Cuba and Venezuela: Long time targets

I often visit Huffington Post to see if anything real or important is going on. It is the bellwether of fake news. It is a slow news day today, Trump Trump Trump Hillary Bernie Trump Trump.

So I want to take a moment to address an exchange I had with Swede yesterday, a kind of  Cold War-revisited debate about various countries and their economic and governmental systems. His targets were Cuba and Venezuela.

I don’t know what to make if the underlying economics, since that science is itself phony top to bottom. The ideological underpinnings are just as confusing, as neither socialism or capitalism exist in a real world run by banking, energy, medical and other cartels. Add to that fake leaders and color revolutions and agents provocateur, and it is a royal mess.

What to make of it? I don’t know. But I will speculate, and expect to be met with countetarguments of merit.

The object of Western policies have been isolation and for Cuba, punishment of its unruly population, and for Venezuela, regime change.

The Cubans threw off their Spanish colonial masters back at the turn of the 20th century, only to be recolonized by the U.S. That was the whole purpose of the Spanish-American War, to wrest the prize from Spain.

But Cubans never really settled down, and for the first half of the 20th century there were strong popular movements in Cuba to overthrow fascist governments and take an independent course. Given such widespread resistance to US control, a decision was made to install a fake leader (Castro*) and then with his cooperation starve the population by means of terror and embargo into submission.

It looks to have recently finally produced results. Obama’s reopening of relations can only signal that the Cuban population is finally deeply indoctrinated and under control, just like Americans.

Venezuela is given different handling, as it has large reserves of oil. By means of free elections, that country has introduced reforms such as subsidized food, energy, medical care and housing for its impoverished population. A clumsy Western-backed coup in 2002 failed, apparently (we never know what or who is real), so that the country has now come under economic attack again.

The oligarchy of Venezuela can easily put the screws on the population, shutting down supply lines, closing warehouses, and creating artificial shortages of necessities. Couple this with embedded Western-back provocateurs to foment street rebellion, and the stage is set for another try at coup d’etat. All it takes is an American Green Beret or three in disguise to fire into crowds, and the jackals of Western media will howl that Venezuelan troops fired on their own people. This is standard operating procedure, used in 2002 and in Ukraine in 2014. It triggers the illusion of widespread protest against the regime, pushing it over the edge.

But there is an added twist this time around … oil prices. The oil markets, just like diamonds and commodities, are controlled. The oil cartel can raise and lower prices at will. The low prices of the last two years are no accident, as Saudi Arabia, a subsidiary of ExxonMobil, was ordered to flood the market, and acts on command.

There is more than one target for low prices, an old Rockefeller trick going back centuries. One is, obviously, Russia, but that regime is more stable and able to endure more than it was when the same tactic was successfully applied in 1986.

Venezuela is a target, and it appears to be working. It depends heavily on oil exports.

But another target is the American market, which has been flooded with new reserves from Bakken and shale. It is expensive oil to produce, and the cartel pricing has now driven most independents into bankruptcy. The cartel will take control of  those operations when prices are raised again, I assume.

In short, high oil prices will soon return. The scam has worked.

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*Castro received huge US media support (cover of Life Magazine?) and aid and arms from the CIA … now we understand why. He was our boy from the beginning. 

26 thoughts on “Cuba and Venezuela: Long time targets”

  1. No country can be allowed to go its own way unmolested. If “we” cant bend them to “our” will by direct confrontation we will use any other means possible to bring them under the control of the multi national banks and corporations as the prisoners we already are (multi national = no national loyalties) Here is another example of our “sh*t stirring” http://www.telesurtv.net/english/analysis/Venezuela-Pro-Govt-Supporters-Being-Killed-in-Record-Numbers-20160530-0006.html

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  2. Why would the Oligarchs commit financial suicide?

    “At least 40 major U.S. companies have substantial exposure to Venezuela’s deepening economic crisis, and could collectively be forced to take billions of dollars of write downs, a Reuters analysis shows.

    The companies, all members of the S&P 500, and including some of the biggest names in Corporate America such as autos giant General Motors (GM.N) and drug maker Merck & Co Inc (MRK.N), together carry at least $11 billion of monetary assets in the Venezuelan currency, the bolivar, on their books.”-Ruethers

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    1. My guess would be that $11B is not enough. “We want it all”. Its not suicide, its “spend a little to gain a lot” capitalism.

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      1. So, the oil oligarchs will be getting there off shore rigs back?

        “Venezuela Takes Oil Rigs Owned by US Company
        In the latest takeover by the government of Hugo Chavez — another in a string of expropriations in his design to remake the oil rich nation into a Communist country — Venezuela announced that it had taken control of 11 oil drilling rigs belonging to US company Helmerich & Payne.

        CARACAS – Venezuela’s government plans to nationalize 11 oil drilling rigs owned by Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Helmerich & Payne in the latest takeover by the government of Hugo Chavez in a string of nationalizations in all sectors of the beleaguered economy as Chavez seeks to remake the country into Communist nation.”-Latin American Tribune

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          2. If Castro is any guide, Chavez may have been a US asset. Leading the opposition is SOP. This would make his death suspect.

            And again, you do not understand the depth of corruption in this world that allows various power centers to focus on and destroy the economies of entire countries, Venezuela, Iraq, Syria, etc. You then blame it on bad economics, as if there were good economics to replace bad.

            As to taking oil rigs from an American company, I don’t care about stuff like that. There’s is no shortage of theft in the world. Must have felt weird for H&P to be on the other side of it for once.

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      2. I guess that could be suicide over a long enough timeline. (Driving everyone and everything over a cliff)

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  4. “Why would the Oligarchs commit financial suicide?”

