
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Fozzz

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Not that the necons itt care about what Venezuelans think, but...

Quote

A study conducted by the polling firm Hinterlaces between January 21 and February 2, 2019, revealed that 57% of respondents consider that the government of the president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, is legitimate.

http://globovision.com/article/hinterlaces-57-reconoce-legitimidad-del-presidente-nicolas-maduro

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LowPressure

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2 hours ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

They absolutely can be.  Our perception of fascism being only far right is misguided IMO. 

Fascism is unique because it takes ideas from the left like revolution/radical change and marries them to the extreme nationalist authoritarian style of governing found mostly on the right. 

You're doing great until the last part.  I don't agree that the right is authoritarian.   Sure there are Big Gov Republicans (RINOS) but I'd say most agree with Mark Levin, that there is only Freedom & Tyranny

If you look at what the two parties want...which side has everything that must be enforced and implemented by Gov?  Which side is creating programs with endless regulations, fees, and taxes? 

For all the talk of Trump doing this or that...what oppression has Trump put on anyone?

There are only two areas I can think of...

Immigration, which is long existing law on our books.  Laws that even when Dems had full control of the Gov they didn't change.  And frankly almost all of them have said that illegal immigration needs to be addressed and fixed at some point, including Schumer, Obama, both Clintons, and even Nancy.

Abortion, which most people on the Right view as murder and the Left view as 'choice'.  OF course the left doesn't want to acknowledge that there are choices before that could be changed that negate the need for abortion all together.   

Edited by LowPressure
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LowPressure

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18 minutes ago, Hugo Stiglitz said:

Nothing says “Not Authoritarian” like holding the taxpayers hostage over a 2000 mile 30ft concrete border wall.

A.  It's been approved multiple times but never funded.

B. It's a national security issue, a task that the Federal Gov is Constitutionally charged with carrying out.

C. As the Dems are proving by not coming back to the table after Trump reopened the Gov...it's not 100% on him.

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David Dennison

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7 minutes ago, LowPressure said:

A.  It's been approved multiple times but never funded.

B. It's a national security issue, a task that the Federal Gov is Constitutionally charged with carrying out.

C. As the Dems are proving by not coming back to the table after Trump reopened the Gov...it's not 100% on him.

He turned down $25 billion in funding in January of last year. It's 100% on him.

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hpslugga

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5 hours ago, workswithseed said:

Doesn't look good then. So are we saying socialism and fascism can be in the same boat? Cause that's what it exactly looks like.

What I'm saying is that, particularly in the United States, our level of understanding of politics is at a level of superficiality that's very hard to describe. We operate in a way that encourages people to assert inanities like "the reason Adolph Hitler was a socialist was that the Nazi flag was red." 

I can't believe I'm going to quote this character of all people to prove a point here, but it really sums it up perfectly: "If you fucking beat this prick long enough, he'll tell you he started the goddamn Chicago fire, now that don't necessarily make it fucking so!" The same applies to political affairs. Just because some person says that they're a socialist, fascist, anarchist, conservative, liberal, et al don't necessarily make it fucking so. The same is true for when some government says some other government is one or another of those things, in fact even more so because there's a 100% degree of certainty that such proclamations are made with self-interest and only with self-interest.

 

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Hugo Stiglitz

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Welp, I guess that settles it.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo against any interference, including military, into Venezuela’s internal affairs, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement following a phone call between the two. 

Lavrov said that Russia was ready for consultations about Venezuela in line with the United Nations charter. 

Lavrov also criticized plans to tighten U.S. sanctions against Russia over the poisoning of ex-spy Sergei Skripal in England, saying new sanctions would hurt bilateral ties, the statement said.

