Venezuela Earthquakes

Venezuela Earthquake Slider

Notice how the shadows from the tall buildings in the left hand image disappear in the right hand one. Aljazeera has several other slider views of the damage wrought by the recent earthquakes. It's pretty bad.

Maduro

Maduro

As usual, David Warren sums up feelings on the matter:

Gentle reader does not need me to provide reporting on the glorious Trumpian capture of Venezuela’s chief socialist drug lord; or the bombings of Muslim terrorists in Nigeria; or the next intervention in Iran by the United States and (blesséd) Israel. All were, are, or will be acts of self-defence by civilization and the West, and I certainly subscribe to Mahatma Gandhi’s principle of justifiable defensive violence. One should not be a coward when attacked (and will be attacked less frequently if one has established this reputation). Then if, like the overwhelming majority of people, one has not the discipline or patience to stand still while being murdered, nevertheless, one should not run away. It is important to defend oneself in “kill or be killed” situations, and when possible bring each to a victorious conclusion. Gandhi was not a wus.

Follow the link to read the whole thing. 

Guyana Update

Guyana and disputed the Essequibo region (red hash marks)

I posted about Guyana once four years ago. Today we have a report from RT (aka Russia Today). Looks like we might have another minor war coming.

The border between Venezuela and Guyana is under dispute. Nobody much cared about this patch of jungle until a giant oil company discovered oil there. Now Madura, the commie dictator of Venezuela, wants it, and we, the USA, are naturally opposed to this because we hate commies. And we want the oil for ourselves.

Looking at this I am wondering whether it might be cheaper and easier to get oil from miles below the surface of the ocean rather than trying to get drilling equipment and pipelines into the middle of a jungle. I just don't know. Drill ships are expensive. But so is any kind of construction in a jungle.

Even if Madura could somehow take over the disputed region, I doubt whether he would be able to get any oil out of there. I mean he has pretty much destroyed Venezuela's oil industry.

Venezuela production of crude oil in oil barrels, 1965-2019

Why Is Latin America still Poor

Why Is Latin America still Poor
Casual Scholar

Everybody, including me, complains about Maduro, the President of Venezuela, but I can kind of understand him now. Latin America has been ruled by a tiny minority who own all the land AND who see no reason to change the way their countries are run. It's not enough to just become president, you need to ruin everyone of those mother-fookers. If any on them manage to hang onto their lands, the whole elitist oligarchy will return and things will go back to the way they were. That is fine for the 'nobility' but wretched for everyone else.

You might think that he could at least manage the country's oil business a little better, but I suspect anyone who could compently run the oil business is a member of the 'ruling elite' and so, like in China's cultural revolution, they can't be trusted. But the people who can be trusted, people who are part of the revolution, don't know anything about the oil business because they never got a decent education. You'd think they would put a priority on sorting that out, but I suspect that there is a whole lot of in-fighting going on behind, beside and all around Maduro. Everybody is trying to get their piece of the pie. If the whole pie gets destroyed that's too bad. At least none of those other mother-fookers got any of it. And if you wonder why they are like that, it's because they learned it from the best, the people who were running the country before Maduro came to power.

All this assumes Maduro has good intentions and is sufficiently paranoid. It could be that he is an idiot, but somehow I doubt it. So we have two questions: can he destroy the oiligarchy? and two, will he be able to restart the economy from ground zero once they are well and truly obliterated? Castro pretty much destroyed the local oligarchy in Cuba, but once he had done that, he didn't build anything new.

Part of the problem is that most of Latin America is very Catholic, and the Catholic church has been very complicit helping the oligarchy maintain their position. They were in the past anyway, I don't know how much support they give them now.

