A couple days ago I’d snagged this from David Pear’s (ain’t that a great name?) ‘VZ is on the edge of civil war’ counterpunch. This was news to me:
“Shortly after Tillerson resigned from ExxonMobil, wouldn’t you know it, ExxonMobil hit one of the biggest offshore oil and natural gas fields in the world. It so happens that the water it is in is claimed by Venezuela. ExxonMobil says that the water belongs to Venezuela’s neighbor Guyana.
Tillerson had his ExxonMobil bags all packed and ready to go visit Guyana’s president David Granger, when Trump called.”
“The possibility of civil war in Venezuela is real and growing every day. The country is badly divided between the wealthy haves and the millions of poor have-nots. The U.S. is egging on the conflict. Hugo Chavez brought social services, healthcare, education and housing to the poor. The U.S. Empire and ExxonMobil have declared war on democratically elected President Nicolas Maduro. He is in the Empire’s crosshairs. Trump has said that all options are on the table. Time is short.”
Now courtesy of the Popular Resistance newsletter, that the largest oil discoveries over the last decade, the offshore oilfields Liza I and II, came in 2015. Tiller-Driller (h/t lemoyne) had resigned as liege-lord of ExxonMobil in Jan. 2017. But yes, he would have packed his bags for Guyana, and would have set his not-firm’s battery of attorneys to work for Guyana’s case in the VZ/Guayana ‘land dispute’.
Now to be fair, misionverad.com really notes that ‘US Occupation Has Already Begun and Is Being Conducted by ExxonMobil’, June 27, 2017, but in this that’s a distinction without much difference given that Exxon (“We don’t care…cuz we don’t have to!” is the biggest of the Big Oil corporations on the planet, and is the world’s seventh largest by revenue…and we live in a corporatocracy under inverted totalitarianism rule, so the nation is ‘governed’by and for Exxon and other mega-corps and multinationals. On to Mision Verdad’s news:
“Exxon wants to topple Venezuela for geopolitical and geo-economic reasons
ExxonMobil awarded contracts to Guyana for infrastructure, drilling and storage with a view to extracting the huge oil and gas reserves from the so-called “Liza Project” located in maritime territory claimed by Venezuela as stipulated by the Geneva Agreement of 1966. In 2015 the first oil discovery in the area provoked a diplomatic conflict between the nations due to the activities of the oil company on the Atlantic front of the Essequibo river.
According to Gulf Oil & Gas, Dutch oil holding company SBM Offshore NV has been granted a contract awarded by ExxonMobil, a U.S. company that owns 45 percent of the Stabroek Block located on the Atlantic front of the Essequibo through its subsidiary Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited Atlantic, where the rich deposits of Liza-1 and Liza-2 were found.
The CEO of the Dutch holding company Bruno Chabas commented on the contract, “We are proud that ExxonMobil has awarded the Liza contracts to SBM Offshore. Liza, the offshore field in Guyana, is one of the major oil discoveries in the industry over the past decade.”
However, this contract is not the first by ExxonMobil to accelerate its plans for oil and gas extraction in the territory claimed by Venezuela. In May, a subsidiary of the Italian oil company ENI named Saipem, took over the rights to carry out “the engineering, acquisition, construction, installation of associated bands, structures and bridges” to Liza-1, according to the World Oil website.
Recently teleSUR, citing the U.S. Geological Survey, informed that the area concentrated in the “Liza Project” is the second largest untapped oil fields in the world.
With this latest contract awarded, ExxonMobil seeks to produce 120,000 barrels of oil and 170 million cubic feet of natural gas, with a storage capacity of 1.6 million barrels of crude oil. In total, the Stabroek Block occupies an area of 26 thousand 800 km2 and it is estimated that 1.4 billion barrels of high-quality oil is deposited in the Liza-1 field alone.
In 2015, Rex Tillerson, the current U.S. secretary of state and former general manager of ExxonMobil, commented with joy to his shareholders that this well (Liza-1) was the largest found anywhere in the world that year, thus giving a strategic character to future projects of the U.S. oil company.
