STILL STANDING: Opposition leaders say fear and paranoia within the military have kept troops and commanders from joining their calls to turn on Maduro. REUTERS/Handout/Venezuelan presidency
Reuters: Imported repression: How Cuba taught Venezuela to quash military dissent
Imposing surveillance, fear and repression, Cuba helped Venezuela revamp its armed forces and military intelligence service. Reuters reveals how two agreements, undisclosed since 2008, let Havana remake Venezuela's security apparatus.
In December 2007, Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez suffered his first defeat at the polls. Although still wildly popular among the working class that had propelled him to power nearly a decade earlier, voters rejected a referendum that would have enabled him to run for re-election repeatedly.
Stung, Chávez turned to a close confidant, according to three former advisors: Fidel Castro. The aging Cuban leader had mentored Chávez years before the Venezuelan became president, when he was still best known for leading a failed coup.
Now, deepening economic ties were making Cuba ever more reliant on oil-rich Venezuela, and Castro was eager to help Chávez stay in power, these advisors say. Castro’s advice: Ensure absolute control of the military.
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WNU Editor: Cuba may have taught Chavez and his successor Maduro on how to stay in power, but they have also helped in the destruction of the very economy that permitted Venezuela to provide aid and assistance to Cuba. Rationing has been re-introduced in Cuba .... Cuba starts widespread rationing of food and other basics (CBC), and my friends who always go to Cuba for a cheap vacation are also noticing that unlike past years the people who are living there are now suffering.
5 comments:
"Animal spirits" are very important.
Socialism chains and whips animal spirits.
The whipping will continue until moral improves.
That loosening with resulting boost in morale and economic growth was short lived. What....2 years or was it three, four? Then again, what does nearly resource free Cuba have to sell to the world but old American cars and Che tee shirts?
Roger if it is land, the land has some value and some worth.
Location, scenery, ports stopover/refueling, something.
Singapore has no 'resources', but it has location.
It is what you make it. Obviously, commutards cannot make shit. However those same people once freed of commutard rules, do great.
Good point, anon. Especially valuable in the winter when many in the north half of the world are looking south. I know I would be.
My sister took a boat tour to Cuba a few years back and remarked on the climate's pleasantness.
Just being located on the equator give a south American or African country desirability as a space port. It is easier to launch from the equator.
Of course if you are going to sink money into a space launch, the neighborhood has to be safe.
Even if every engineer and technician who launched a rocket form ma an African spaceport was non-black it would be a great boon for the Africans of that country. All those people need housing and food. In a generation 90% of those jobs could be held by Africans.
Cameroon is just a few degrees above the equator. Instead of capitalizing on it, the French speaking Cameroons are persecuting the English speaking ones. I have said that a country should have one language for government. In Cameroon it should be French. However a minority should never be denied speaking their native language anywhere else.
The French launch their satellite from French Guiana due to the decreased cost. Cameron is actually closer to the equator (at least along the coast).
Cameroon if it got its act together could launch satellites for the UK and France and benefit from its English and French speaking populace.
But no one asked me.
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