Edited by Hugo Stiglitz
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Nivek

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What I'm saying is that, particularly in the United States, our level of understanding of politics is at a level of superficiality that's very hard to describe. We operate in a way that encourages people to assert inanities like "the reason Adolph Hitler was a socialist was that the Nazi flag was red." 
I can't believe I'm going to quote this character of all people to prove a point here, but it really sums it up perfectly: "If you fucking beat this prick long enough, he'll tell you he started the goddamn Chicago fire, now that don't necessarily make it fucking so!" The same applies to political affairs. Just because some person says that they're a socialist, fascist, anarchist, conservative, liberal, et al don't necessarily make it fucking so. The same is true for when some government says some other government is one or another of those things, in fact even more so because there's a 100% degree of certainty that such proclamations are made with self-interest and only with self-interest.
 

You mean the soviets werent socialists? And the Norks are not in a Democratic Republic?
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GHOSTUSER

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On 2/10/2019 at 6:21 PM, bad_teammate said:

 

Fuck this loser spreading lies. 80% of Venezuelans want Maduro to be deposed. Handsoff Venezuela means support for mass starvation and an abdication of our role as a superpower. Read it right here in the NYTimes from someone in Venezuela.

More than 80 percent of Venezuelans want Mr. Maduro to resign.

 

Nothing Can Prepare You for Life With Hyperinflation

Feb. 12, 2019

Food shortages and an unrelenting surge in prices are overwhelming Venezuelans. They could prove to be the force that spurs Maduro’s exit from power.

By Virginia López Glass

Ms. López Glass is journalist and has covered Venezuela for more than a decade.

Shoppers in Guaicaipuro, Venezuela, searched for food at a grocery store where nearly all shelves were empty because of massive food shortages plaguing the country last year.Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

12Lopezglass-articleLarge.jpg?quality=75
Shoppers in Guaicaipuro, Venezuela, searched for food at a grocery store where nearly all shelves were empty because of massive food shortages plaguing the country last year.Meridith Kohut for The New York Times

I’d seen the black and white photos of German children using bundles of money as building blocks during the Weimar Republic. I’d read about the skyrocketing price of bread in Zimbabwe, and how people were carrying their cash in wheelbarrows. But nothing you read can prepare you for life with hyperinflation. 

In the Weimar Republic hyperinflation was largely the result of reparation: payments imposed on Germany after World War I. In Zimbabwe it was the result of Robert Mugabe’s land reform policy and the drop in food production and foreign investment that followed. 

But in Venezuela it has been the result of two decades of gross economic mismanagement, profligate public spending, government debt despite a historic oil windfall, and epic corruption. What was once the most prosperous country in the region is now a man-made disaster.

As Venezuela’s political crisis reaches new heights and international pressure mounts against Nicolás Maduro, hyperinflation and the hunger it has sown could worsen. But they could also prove to be the force that hastens his exit from power. In the end, hyperinflation spares no one.

Inflation in Venezuela began to creep up slowly after Mr. Maduro rose to power in 2013. As a journalist, I began to report on how it, along with chronic food shortages, was one of the reasons life had become so hard in 2014. 

Price controls meant that subsidized food disappeared from shelves. If and when you found cooking oil, corn flour or sugar, you could offset the cost of more expensive food by reselling the cheap goods in the black market or across the border. It became such a profitable business that a new job soon emerged. Bachaqueros, or ant-traders, would carry anything from soap to powdered milk to Colombia and make five times as much in a day as in a month at their formal jobs. 

As shelves were bled dry in this scheme, Mr. Maduro blamed “economic warfare waged from abroad.” The government supporters that stood in mile-long queues outside food shops still believed him then.

By 2015, Venezuela had the worst inflation rate in the world. Some food items have never made it back on the shelves. Shop owners started using money-counting machines. People carried bags full of cash. By 2016, the inflation rate hit over 700 percent. 

At the time, I interviewed Hugo Lugo, a collector of rare coins and old bills. At his numismatic shop, Mr. Lugo, a self-taught amateur historian, told me that what had begun as a hobby had become a painful reminder of the turn the country had taken. Next to rare bills used during the country’s best years — and now protected carefully by plastic vault-like envelopes — was a glass shelf where crinkled, more recent notes had been carelessly shoved. Printed less than three years before, he said, they were now worthless.