Geopolitical Urgency
The priority of this U.S. oil company to topple Venezuela is geopolitical and geo-economic, as a fundamental pillar of a new political, economic and financial configuration of the continent (with Russia and China as alternative strategic partners), which poses a threat to the strategic advantages and the almost absolute control of the energy resources of the region that these corporations boasted throughout the 20th century. Securing that source of supply not only enabled it to carry out its arms race and military campaigns in the Middle East, but to maintain a global superpower status which is challenged today by emerging rivals.” [snip]
“In the thick of it, Russian and Chinese oil companies (Rosneft and Cnooc) are ahead in investments and exploration projects that represent a serious threat to what the largest U.S. oil company sees as a strategic source of supply for their geopolitical global control plans.
Inescapable data. ExxonMobil’s awarding of contracts came just days after Venezuela and China signed four large-scale energy partnership projects, ranging from increased oil production to refining projects in the Asian giant.
The Coup Master
In an investigation presented by Mision Verdad a few weeks ago, ExxonMobil’s financing of Venezuelan opposition organizations to generate acts of violence was revealed, while at the same time diplomatic maneuvers were being carrying out by the U.S. State Department to revive the internal political conflict and to repudiate the Venezuelan government in international organizations such as the OAS.
The last meeting of foreign ministers of the OAS on Venezuela, prior to the organization’s general assembly in Mexico, served to illustrate how the oil corporation also manages the threads of the international siege against the country. The Guyanese government, subordinate to its investments and currently the chair of CARICOM, tried to impose a resolution not agreed upon by the Caribbean states and identical to the one presented by the U.S. at the last meeting, with the aim of condemning the Venezuelan National Constituent Assembly. The “red line” drawn by the U.S. to camouflage rounds of much more aggressive sanctions against the Bolivarian nation.”
The ‘The Caribbean as a Strategic Objective’ section is worth reading (the geopolitics); it ends:
”ExxonMobil’s strategy is long-term, directed at the entire continent and has Venezuela as its primary objective. It is not in vain that a crew of business elites has assumed the reins of U.S. foreign policy today. There and not elsewhere you will find the reasons for the aggressive siege we face.”
Now the Wiki entry on the Geneva Agreement of 1966 scored C in all major categories in the Talk tab, so I can’t say how far its bias extends. Same for the related Guayana Esequiba entry. But some very cool maps are included in that one, and the Arbitration section is interesting in that it sounds as though the decision was…very political (VZ v. Great Britain. There’s a ‘Dispute renewed in 1899’ section as well.
Newsamericasnow.com asked in June of 2015: ‘Does Essequibo Belong To Guyana Or Venezuela?’ It seems to be a bit of a tabloid rag, totally unfamiliar to me, even though it’s coming from a story of Guyanans protesting at the VZ embassy.
“Tensions escalated Tuesday as Venezuela’s foreign minister took to the airwaves to demand Guyana halt oil exploration in the disputed offshore territory while a handful of protestors in Guyana urged for the sitting Venezuelan ambassador to be send packing.
Venezuela Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez said Tuesday that “until there is a resolution of the issue of territorial reclamation… there can be no unilateral use of these waters.”
“The new government of Guyana shows a dangerous political provocation against a peaceful Venezuela, supported by the imperial power of an American transnational, ExxonMobil,” she added days after the May 27 claim to the Guyana territory by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.”
True or poetic license/revisionist history?
“Guyana’s new President David Granger for his part called Venezuela’s claim a “threat to regional peace and security” and a “flagrant violation of international law” even as Guyana’s Foreign Ministry warned that any attempt by Venezuela to enforce its claim would be “vigorously resisted.”
“It is international law that must reign supreme and not the ambitions of a larger State which wishes to trample upon the rights of a smaller country in order to obstruct the sovereign right of Guyana to develop its natural resources,” the statement said.
The Venezuelans insist the English-speaking nation is unfairly exploiting the disputed Essequibo territory that must be negotiated through a mechanism created via a 1966 treaty signed in Geneva.”
Well, yanno that Exxon will help Guyana’s oligarchs.
The author’s THE HISTORY section goes back to the beginning, but if you can make sense of it, you’re better men than I am, Gunga Dins. Claims, counter-claims, expired agreements, tra la la. But regardless, if there’s a permanent settlement made on the disputed territories, and Tillerson’s attorneys are workin’ it hard, as would be the US State Department plus Nikki (the shrieker) Haley at the UN…guess who’s gonna get it all?
