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.