By late 2017, the inflation rate exceeded 50 percent a month. It was a turning point: economists signaled that we were officially in hyperinflation. Inflation is bad, but hyperinflation is a totally different game. 

Hyperinflation hits the poorest the hardest. Venezuelans have reported losing on average 24 pounds in body weight. Nearly 90 percent now live in poverty. In the slums of Caracas, I visited mothers who have gone from reducing their children’s portions to having them skip meals altogether. 

Marilyn Alma, a mother of three, had to give up custody of her eldest child because she can no longer feed him. One week, a dozen eggs cost Alba three days of wages; the next week, the cost doubles. Eggs, the cheapest source of protein, are now a distant dream for the vast majority of people. Ms. Alma, who had once been a staunch government supporter, told me, “Maduro betrayed this country.” 

The professional class has also been affected. In middle-class neighborhoods large supermarkets previously stocked with imported goods are now half stocked with cheaper versions. Professionals can only afford two or three food items, and retirees often must leave behind products they can no longer afford. Their life savings and pensions are suddenly worthless.

Hyperinflation has also meant a brain drain. Young engineers or doctors are now working as waiters in Bogotá, Colombia, or as store clerks in Lima, Peru. “The worst part is that they send back money to help us,” Melani Delgado, whose two sons have left, told me recently as she fought back tears. A part-time dentist, Delgado said she could once afford to send her children to private university on her salary. Today remittances are fast becoming a lifeline for those left behind. “This government broke up the Venezuelan family and turned parents into parasites,” she said.

If you belong to the dwindling minority that has access to dollars, you can somewhat offset the rise in prices with the surge in the black-market exchange. You may be able to survive, but it’s impossible to plan for something that changes every day. To adapt to the destruction all around you. 

For those with access to dollars, living with hyperinflation is demoralizing. At 6,000 bolívars (the equivalent of $2, or one third of the minimum monthly wage), a pound of butter is obscenely expensive. Paying $30 for a 17-ounce bottle of olive oil feels criminal. Today this bottle costs the equivalent of five times the minimum wage, but that’s likely to change tomorrow. “Beating the system” feels like you are eviscerating your country’s economy.

In a hyperinflationary economy, buying food becomes your one and only priority. But even for those in the business of selling food, hyperinflation is a losing game. Strict price controls mean that producing, distributing or commercializing food is either going to lead you to bankruptcy or if you sell at a profit, to jail. 

“If people feel their salaries are evaporating, I feel the work of two generations of my family could vanish overnight,” the owner of a supermarket, who asked to remain anonymous, told me. Scores of executives, managers and employees in the food distribution business have been imprisoned on charges of price manipulation, hoarding food or conspiring against the government. Speaking to the media or even allowing journalists to film inside stores can also land you in jail.

A recent move to slash five zeros off the previous currency became obsolete within months. Venezuela now has two currencies simultaneously in circulation — the strong bolívar and the sovereign bolívar — both of which are worthless.

Venezuela’s economic collapse is fast becoming an international conflict. Mr. Maduro’s inability to tackle an economic crisis with rampant shortages of food and medicine has fueled a humanitarian crisis where hundreds of people, like Hugo Lugo the numismatic, have died of preventable diseases. 

This humanitarian crisis, in turn, has led to the exodus of more than 3 million, like Ms. Delgado, the part-time dentist, who has since joined her sons abroad. It is the worst migration crisis the Americas has seen in this century and one that our neighbors can no longer resist.

While a growing number of countries condemn Mr. Maduro as illegitimate, the queues outside food shops or at the border only grow longer. More than 80 percent of Venezuelans want Mr. Maduro to resign. Like Ms. Alma, they blame him and no longer “economic warfare” for destroying the country. For Mr. Maduro, hyperinflation is the force that is rallying half the world and his entire country against him. 

Virginia Lopez-Glass has covered Venezuela and Latin America extensively for international media. She was senior correspondent for Al Jazeera English.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.

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hpslugga

hpslugga 3984

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1 hour ago, Nivek said:


You mean the soviets werent socialists? And the Norks are not in a Democratic Republic?