She finishes:
“In September 2011, Guyana made an application before the United Nations’ Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf in order to extend its continental shelf by a further 150 nautical miles. Since the Commission requests that the areas to be considered cannot be subject to any kind of territorial disputes, the Guyanese application disregarded the Venezuelan claim over Guayana Esequiba, by saying that “there are no disputes in the region relevant to this submission of data and information relating to the outer limits of the continental shelf beyond 200 nautical miles.”
Venezuela sent an objection to the Commission, rejecting the Guyanese application and warning that Guyana had proposed a limit for its continental shelf including “the territory west of the Essequibo river, which is the subject of a territorial sovereignty dispute under the Geneva Agreement of 1966 and, within this framework, a matter for the good offices of the Secretary-General of the United Nations.”
Well, gosh, we can’t forget that the Director of the CIA recently admitted that his agents have been working with Mexico and Colombia to find…some sort of solution to a transition in Venezuela, either.
CIA Director Mike Pompeo Discussed Intervention In Venezuela With Mexico And Colombia
“Any time you have a country as large and with the economic capacity of a country like Venezuela, America has a deep interest in making sure it is as stable© and as democratic™ as possible so we’re working hard to do that. I’m always careful when we talk about South and Central America and the CIA – and there’s a lot of ♫stories♪ – so I want to be careful with what I say, but suffice to say we are very hopeful that there could be a *transition in Venezuela* and we, the CIA, is (sic) doing its best to understand the dynamic there so that we can communicate to our state department and to others.
I was just down in Mexico City and Bogotá the week before last, talking about this very issue, trying to help them understand the things they might do so that they can get a better outcome for their part of the world, and for our part of the world.” – Mike Pompeo, July 20th, 2017 Taken from the Aspen Security Forum Interview
And of course this holy hegemonic hardball hypocrisy from the OAS:
Above: that’s ‘OAS Appoints Former ICC Prosecutor Ocampo to Look Into Venezuela ‘Crimes Against Humanity‘; Telesur, July 25
photo: Luis Moreno Ocampo (L) discusses human rights with New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof (R) at the CFR Symposium on International Law and Justice sponsored by the Pitt-Jolie Foundation.
“Ocampo has pursued the prosecution of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on charges of genocide while likewise charging deceased former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi with crimes against humanity for alleged massacres committed against anti-government protests that became increasingly violent before culminating in an open “regime change” campaign spearheaded by the U.S. with European and Gulf Arab allies.
Most recently, the former ICC prosecutor advised the Israelis on how to evade criminal charges for their perpetual expansion of illegal settlements. Ocampo noted that the settler-colonial state could successfully defend itself by manipulating international legal perceptions through arguments that the ongoing settlement construction is legal “once ratified by the country’s top court,” the Israeli High Court, which Ocampo argued “is highly respected internationally.”
Zo. Stay tuned for what actually happens between now and July 30, the date for the National Constituents Assembly. These folks mean to bring down Mauro, and put a stake through Bolivarism once and for all. My guess is that Bolivia will be next.
Bonus: William Blum (Anti-Empire Report), author of ‘America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy’, has compiled this ‘master list’ of governments the US has toppled or attempted to overthrow. Yes, it’s a long list; asterisks denote which were permanent.
davidly
Greyson Smythe
LeMoyne
juliania2
ohiobarbarian
stephenadavis1
wendyedavis
café babylon 
the telesur tweet w/El Chapo, I mean Ocampo. w/him, that’s Nicholas Kristof of the NYT, human rights warrior for hire. probably he has just shared some anecdote about how he bought a VZ sex slave out of a brothel for $5 & that means Maduro must go or be bombed. the invisible hand of human rights requires the visible fist of Lockheed & the Pentagon. once Kristof helps the US set up a military base in downtown Caracas, the zona verde o cualquiera, he can have all kinds of extra chiquitas to buy out of the sex trade. he should patent his excretions & sell them as distillate or essence of smarm. every ounce buys one woman out of the clutches of a US soldier.