Gold

A customer places gold wrapped in a crumpled bolivar banknote on to a scale for payment at a pharmacy in Tumeremo, Venezuela. Photographer: William Urdaneta/Bloomberg

The official Venezuelan currency, the Bolivar, is nearly worthless. Maduro, the pig, has just replaced the old Bolivar with a new one. The new one is worth one million of the old one. That should give you some idea of the rate of inflation down there. Most places are using foreign currency for everyday purchases, however things are little different in one area in southeast Venezuela. That area is home to a host of gold mines, so people are paying for things with flakes of gold, flakes of gold that they carry wrapped in Bolivars, which is about all the paper currency is good for.

Price of one gram of gold today is $57.58, almost $60, so a half gram is worth about $30, a quarter gram is worth about $15 and an eighth of a gram is worth about $7. Gold has a density of of 19.3 grams per cubic centimeter, so a small flat square of the metal measuring one centimeter on a side and half a millimeter thick would be weigh one gram. For comparison, a gold coin the size of a dime would weigh six and half grams, which is a little more than twice as much as a real dime weighs.

Via Zerohedge

Venezuela, Oil & Politics

Despina Andrianna
Blacklisted oil tanker

Reading Google's translation of Crimenes sin Castigo (Crimes without Punishment), I come across this little bit:

On Friday, March 5, the US Treasury Department added to the list of OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) two companies related to the maritime business, registered respectively in Greece and Liberia. and 35 oil tankers.

Okay, so we are trying to put the squeeze on Maduro. That's consistent with what I've heard. But when I Google OFAC, the first news story that mentions Venezuela is from Tass, the official news agency of the evil Russian empire. I guess Venezuela has fallen so far in importance that Americans can't be bothered with it. Or maybe Google has decided I like Russian news better.

The Tass story seems pretty even handed. There's none of the bombast that I normally expect to see from a despotic regime's state run media. Could they be attempting to lull us into a false sense of complacency so that sometime in the future they will be able to lead us to the dark side?

Venezuela

Raul Castro, Vladimir Putin & Nicolas Maduro

With all the noise about Venezuela, one might be forgiven for thinking that Maduro is near the end and democracy will soon prevail. I have my doubts. Some semblance of democracy did return to Eastern Europe after decades of Soviet control, but it wasn't a civil war that brought their freedom. The Soviet Union simply ran out of money to pay their goons. We can hope  Maduro's government will also soon run out of money, but since Russia is supporting him, that might not happen.

I can understand Russia's interest in Venezuela: they have huge reserves of oil, as big or bigger than Saudi Arabia. Plus Maduro's government is of a similar, pseudo-communist, bent, so they are somewhat simpatico. Since the economic situation there has gotten very bad, and the West has universally condemned Maduro, Russia is his only friend. Let's not forget that the Western running-dog imperialists (to use an old, communist phrase) persist in sticking their fingers in Ukraine, so I can see why Putin would enjoy messing about in Venezuela. Tit-for-tat, so to speak.

But the problem isn't just Maduro. He isn't going to be able to maintain his position without support, specifically from the military. The Atlantic has a story by Moisés Naím from two years ago that paints a more complete picture of the situation. It's ugly.

Removing Maduro from power could be done peacefully if we could somehow cut off his support from Russia. I don't see how we can do that. We might be able to do some horse-trading, stop mucking about in Eastern Europe so much, especially the Ukraine, but I doubt that will happen. The political support for Eastern Europe is much stronger in the West than it is for Venezuela, which is mostly a jungle filled with wild-eyed revolutionaries, as we all know.


Don Henley - All She Wants To Do Is Dance (Official Music Video)
Don Henley

Update November 2021 replaced missing video.

Update June 2023 replaced missing video.

Isla La Orchila

Russian Tu-160 aircraft make flights in Venezuela
Russia has been flying TU-160's to Venezuela occasionally ever since Hugo Chavez came into power. The TU-160 is a supersonic bomber. It's the only large supersonic aircraft still flying. It's obsolete as weapon, but it is still big and impressive and so these flights make good propaganda.

La Orchila. 2 mile long airstrip in orange.