    Because even though they think they know everything they are blinded by greed. Since I don’t know if anything I link gets read by anyone other that the proprietor here, I am going to copy and paste an lightly edited essay by Jim Hightower as an illustration of the suicidal bent of our “masters of the universe.” They have and will and do commit suicide and take millions with them along the way.

    (Mark, I hope that posting something of this length on your site is Ok once in awhile. You will let me know if it is not.)

    “The victims of corporate greed: U.S. workers, communities and the future of our middle class
    U.S. corporations are twitching in the conglomerate pods and abruptly jumping to Mexico
    By Jim Hightower

    “When I was six years old, my uncle showed me: four beans that moved on their own. Leaping legumes!
    They were “Mexican jumping beans.” They’re not beans — they’re brownish seedpods from a desert shrub in northwest Mexico. A larva from a small moth invades the pod, attaches itself to the inner wall with a silk-like thread, and waits in relative coolness for its metamorphosis into mothdom. When you hold the “bean,” however, the warmth of you palm discomforts the larva so that it twitches and pulls on that thread, causing the pod to “jump.”
    Decades later, I find myself astonished by the odd movements of a news species of Mexican jumping bean I’ve named corporados greedyados. Far from being a creation of the natural world, these jumpers are enormously profitable. Native to our land, they’ve long reaped the benefits of U.S. corporations, including having high-skilled and loyal blue-collar workforces, corporate-friendly labor and consumer laws, publicly funded education and training, an interstate highway system, extensive tax breaks, on-call police to safeguard their corporate order, military defense of their worldwide commercial pursuits, and more. But now they’re twitching in the conglomerate pods and abruptly jumping to Mexico. Giving no more notice than a cursory shout of adios, they’re leaving U.S. workers, communities, the future of our middle class, and our unifying ethic of fair play in the dust of their corporate greed.
    Perfidious corporations have been jumping to cheap-labor countries for years, particularly since the North American Free Trade Agreement, China’s admission to the World Trade Organization, and other policies incentivizing corporations to export our blue-collar jobs. Since NAFTA was signed in 1994, over 50,000 U.S. factories have closed and more than 5 million jobs have been lost to offshoring.
    Unfortunately, that was just a warm-up. During the past decade, corrupted and compliant legislatures, courts and regulatory agencies have effectively removed our society’s reins on these profit seekers. Not since the robber barons of the 1800s have those in the executive suites felt so free and entitled to work their will on the rest of us. And they’re not hesitating. The corporations’ recent surge in abandonments of the Good Ol’ U.S.A. is different from the offshoring of only a decade ago — bigger, cruder and wholly narcissistic.
    The real difference is a fundamental, regressive shift in the ethos of the elites who run major corporate empires. These investors and executives believe that what they think and do is what’s best, and everyone else should get out of their way. This has led them to adopt a thoroughly unethical code of social irresponsibility, unilaterally decreeing through a hokey doctrine called “shareholder hegemony” (shareholder hegemony asserts that corporations exist strictly to benefit shareholders — i.e., maximize profits no matter what this costs everybody and everything else) that they and their corporate entities owe nothing to the country and the people who have nurtured them, even coddled them.
    Consequently, we’re witnessing the murder of our country’s manufacturing prowess by our industry’s own leaders. CEOs of America’s most iconic brands have gone bonkers, asserting a “moral duty” to shut down factories here, dump the workers, desert our hometowns, and hightail out of the country to any low-wage, low-environmental-standard refuge on the map.
    Of course, the beneficiaries of this Kafkaesque doctrine of shareholder supremacy include not only the large stock owners, but also the very CEOs whose paychecks and bonuses depend on jacking up stock prices at our expense. It’s a socially suicidal system, proving both an irresistible incentive and a moral excuse for executives to commit corporate treason, even as their moves expand the ever-widening chasm of inequality that cleaves our society. And, by the way, CEOs and billionaire shareholders aren’t moving south with their bottom-wage factories, preferring instead to enjoy their life in America the Beautiful. Apparently unaware that their elimination of middle-class wages is eliminating their own customer base, they also expect you and me to continue being the primary buyers of their now foreign-made products.
    And The Powers That Be wonder why an angry populist rebellion is spreading like a prairie fire.

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    2. For a case study in how and why, look into the life of Montagu Norman, head of the bank of England from 1920 to 1944, and how he jerked the leash of Germany between the wars to deliberately get the fascists into power. The Donald’s hairpiece will one day be as iconic as Der Fuhrer’s Chaplin ‘stache-

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    1. He’s a spook, CIA or MI6, comfortably numb reading his lines. I’ve sat through him before. With these types your best bet is to focus on what they do not say. Professional liar.

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      1. Broad brush statement. I’m interested in your take of his stance on Pinochet.

        Why with all the others leaders in South America is he the only one labeled “dictator”.

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        1. I listened to this guy for over an hour and a half with Peter Joseph. He was seemingly attentive and respectful of Joseph’s points, and then after the interview, in a passive aggressive fashion, slammed Joseph as dishonest. I’ve listened to Joseph at length too and find him to be sincere, even as minds differ.

          So put him in an adversarial forum, I will deal with him. Put him on alone, where he is one-sided and propagandistic, I have no interest.

          There are a lot of fake democracies in South America, with puppet leaders run by US corporations and oligarchs. Pinochet, however, never pretended to be anything but a dictator, you know, using military force to overthrow the governmetn, killing thousands of people.

          That sort of thing.

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          1. In all the years I have known you, you have not shown one inch of forward movement in your thinking. Your statements above are exactly what you would have written in 2006. You’ve never tested your own beliefs. They stand unexamined and so are not worth anything.

            Showing respect to an adversary to his face and then attacking him when he is not there to defend himself is passive aggressive and cowardly. That was what Stefan did. I have zero respect for him.

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