I really despise him.
yeah, i’d meant to unwind that tweet, and just took care of it. they were ickin’ back in self-righteous conversation ‘CFR Symposium on International Law and Justice sponsored by the Pitt-Jolie Foundation’. i pulled a couple of el chapo’s recent ICC gigs, as well.
and brad and angelina can adopt twenty of those po’, starving niñas and niños. a drone base would fit well in downtown caracas, wouldn’t it?
‘Exxon Finds Even More Oil off the Coast of Guyana’, telesur, today
“On Tuesday, U.S. oil giant ExxonMobil Corporation announced that more oil has been discovered offshore Guyana. Located in the Payara reservoir, the increase brings the total oil reserves to between 2.25 billion oil-equivalent and 2.75 billion oil-equivalent barrels, according to the St. Lucia Times.
“Payara-2 confirms the second giant field discovered in Guyana,” said Steve Greenlee, the president of Texas-based ExxonMobil Exploration Company,
“Payara, Liza and the adjacent satellite discoveries at Snoek and Liza Deep will provide the foundation for world class oil developments and deliver substantial benefits to Guyana. We are committed to continue to evaluate the full potential of the Stabroek Block.”
Guyana’s government plans to provide new aircraft and technology to its small military in order to increase border protection around the fields, providing “comfort to Exxon and other investors,” the presidential spokesperson said, according to Associated Press.
“According to a report published Wednesday in the New York Times, Trump has “latched on to a prospect that tantalized previous administrations: Afghanistan’s vast mineral wealth, which his advisers and Afghan officials have told him could be profitably extracted by Western companies.”
Pitching the idea to Trump are both the CEO of American Elements, a firm that contracts with the Pentagon and specializes in rare earth minerals that exist in apparent abundance in Afghanistan, and Stephen Feinberg, the hedge fund and private equity billionaire. A prominent Wall Street supporter of Trump, Feinberg also owns the giant military contractor DynCorp International and has reportedly offered the services of his mercenaries to guard US-run mines against attacks by the Taliban and other insurgents.
Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani, recognizing the profiteering mindset of his new master in Washington, has, according to the Times, “promoted mining as an economic opportunity” since his first conversation with the US president.” wsws.org
yeah, i remember writing up a ‘new silk road in afghanistan’ story w/ a forward by the ‘pillow talk’ david petraeus waaay back in TPM days.
Trump bans someone from the military? how about we ban everyone from the military? I’m sure the Afghanis will be pleased to hear that there will be no transgender soldiers stealing their rare earth metals. lots of rapists though. I don’t mean to just gloss over this singling out of a minority, which is scapegoating, conditioning us to the habits of scapegoating, but constantly kicking the titillating football of people’s “deviant, transgressive” sexual identities is a great weapon of distraction. Chuck Schumer can now preen as a defender of minorities while giving quite a bit more than silent approval to the gov’t’s massive assault on the undocumented. Obama by a stroke of the pen could come across as a champion of the LGBTQ community, liberals cheer, Sam Brownback family values types froth & foam & see brimstone on the horizon (while denying capitalism’s climate change. snort.) Trump comes along, and same pen stroke & now libs get to get the terror vapors over the awfulness while team Brownback is saving the country from sodomy’s doom. the hydro is still fracked, the prisons are still full, the heroin is still being shot. and Hollywood still cranks out stars. I think if the Russians or Chinese or Taliban or Sandinistas or Zapatistas or Chavistas really were about to invade through Mexico “Red Dawn” style, the gov’t would not give a shit about the package in people’s gym trunks. cuz of the whatcha callit, existential crises or threat or what have you would be more pressing.
meanwhile, some high up in the Navy gets to express concern about the transgender ban while his flotilla of flying fortresses flows toward Venezuela. or takes aim at Yemen. or N Korea. I could just see some naval commodore on one of our many world-destroying vessels resisting a Trump mandate to weed out the undesirables b/c such actions would be bad for the morale of the team as they target Pyongyang w/their nukes. this transgender issue wouldn’t exist in the way it does w/o the completely BS state of fake military crisis rammed down everyone’s gullet non-stop. capitalism produces scapegoats for its failures; can’t do otherwise.
i’d thunk the same thing, nagelbett. as well as a tempest in a tea-tweet as a distraction for ultimate lib outrage. i’d cruised b’s open menu some time today, and a commenter had flipped his zoris over the ugliness of ‘Trump Affirms the Military Ain’t a Freak Show‘’ by Publius Tacitus (col lang’s place)
at the freak show earlier, comments were about military ‘cohesion’ (the new blacks?), horny GIs, and iirc, few even understood what trans can entail in many directions. now, all the comments are in cross-out form; dunno what’s up w/ that. gadzukes, did someone even mention that it could be a very big deal that host countries, enemies, saw the US military as a trans freak show?
oh, for half a memory. i know a commenter said there are 28,000 trans serving right now. as you imply, what does naval commander do, throw em over the side? don’t ask, don’t notice? keep em out of the showers?