There has been some talk about Russia opening an air base on La Orchila, a desert island off the coast of Venezuela near Caracas. There is a big airstrip there, but not much else except rocks. It's under the jurisdiction of the military, and so off limits to everyone else. A group of ham radio operators got permission to set up camp there and run their radios, but no one else has shown much interest in it.

Los Roches, La Orchila & Caracas, Venezuela

La Orchila is about 80 miles off the coast of Veneuela and about 30 miles east of Los Roches archipelago, which is a National Park.

My take on this whole thing is that while the upper class was getting along very well in Venezuela before Hugo, the poor were not, and their frustration / desperation was what brought Hugo into power. Now we have Maduro in power, and he doesn't seem to understand the first thing about business, which is why oil production has fallen off and whole country seems to be going to hell. You'd think hanging with Putin he'd figure out that he needs to get his oil business running properly.

But maybe Putin is waiting until Maduro is really desperate so he can step in and save his sorry ass, for a price naturally. Can't really blame Putin for messing about with Venezuela, not after all the messing we (the USA) have done in his neighborhood (the Ukraine). Besides, all these despots need to stick together. Hah. Like they would. Stab each other in the back first chance they get more likely.

I suspect that property rights are at the root of this whole debacle. Pretty much all of Latin America runs on a 15th century model of property rights where the governor doles out land to his cronies and everybody else is screwed. As long as the upper class continues to squash the peasants, the communists are going to have people who are willing to listen to their bullshit, which is where we get revolutionaries.

If you want things to change, you need to give people an opportunity to crawl out of their hole without getting crushed in the process. Problem is, the upper class think they have to give up something, but if they can give the peasants an opportunity, they will reap rewards much greater than anything they are getting now. Hard to imagine, and that, I think, is the problem.

Isla Aves

Venezuela Protest

Came across a report about Internet access being blocked in Venezuela. Not surprising given the situation (zillions of people protesting the tyrant Maduro). Looking at the list of websites being blocked and I notice https://crimenessincastigo.blogspot.com/ They've blocked somebodies blog? It must be really radical to get the attention of Maduro's thugs. Let's go take a look, well, we'll take a look at Google's translation. It starts out with a piece about the financial clubs the US government is using to beat on Maduro's supporters. It's all rather complicated, but it might be having some effect.

The next story is completely different:

-On December 26, three Navy personnel assigned to the Simón Bolívar scientific-naval base, on Isla de Aves, went to sea in a small inflatable boat. Soon after, they lost sight of them, and since then nothing else has been known about them. The zodiac-type boat-equipped with an outboard motor-was manned by the first sergeant Víctor García Navarro, and the second corporal Gustavo Fuentes Vera and Yohander Bravo Colmenares. The first known part about this situation indicates that the military went out to do a "sea trial", and that at approximately 4:30 pm the visual contact between the crew and the base, which operates in a palafito-type building, was lost. 

Aves Island with research station

Isla Aves (bird island) is not much more than a rock (it's about 500 yards long), but since Venezuela claims it is an island, they can lay claim to a 200 miles economic zone around their rock, which brings them into conflict with just about everybody else in the eastern Caribbean.

Analysis of the case of Maritime SAR of Isla de Aves made by the Humboldt Rescue Organization.

There was some kind of search mounted for the sailors, but nothing was found, so they might be lost. Or they might have motored over to another nearby island. Guadeloupe is 125 miles away, which is a bit of a stretch for a Zodiac, but with good weather and enough fuel they ought to be able to make it. I think the above map shows they would expect a boat drifting from Isla Aves to wash up on the Yucatan peninsula after two or three months. This is the opposite direction from Guadeloupe, so if our intrepid sailors were trying to escape, the Search And Rescue team would be looking in the wrong place.

Some places that have made it into this blog before.

Top to bottom:
The Dry Tortugas (links to Amazon)
Scorpion Reef
Treasure Island
Swan Island
Isla Aves (this post).