It’s funny that you mentioned North Korea because they rank 167th out of 167 in the EIU’s democracy index. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index

But hey, “democratic” is in the title, so that had to be a mistake.

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GHOSTUSER

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Love that y’all are trumpeting Ilhan Omar, a rabid anti-Semite who I’d have under constant surveillance if I was President. China is hedging their bets and have already reached out to President Guaidó about protecting their investments in Venezuela after Maduro is deposed. When China is acting this way that has to mean the Cahavez/Maduro reign of terror is about to end. I hope Maduro is as full of hubris as he seems and is not making plans to flee. I want him dead and so do the Venezuelan people. The catharsis and joy the people will feel when they see his dead body will be off the chain. Long live President Guaidó!

China Talks With Venezuela Opposition to Protect Investments

Chinese diplomats discuss debt, oil projects with Guaidó camp as pressure mounts against ally Maduro

Kejal VyasUpdated Feb. 12, 2019 2:01 p.m. ET
Representatives of Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó, above in Caracas on Feb. 5, have met with Chinese diplomats to discuss China’s loans and oil investments in the country.

CARACAS, Venezuela—China has been holding talks with Venezuela’s political opposition to safeguard its investments in the troubled Latin American nation, hedging its bets as pressure builds on Nicolás Maduro, the embattled leader for whom Beijing has been a vital ally.

“China recognizes the increasing risk of a regime change and does not want to be on the bad side of a new regime,” said R. Evan Ellis, an expert on Chinese relations in Latin America at the U.S. Army War College. “While they prefer stability, they realize they have to put eggs in the other basket.”

Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro has resisted pressure at home and abroad to cede power to Mr. Guaidó.

Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro has resisted pressure at home and abroad to cede power to Mr. Guaidó. Photo: Manaure Quintero/Reuters

The talks are a sign of the apprehensions building with creditors of Venezuela’s leftist government. Over nearly two decades, loans-for-oil deals with China and Russia have provided vital support for Venezuela. Relations flourished under Mr. Maduro’s predecessor, the late socialist strongman Hugo Chávez, who fortified ties with those countries, Cuba, Iran and even India in an effort to combat U.S. power.

But commercial and financial ties with these countries have been strained since Mr. Maduro, Mr. Chávez’s handpicked successor, took power in 2013 and the economy began to shrink, with oil production plummeting by more than half after years of rampant graft and mismanagement.

Sanctions leveled by Washington last month on Venezuela’s oil industry have exacerbated Mr. Maduro’s difficulties, cutting off Venezuela’s only meaningful source of income and portending further declines in oil output.

China’s Foreign Ministry didn’t respond to a request for comment about Beijing’s contacts with the Venezuelan opposition. In recent weeks, the ministry has suggested that discussions are taking place and Beijing wants to see its interests respected.

Latin Venture

China has lent Venezuela more than $50 billion in exchange for oil supplies since 2007 but repayments have dwindled since President Maduro took office in 2013.

B3-DB092_backgr_4U_20190201130529.jpg

China's imports from Venezuela

Other

Oil

$17.5 billion

Maduro

15.0

12.5

10.0

7.5

5.0

2.5

0

2005

’15

’10

2001

China's exports to Venezuela

Machinery

Electrical machinery

Other

Vehicles

Iron and steel

$10 billion

Maduro

8

6

4

2

0

’10

’15

’05

2001

Source: ITC calculations based on United Nations Comtrade data

Asked about rumored talks at a media briefing on Feb. 1, Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said Beijing “has been in close communication with all parties in various ways on the situation in Venezuela.”

“No matter how the situation evolves,” Mr. Geng said, “China-Venezuela cooperation should not be undermined.”

Mr. Guaidó has publicly extended olive branches to China and Russia. The young National Assembly chief, whom lawmakers chose to lead an interim presidency in a direct challenge to Mr. Maduro, has argued that political change would be a precursor to economic reforms to restore stability.