I was talking to someone about the whole LGBTQ thing, someone way too familiar w/words like “sin” when it comes to practices he’s squeamish about, I asked him what are the consequences of going backwards on civil rights legislation? (beside the obvious point that if obillary was such a gay rights crusader, why are their “accomplishments” so easy to overturn?) where does it stop? why stop w/employers checking up on the sexual identities of their employees? why not overturn women’s suffrage or child labor laws? does the state’s treatment of the indocumentados stop w/them? or is that just one very large step toward treating the entirety of the population that way?
when people like Trumpbama & Texas Tea for the Tillerson & slave owner Bezos & & & *own* society, backwards is the only direction we go. on civil rights & everything. hard to get a white guy making some decent scratch to see that rather obvious point.
like the big HR gay rights fund, Human Rights I forget the name, focusing on the horrendous rate of pay young people receive in the District of Columbia (and, no doubt the whole country) exclusively in terms of its impact on LGBTQ youth (who, to be fair, are far, far more likely to be kicked out of their birth homes.) but hey, an employed 18 or 20 yr old making only $16k a year is horrible no matter what else is going on w/that youth. dividing youth in the name of helping youth, by appealing to the extra-awful way one minority group is treated in a sea of universal awfulness. and that’s the name of the game…they call it riding the gravy train. that same HR group’s board, at least a couple of years ago, was averaging well over $200k a year each. helping the impoverished is big biz.
human rights campaign, ‘trump launches all out assault on trans service members: Give Now’. i hadn’t clicked in, but a headline said close to: ‘sessions launches attack on lgbtq rights’. i guess i see your point on divide and conquer identity politics, but i’d like to think that class has to be considered as well, yanno what i mean? and if sessions mean no protection from hiring, being able to rent, etc., fuck him. but i saved this for you; it really illustrates your point to the Nth degree. to many quotable quotes, but one was kinda ‘save our country’s freedom’. good gawd all-friday.
wasn’t that just awful? why doesn’t Amy G conclude by thanking her for her service? good thing the military is neutral, ain’t it? just here to protect our French fries, I mean, freedom, ain’t ya Pat? thanks, trump, for putting us all in the position of rooting for the military to stand up for justice, liberty, equality, some modicum of privacy, etc. we run into the loving embrace of Big Marine to protect us from the awful president. hmmm…..why stop at the military? why trust ’em in HUD or, shudder, Dept of Ed, what w/the big trans agenda & all? much scarier than the big diabetic agenda, ain’t it? can transgender people be trusted to fully support Monsanto in the Dept of Ag? the military is here to tell us, yes, they can be trusted. except in the NSA, CIA, FBI, Secret Service, Joint Chiefs, etc. don’t even bother to apply. black people have a better chance of getting in. maybe loyalty oaths can help weed out the bad seed?
ah, to say the truth i’d just scanned the transcript. and while ii do have some understanding of folks who ‘want to serve’ yada yada, including our son, who according to his wife (a large influence), he may arrrggh *make teh military his career*. and he swears to me that he knows this, he knows that, of which i speak to him (almost in prayer).
but i conclude that he, as so many others, who’ve been burned by the system, can find no work in their degree fields, what.ev.er, but aren’t self-directed past that hope or dream, and by default listen to what? genetic memory, too-ubiquitous patriotic propaganda/jingoism, etc. for transgendered, maybe it’s even a subconscious class thing: if i’m in uniform, serving my country’s ‘freedom’, maybe i can pass, but not in a nightclub where i might be murdered
but in the end it reminds me of the quasi-stockholm syndrome we hear about: ex-prisoners breaking parole, committing a third strike theft of a loaf of bread, some wine…wanting to go back inside, where they get three meals, and know what’s expected of them, meaning: no decisions to make… see what i mean? just spit-ballin’ here, but yes, the interview was designed to make one stand up and salute the flag.