The Dry Tortugas is on this list because I read a book that was set here. I thought I had put up a post about it, but evidently not. The book is Flashback by Nevada Barr, who has written a whole series of murder mysteries, all set in National Parks.

Cuban Doctors

Cuba-Brazil: The Battle of the White Coats

Posted on November 19, 2018 by Yoani-Sánchez

Cuban doctors who stay in Brazil will be forbidden entry to the island for eight years. (14ymedio)

14ymedio, Yoani Sanchez, Generation Y, Havana, 19 November 2018 – We saw the conflict coming. From the moment Jair Bolsonero won the elections in Brazil, Cuba’s official discourse increased in rhetoric against him and prepared public opinion for the rupture that was imminent.
The straw that broke the camel’s back for the Plaza of the Revolution was the statements by the president-elect in which he warned that he would change the conditions of the agreement under which more than 8,300 physicians from Cuba work in Brazil’s Mais Medicos (More Doctors) program.
Last Wednesday, tensions escalated to their highest point when the Cuban Minister of Public Health announced that he was cancelling the contract and removing his professionals from the South American country. The official notice, read out on all of the island’s the news programs, repeated that Bolsonaro’s threats would not be tolerated but deftly ignored some of his words. Particularly those where the rightist leader insisted that the Cuban doctors should receive their full salaries and be able to bring their families to stay with them while they were in the program.
The Cuban government has made medical missions a lucrative business. With professionals deployed in more than 60 countries, the money raised by this practice is Cuba’s largest source of foreign currency, estimated to exceed $11 billion annually.
In the case of Brazil, Havana pockets 75% of the 3,300 dollar salary Brazil pays for each doctor, while the health professionals only receive a quarter of the total. On the Island, in a bank account which they do not have access to, their “Cuban” monthly salary of about 60 dollars accumulates, which they can only collect if they return to the island.
Those who leave the Mais Medicos program under their own will are considered deserters and are banned from entering Cuba for eight years. During the time the Workers’ Party (PT) was at the head of the Brazilian government, the doctors who escaped from their contracts were pursued by the Brazilian police and could be returned to the Island if they were arrested. None were allowed to bring their family members to be with them during their missions, and they were often housed in overcrowded hostels shared with other doctors, nurses and hospital technicians.
Despite so many difficulties and the low earnings, the missions were very much desired by the doctors because they were able to buy goods that are not available in Cuban markets, and to make contacts that would later allow them to return to Brazil privately, with a contract to work in some clinic.
Beyond its ability to provide healthcare for many Brazilians in the poorest areas of the country, the Mais Medicos program hid a political operation to build support for the leftist Workers’ Party and guarantee it the votes of the lower classes. It was clear that Cuba’s interest in this outcome was not going to continue with Bolsonaro in charge, thus it was only a matter of time before Castroism removed its healthcare professionals from Brazil. It only remains now to ask how many of them will actually return to the island.
The president-elect of Brazil has announced that he will grant political asylum to all Cuban doctors who request it and it is expected that a considerable number will benefit from this offer. Those who do so will lose the right to return to their homeland for many long years, they will be called traitors and, most likely, their families on the island will be under pressure. The battle of the white coats has barely begun.

Stole this article from Generation Y. My daughter's father-in-law is a doctor working in this program, although he is in Venezuela, not Brazil. He's been there two years and has another year to go before he can return home.

I find it curious that even though Cuba is essentially impoverished, they are still able to produce more doctors than they need. Or maybe they are just providing medical services to those who can pay for it and their own people will just have to do without, which makes them just like us imperialist running dogs,  whom they denigrate and despise.

Venezuelan Bolivar exchange rate black market

Venezuela’s Nemesis Is a Hardware Salesman at a Home Depot in Alabama

The Wall Street Journal has the story.

HOOVER, Ala.—Public Enemy No. 1 of Venezuela’s revolutionary government is Gustavo Díaz, a Home Depot Inc. employee in central Alabama.

