Peter Binose
Wednesday, March 19, 2014
In early 2014, a series of protests, political demonstrations, and civil unrest occurred throughout Venezuela. The protests erupted largely as a result of the high levels of criminal violence, inflation, and chronic scarcity of basic goods.
These are caused by the economic policies of Venezuela's government, including strict price controls, which have led to one of the highest inflation rates in the world. President Nicoläs Maduro instead blamed an "economic war" being waged against his government, specifically blaming capitalism and speculation. As a result, protests opposing the current government have taken place in cities around the country; clashes that have resulted from these protests have led to arrests, injuries, and deaths.
Venezuela students are being slaughtered on the streets of Caracas. Students who are demonstrating in the streets against the Maduro socialist [Marxist] government are being shot.
Venezuela is Cuba’s top trading partner and aid provider, to the tune of $3.5 billion a year and 115,000 barrels of oil a day, according to The Economist. Cuba pays its neighbour back in doctors, as well as in intelligence and security officers. It also lends a hand in times of crisis by sending in their urban warfare fighters the Avispas Negras—the "black wasps".
Without Venezuela Cuba is actually dead in the water, they have ponced off the Venezuelan economy for so many years they have all but dragged Venezuela down to their level. They cannot let the Venezuelan socialist government fall, because if it does they will be declared a bankrupt state in a very short time.
Venezuela has been reduced from a wealthy oil state to a failed state with 57.3% being the current inflation. It started with Hugo Chavez a Marxist who had charisma. He took over almost every corporation in the country and almost all of industry has now ground to a halt. You go into grocery shops and the shelves are bare, people line up outside supermarkets awaiting deliveries, which very often does not arrive. More often then not there are is no toilet paper or sanitary napkins for ladies in the shops.
Chavez purchased several billion US dollars worth of military arms and equipment from the Russians, instead of paying cash he committed crude oil to the Russians over the next ten years. This procedure took billions of dollars of cash flow out of the economy.
Chavez also with his Marxist expansionist beliefs, worked out with the Cubans how to entrap most of the small Caribbean states and poverty ridden South American countries, they worked out how to create a Marxist Union of countries without the need of training revolutionaries and fighting revolutionary battles on numerous fronts. It was seen by them as a quick, clean and easy way of capturing the minds and souls of most of the hemisphere. All it required was a stick and carrot and a collection of leaders with Marxist indoctrinated minds, people they could rely on to collaborate and eventually sell out their countries. They invented ALBA, and the carrot was PetroCaribe which would fund ailing states run by socialist fiscal dunces.
Most of us forget that the Castro’s had agreed with Chavez to join Venezuela and Cuba together and for Chavez to be the president of the whole amalgamated state. Unfortunatly for Cuba, and one may say more unfortunately for Chavez, Chavez died at a comparatively young age.
In Caracas, the governments of Cuba and Venezuela signed 56 collaboration agreements during February 2014. The Cubans are panicking and trying to tie the Venezuelan state down, in the hope that if it fails they will have some legal recourse against a new government.
You can see how the indoctrinated minds of Caribbean leaders are working, when you consider that CARICOM which is currently under the leadership of SVG’s prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves made a statement of solidarity and support for Venezuela’s President Maduro, the very regime that is killing students and demonstraters.
CARICOM and its member governments may be judged as guilty of the deaths of Venezuelan protesters, as if they pulled the triggers themselves.
Note: The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Peter Binose.