habits of institutionalization. and w/the military, there’s the romanticization (army of uno & all that crap), the peer group & its pressure, gender issues (unmanliness of turning one’s back on war). military as family…that succeeds by destroying actual families. and we want to have the idea that some profession might be unambiguously good, like a teacher. speaking of killing people as “service” is an attempt to foreclose on asking questions about what & why the military does what it does. (and who remembers the good german? didn’t the Nazis need certain people just to be good doctors, teachers, mothers, farmers, bakers, etc.? you can “cultivez votre jardin” w/ a bunch of fascists, right? um, not if you expect the water supply to last, no, you can’t.)
and Big Gay, for some people (Jay Dyer), is, like “climate change”, part of the NWO trans-humanist soy vs. beef agenda 21 of control. to just stick w/the political & not psycho-analyze motives, b/c people like him reject class struggle as the motive of history, symptoms & causes are easily confused and the oppression of a minority group can be legitimized b/c that group is part of a gigantic conspiracy (transhumanism or whatever), not itself a victim of the actual conspiracy, capitalism.
what help is there for a person, of whom there are far too many, who can’t see that a ban on transgender in the military (as odious as the military is) is by its nature fascistic? in the false consciousness of most of US society, the question must be posed as: what person or group is worthy enough to take a bullet for their noble country? whose self-sacrifice is unworthy? the military itself is a complete distortion of the idea of self-sacrifice, of course, but the perversion cannot progress until we ask: who is unworthy to make that sacrifice? it’s just so fucking awful.
had to read this thrice, but yes, this is perfect. but it may be an alliance that herr cheeto and beauregard share, ‘Jeff Sessions Told Anti-LGBTQ Hate Group That New ‘Religious Freedom’ Guidance is Coming’. (herr cheeto agrees) but more about that on a future diary. lots to do here, it’s day 2 of the 3-day weekends that work me to death. ;-)
i can’t remember how this turned into a ‘trump bans trans’ diary, but i admit that i care far, far, more about what’s afoot in VZ, and i won’t apologize for it. it may be all of one piece if you stretch a bit, but i’ll keep my breaks for looking for VZ news. lots of it is tangentially and bombastically horrid, such as ‘Former Colombian President Alvaro Uribe urged the Venezuelan military to rebel against the democratically-elected government’, but not definitive…yet.
Here is some background of the long war between ExxonMobil and Venezuela. It seems that ExxonMobil really never left either in the 1970s during the first nationalization or in 2007 during Chavez’s nationalization of the oil companies. (That obviously is much of what this is all about–public ownership of natural resources.)
http://www.telesurtv.net/english/analysis/The-Long-War-Venezuela-and-ExxonMobil-20151118-0013.html
Superb post. I quickly got up to speed on the issues with this latest oil find. Guyana better be careful about what it wishes for; there are any number of oil states whose society declined as a result of the corruption in the oil ministry and government.
What is striking is how much fossil fuels and the nuclear industry now depend on the artificial demand created by the world’s militaries. The US military of course being the most spendthrift and the most prone to long-term wary being the greatest creator of demand for fossil fuels. As consumers move to renewables, the military will be the welfare for the oil industry. What makes that not the total picture is the commercial airline industry, which has become and ordeal through deregulation and imposition of airline travel security. If (when?) the public gets fed up with the hassles, that demand could disappear along with the industry, a victim of global climate change.
No matter how victorious Venezuela is in court, Exxon can tap oil on Venezuelan territory once it puts in the straw. It depends on how continuous the formation holding the oil is and how how many competing drilling and pumping projects there are.
A strong “Keep it in the ground” movement in Guyana would be the best bet for Guyana’s prosperity. Pump and squander has been the routine in the oil industry for 150 years. While lecturing everyone else on thriftiness and prudence, the oil industry blows through Mother Nature’s saving account. Sadly, the cartoon money signs in the eyes describes all too many leaders, especially politicians.