Gustavo got to be so popular by starting a website, dolartoday, that publishes the current black market exchange rate for the Venezuelan Bolivar.

Venezuela

Shoppers walk past empty shelves in the refrigerated foods section of a Makro supermarket in Caracas(Jorge Silva/Reuters)

International Business Times has a story by David Sim about the economic situation in Venezuela. It's about half fluff and half facts. Here are some excerpts.

    The official exchange rate is about six bolivars to one US dollar, but Venezuela's spiralling inflation makes locals desperate to get rid of their bolivars; rates of 400 to one are not unheard of.
    Venezuela's largest denomination note is 100 bolivars (officially valued at about $15, but worth as little as 25 cents on the black market).
    In contrast with tourists, Venezuelans' purchasing power has fallen. Wage rises cannot match the inflation rate, which was 68% in 2014. It is widely forecast to hit triple digits this year.

The IB Times story has a several great photos, besides the dismal one I posted above.

South America

The Altitude Land. BOLIVIA by Alexander Koval

Countries in South America seem to suffer once crisis after another. If it isn't an economic collapse, it's a revolution, so it was encouraging to read this story by Hernan Luis Torres Nunez comparing Venezuela and Bolivia.

Stand Your Ground In Venezeula

Retired army general Angel Vivas, accused by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro of inciting violence, is entrenched at his house after the National Bolivarian Guard tried to arrest him, in Miranda state, Venezuela, on Feb. 23, 2014. (Xinhua/Str).

It's always nice to see someone sticking up for their principles. I have no idea whether it will do any good or not. More here.

Russia Flies White Swans to Venezuela

Russian Tu-160 strategic bombers land in Venezuela for ‘combined operational flights’
[Old caption: I'm not sure what all the other aircraft are doing in this video, but we see a Tu-160 landing at the end, supposedly in Venezuela.]

Repurposed from the Google translation of the Russian blurb that came with this video:

Ten thousand miles in thirteen hours. The crews of two RussianTu-160 strategic bombers took off from Engels air base and landed at the airport in Maiquetia Venezuela. The route passed over Norway, the Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. While over Norway the Russian's were accompanied by two F-16 fighters. The Ministry of Defense in particular pointed out that all the flights were carried out in strict accordance with international regulations on the use of airspace.

Engels air base is across the Volga River from Saratov in Southwest Russia. A direct line between the two places on Google maps is only 6,800 miles. If Norway was the only European country they flew over, they would have had to go 1,500 miles North to avoid the rest of Europe. That's a lot of jet fuel. Dividing distance by time I get 770 MPH, which is supersonic. I kind of doubt whether they ever went supersonic on this flight. I don't think the fuel budget would accommodate those kind of shenanigans.

Update March 2020. Replaced missing video with one from 2018. Near as I can tell Russia has been flying Tu-160's to Venezuela since 2011.

Update April 2022 replaced missing video with one with the same title.

Rumors of War

Refinery fire in Venezuela, August 27, 2012.

