OPINION: Dirty politicians and ALBA leaders
By Jolly Green
Part One [1]
There have always been dirty Venezuelan politicians, but when Cuba’s Castro encouraged Hugo Chavez to take over Venezuela via a military coup in 1992, things got many times worse, many time dirtier. Dec. 13, 1994 — Chavez visits Cuba, where he spent a long time and had long talks with President Fidel Castro, and Chavez was honored with a ceremony at the University of Havana. Although this is the first time Chavez and Castro are known to have met on such terms, many historians believe that Chavez was a Castro convert long before this. Because in the Latin Americas and the Caribbean, there is not a left-wing uprising, coup, attempted or otherwise, or even a revolution that Fidel Castro did not have a hand in.
Chavez went to prison for two years following his attempted 1992 coup, emerged from prison in 1994 as a popular populist figure, and Fidel Castro honored him. He enjoyed financial support from political groups that had been left out of the traditional parties’ power-sharing agreements. The poor, the intellectuals, and the traditional left also supported him. He ran for president in 1998 and was elected with 56 percent of the vote. In the early months of his presidency, Chavez’s support shot up even further, reaching 80 percent according to the polls.
The problem with communism is that it’s never what true socialists think it should be. It’s always to do with one person, one man imposing communism while he lives the dictator’s life of luxury and affluence. That one man appointing others to do his dirty deeds while rewarding them for doing so. Those subordinates of the top man are willing to blindly follow him, even kill for him, while he rapes the country of its riches. They are often stashing away the country’s riches in offshore banks via trust funds and offshore companies. There are multitudes of people only too willing to help the dictator, often for as little as a nod of the head or a handshake, or a red T-shirt. There are also multitudes of the poor and ignorant who believe the dictator is all good, and all the bad things said about him are untrue. The cashing and stashing process has been used in Cuba and most certainly in Venezuela, multi-billions ending up in offshore accounts while people starve.
Fidel Castro died a wealthy man while even today; his people still suffer shortages of food and are paid paltry sums for their labour. Castro owned a palace on a private Cuban island, where no ordinary Cuban would ever be allowed to venture. The island of Cayo Piedra consists of not one island but two, a passing cyclone having split it in half. Fidel had, however, rectified this by building a 700-foot-long bridge between the two parts, with a 200-foot-long landing stage for his yacht, the Aquarama II.
He owned his own money laundering bank in London. Havana International Bank LTD. Now renamed Havin Bank LTD. According to Forbes Castro was worth 900 million and owning 800 international companies.
See: http://www.therealcuba.com/?page_id=74
Castro owned a stable of yachts and boats, which family members toured the world’s most expensive resorts living billionaire lifestyles.
This yacht is the one his son Antonio sailed around the Mediterranean in with a bevy of beautiful women while ordinary Cubans starved.
See: http://www.therealcuba.com/?p=540
All this under the pretense that he Fidel Castro was living the meager life of something just above that of a pauper. Castro claimed to earn 900 pesos a month, when in fact it was multi millions monthly. Castro claimed he knew nothing about, and even despised, the bourgeois concept of vacation. Nothing could have been further from the truth; he spent two-thirds of his life vacationing in luxury, drinking Champagne and eating Russian and Iranian Beluga and Sevruga caviar.
https://nypost.com/2015/05/10/inside-fidel-castros-luxurious-life-on-his-secret-island-getaway/
“Ven Hugo, esto es lo que puedes tener si te apoderas de Venezuela.” Hugo Chavez did just that, brought up in a small house with dirt floors; he now lived in a palace. He stashed obscene amounts of money in Swiss and Lichtenstein bank accounts, multi-billions that one man and his family could never spend in 500 years. He was making all sorts of promises to the people about building low-cost houses for everyone, free education for all, in fact, all the usual promises that every one of these left-wing dictators makes to their people. The low-cost houses promised were two million, actually built up until 2019 were less than 200,000. Free education already existed in Venezuela, the “for all” meant more unsuitable college students were enrolled, students unsuitable for tertiary education in a normal society, unaffordable for any society.
How did Chavez’s family become billionaires as well? “Today, all the Chavez family, even the extended family are tycoons; they are all rich people who look like royalty. … It’s a kind of new oligarchy.” Have no doubt not one of them earned it honestly; they have huge ranches and mansion houses that spread over whole blocks. It is most certainly stolen wealth, and also in some cases derived from the cocaine trade.
So where does Socialism go wrong? It’s quite simple, called the human greed gene; to one degree or another, we all have it, every one of us. All these socialist type people start early in colleges with dreams of the utopian socialist system, a dream which to live by. But when the opportunity comes along to enrich themselves, every single one of them is affected by the greedy gene. Just apply the saying ‘nothing corrupts more than power.’ Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
It’s a historical fact that great socialist and communist leaders are almost always bad people, even when they exercise influence and not authority; still, more when you superadd the tendency of the certainty of corruption by their authority. One thing we can always be sure of is that despotic power is always accompanied by corruption of morality. Any authority that does not exist for Liberty is not authority but force. Socialism easily accepts despotism.
Between 1999 to 2002, Hugo Chavez toured the world, visiting leaders like Castro, Muammar Khadaffi and Saddam Hussein — more than $21 billion left the country. Foreign investment fell from $1.5 billion to $226 million in the same period. The polls showed Chavez’s popularity dropping, from a high of 80 percent at the beginning of his term in 1999 to a low of 34 percent in December 2001.
At one of Chavez’s most voiced declarations, “Oligarchs, tremble!” Not just the upper but the middle class trembled. Some 150,000 middle-class Venezuelans, who feared a rerun of the Cuban Revolution fled – shivering and trembling with fear to Costa Rica, Miami, and Madrid. With the wealthy and these people went the country’s wealth, between them and the foreign investors $21 billion just disappeared from the economy between 1999 and 2002. Rich and poor initially responded more to Chavez’s rhetoric than to his policies, perhaps for different reasons, but without doubt, he affected the people, the rich left and the poor cheered him.
Unlike Cuba, where the press and TV are all state-owned and state-controlled, Chavez allowed a somewhat free, even though tightly controlled and later shut down and took over the media world. He continually criticized the press and belittled his opponents — calling them oligarchs and escuálidos, the squalid people — no journalist was ever thrown in jail at that time, that came later. Like many of the socialist government leaders, he specialized in belittling and bemoaning reporters, news editors, and media owners. They were rarely able to operate under normal conditions. Laws were passed that allowed Chavez to throw media people in jail if they criticized or insulted him.
Chavez embarked on an intense campaign to control the country’s institutions, and this campaign roiled the political establishment. Chavez had succeeded not only in awakening the poor, who largely supported him but also in enraging professionals of all sections of society. Suddenly the middle class embraced what had seemed mundane activity to them before — movement politics — setting off a grassroots rebellion against the would-be modern Bolívar.
When Hugo Chavez died most anti-communists breathed a sigh of relief, the world was relieved of a wicked man who stole most of his country’s wealth.
Jolly Green,
Bringing the truth to a hemisphere of lying politicians
To Be Continued in Part two [2]
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DISCLAMER: The opinion, belief and viewpoint expressed by the author do not necessarily reflect the opinion, belief and viewpoint of iNews Cayman/ieyenews.com or official policies of iNews Cayman/ieyenews.com