Now we know the answer to “Why the hurry?” in regime change in Venezuela. Yes, June 30 will show whether the US still controls its Monroe-Doctrine-protected hemisphere. Interesting that it is China that has made the counter-play backing Venezuela. The details of those arrangements will give a clue to what Chinese tributary empire will be like; it will not come with lectures on human rights.
good digging, thd; an awesome contribution. indeed, this is an anomaly, from all that i’ve read: ‘Although ICSID is often labeled by critics as prejudiced toward business, this outcome was actually welcomed by the government.’ but it was world bank, not WTO, nafta, etc. still….
good point on slant drilling, but exxon made a huge deal about the citizenry gaining from the ‘new discovery’. yes, right. there are always corrupt oligarch compradors. as an aside, one of the sites at which i’d read that ‘guyana owns the fields’ actually pimped that ‘poor guyana *only* has gold, diamonds and…bauxite’. srsly.
i did get to wondering today how much oil/gas goes into plastics, including polyester, nitrate fertilizer for (dubious) farming, and o on. airline industry? hard to see a great ‘consumer’ switch, really. ‘time is money’ and all that rot.
but yeppers, this is key to ‘why the hurry’. thanks. poor VZ, srsly. we”ll keep watching and…hoping, praying, but…whooosh. what a stacked deck.
et tu, eva golinger? have you been assimilated by the Imperial Capitalit Oil Borg? stellar hit job on maduro and the constituent assembly. who mugged you, eva?
your tweets and retweets make it seem so.
Eva Golinger Retweeted: UN Human RightsVerified account @UNHumanRights 5h5 hours ago
“We’re deeply concerned by the risk of further violence in #Venezuela where elections are due to take place on Sunday” http://ow.ly/cTzH30dYNpq
Eva Golinger Retweeted
US Embassy, VEVerified account @usembassyve 13h13 hours ago “A new Travel Warning is available for Venezuela.”
http://ow.ly/PMaY30dYpPD
Eva Golinger Retweeted
a warning of what’s to come? or plain old Imperial agitprop fear-mongering?
i just found this at venezuelanalysis (and if you think that ain’t hard for me to spell…) :
‘Empire Files: Constituent Assembly Dictatorship or Democracy in Venezuela?’, TELESUR ENGLISH, July 20th 2017
‘On July 30th, Venezuelans will elect a people’s body called the “Constituent Assembly” comprised of hundreds of representatives across the country with the power to redraft the constitution.
U.S. politicians, press and opposition in Venezuela are calling the process a “coup” that should be boycotted by all.
Abby Martin addresses the criticisms with Head of the Presidential Commission to oversee the Constituent Assembly process, Elias Jaua, speaks to supporters and participants of the Assembly, interviews historian Chris Gilbert and explains what is at stake in Venezuela if the social programs instated under Chavez are terminated by the opposition.’
let this stand as a lullabye of sorts. when i’d seen the movie, what i’d heard wasn’t “Take off my shield…carry my sword…I won’t need it anymore” it was instead: “take off my shield, Bury my Soul, i won’t need it anymore.”. but it’s very human to see patterns that we…need to see, expect to see, isn’t it?
‘The Guardian’s propaganda on Venezuela: all you need to know’, Off-Guardian, July 27, Ricardo Vaz (a helpful, but not exhaustive, deconstruction)
http://alturl.com/ckhzq
The news media reporting on the eve of the election report mobilization of 370,000 troops to police the streets. That is about 1 per 70 people and 1 per 40 adults. It will have to be internal weakness of the military as an institution to have this level of troops not be a successful deterrent to disorder in most of Venezuela. The referendum likely will go on and provide results. Then the street action will intensify or be suppressed. And those 370,000 troops either will ratify the decision or try to overturn it. Could be as consequential as the elections of Mr. Morsi in Egypt. Is there some site that is keeping up with the election in close to real time?
i hadn’t even seen that report, amigo, but i did fall asleep for an hour, i admit.. i checked about, but i have no idea who might be carrying live coverage. not telesur, misionverdad, abby martin…but so much is in spanish, and i know only poquito. so many of the relevant hashtags are stalled; i guess we’ll have to see tomorrow. msn coverage, of course…is simply ugly and inflammatory.
mike prysner, empire files, says there’s all sorts of coverage; perhaps he means tomorrow? thanks for this, srsly,
fogbound wd.