I don't like the term "War Fighter", and not just because it was George Bush's favorite phrase. We had perfectly cromunlent words like soldier, sailor, marine and airman, and they got us through umpteen previous, real wars, but now that we're engaged in glorified police actions worldwide we need a new term? Bah and humbug.
    I read something the other day that said the reason we were friends with Saudi Arabia was to ensure the free flow of oil, not just to ourselves (the USA), but world wide.
    Then I heard the news that Iraq is now the second largest oil producer in the world. That's pretty impressive considering they were down to practically zero due to the last Gulf War. It occurs to me that this might be the real reason we picked a fight with them, not because they were threatening to use the weapons of mass destruction that they had possibly built, not because they were threatening to stop using the dollar as the medium for oil pricing, not because Saddam was a vicious asshole. We picked on Saddam because he was not keeping up his share of oil production. His production was slipping, badly, and that was unforgivable.
    The War on Terror is a big production, but it is basically a show, a Showtime Production if you will. Big budget, cast of thousands, lots of press, lots of photo ops, headlines everyday, but we aren't really serious about it. If we were serious we wouldn't be playing patty-cake with Saudi Arabia.
     Terrorists commit atrocities everyday, but in the grand scheme of things they are like airplane crashes, or even automobile crashes. Yes, horrible things happen, innocent people get killed, maimed or injured in all kinds of horrible ways, but all-in-all, it is a small percentage of the world population that suffers. For 99.999% of the people in the world it doesn't exist. You are probably more likely to die in a car wreck, a helicopter crash or gang warfare.
    So the powers that be are not going to take terrorism seriously, not until it starts having a significant effect on their bottom line. Part of the problem is that people are only human. It is very difficult to accomplish anything in this world, even when you are concentrating. If you allow yourself to get distracted by concerns other than your main one, your main concern is going to suffer. People who have built large corporations have done so by concentrating on that building, not by worrying about every baby that lands on their doorstep.
    We have all benefited from these giant financial conglomerations. Mass production, high technology, lower costs, and plentiful food have all contributed to where we are now. Okay, not everyone is living "the good life", but not too many people are hitting rats over the head with rocks in order to get their next meal. Well, at least I don't think so. And now that I mention it, I'm not sure that is any worse than the kind of crap we get to deal with in the first world.

Gasolina

Saw this in a news magazine in the doctor's office. Time or Newsweek or some such. Over six months old, but I don't think that matters very much.

Marc told me about a diesel spill in the harbor when he was in Venezuela. As I recall, there was about six inches of diesel floating on top of the water, but nobody could be bothered to scoop it up because the price of diesel was so low. I am sure I have some part of this story wrong, it sounds unbelievable, but if the price of diesel is only six cents a gallon, why bother? I mean, who bothers to pick up pennies any more?

Seems a fishing boat captain was supplementing his income by buying fuel at the subsidized price and then ferrying it offshore where he would sell it other boats for fifty-cent-a-gallon premium. Customs agents showed up to bust him and his solution was to dump the cargo overboard to get rid of the evidence.

Of course there is the whole fire hazard aspect, but maybe that's why prayer is still so popular in Latin America.

Note that the ratio of the price in Cairo to the price in Caracas is 18 to 1, while the ratio of the price in Istanbul to the price in Cairo is nine to one.

Cigarettes & Liquor

Twister Liquor Store, Pampatar, Venezuela

At lunch today my friend Marc tells us about liquor pricing in Venezuela. He goes in a liquor store and as you might expect they have three sizes of liquor bottles: small, medium and large. Also, as you might expect, the small bottle is the cheapest, the large bottle is the most expensive and the medium size bottle falls somewhere in between. However, when he (or more likely his wife) checks the price per milliliter he is surprised to find that the small bottle is still the cheapest.

Now this is completely backwards to what we have come to expect in the US. The bigger bottle is supposed to be the "economy" size. By putting liquor in a larger bottle, the producer saves on packaging, and this cost savings is supposedly passed on to the consumer. There was even a bit of a scandal a few years ago when it was discovered that this was not necessarily the case. That is why you seen the price per ounce displayed with prices in grocery stores.

Marc asks the clerk about this, and given the language barrier and all it takes some doing, but eventually he finds out that she is aware of this discrepancy. Their logic down there is slightly different than here. Poor people can only afford to buy the small bottles, so they sell them as cheap as possible. People who have enough money ("rich people") to buy the larger bottles do not mind paying a little extra in order to get one big bottle instead of a bunch of small bottles. So they are paying for the convenience of having the big bottle. Weird.

And cigarettes? In Venezuela there is no such thing as a "carton of cigarettes" or even a pack. Cigarettes are sold individually. I have seen this in some convenience stores here a few years ago. Haven't seen it recently, but I haven't been in one either.

Update November 2016 repaired broken html