Venezuela, which sits atop the world’s largest oil reserves, should maintain ties with China, the world’s biggest oil importer, he said.

The fall of the Maduro government could work to China’s advantage, said Mr. Ellis. “Guaidó could help lift [U.S.] sanctions and get oil flowing again. At the end China has everything to gain from Guaidó,” he said.

People familiar with the debt-repayment talks said there are significant hurdles. Venezuela has borrowed from China more than $50 billion in a series of loans-for-oil agreements since 2007, and according to estimates by China’s Commerce Ministry it still owes Beijing around $20 billion.

China is unwilling to take a significant loss on its loans, as some of the opposition’s economic advisers have suggested for lenders, including holders of the country’s defaulted bonds, according to two of the people familiar with the talks. Both sides have been discussing grace periods on repayment plans to give any potential Venezuelan transitional government breathing space, they said.

Opposition lawmakers have also long clamored to make the terms of China’s loan deals with Venezuela more transparent, which Beijing opposes, according to two of the people familiar with the negotiations.

Venezuela's Oil Minister Manuel Quevedo, center, in India on Monday, where his ministry said he was seeking buyers for Venezuelan oil.
Venezuela's Oil Minister Manuel Quevedo, center, in India on Monday, where his ministry said he was seeking buyers for Venezuelan oil. Photo: anushree fadnavis/Reuters

Like China, Russia has publicly supported Mr. Maduro but has shown little willingness to prop up the government with fresh funds. Neither ally has granted large loans to Venezuela in recent years. Their joint oil ventures in Venezuela have been subject to the corruption and operational difficulties felt across the country’s oil industry, energy consultants said.

One director of a company that provides oil-field valves and tubes to Chinese and Russian state firms operating in Venezuela said the company had only made one sale in all of 2018. “The Chinese, the Russians, I just don’t see them putting any money in,” the director said.

Moscow is open to dialogue with Mr. Guaidó, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov suggested this month, saying Russia expected to maintain cooperation with Caracas “regardless of political developments in the country.” 

The Trump administration’s sanctions aim to redirect oil assets and revenue away from Mr. Maduro and into the hands of Mr. Guaidó, closing off access to Venezuela’s biggest cash customers. 

Venezuelan officials have been seeking new buyers for their heavy oil, which until January could be refined at specially fitted American installations.

On Sunday, the state-run Saudi tanker company, Bahri, said one of its vessels had traveled to Venezuela to load crude for one of Caracas’s regular customers in India. Bahri said the shipment would be completed before the end of a grace period set by U.S. sanctions.

On Monday, Venezuela Oil Minister Manuel Quevedo was in New Delhi, seeking to increase sales to India, his ministry said.

But Indian officials have said privately that they have grown impatient with Venezuela, which for several years has delayed repayment of nearly $500 million owed to state oil company ONGC Videsh Ltd.

Venezuela’s government has also fallen into arrears with Indian pharmaceutical companies that once thrived here, forcing many of them to shift operations out of the country as social and economic conditions deteriorated.

“Private entities in India have little reason to go out of their way to ramp up imports in such a chaotic situation,” said Smita Purushottam, a former Indian ambassador to Venezuela who recently retired from the Foreign Ministry.

“My view is that the people of Venezuela are fighting for survival,” she said. “They have suffered for too long and perhaps the only way forward is to start anew, under international supervision, to minimize their suffering and rekindle hope.”

—Benoit Faucon in London, Charles Hutzler in Beijing and Ginette Gonzalez in Caracas contributed to this article.

Write to Kejal Vyas at kejal.vyas@wsj.com

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David Dennison

David Dennison 17660

Posted
Posted
23 minutes ago, Iconoclast Texan said:

After Venezuela is liberated, I can’t wait to see what Bolton and Abrams have in store for Iran. Having Maduro’s government toppled will be a significant foreign policy victory for Trump. 

The sanctions in Iran are having the exact opposite effect. It's only helping the hard liners. And we'll never send troops there, so I have no idea what you think they have in store.

 

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