A Falling-Out Among Thieves

Former BFFs Hugo Chavez and Barack Obama have just had a lovers' spat. It seems that Obama had appointed another one of his diplomatic geniuses as ambassador to Venezuela and Hugo "Boss" Chavez didn't like him. Appointee Larry Palmer is a typical Obama hack, but he also shares a trait common among all Obama State Department picks in that he has foot-in-mouth disease. Palmer suggested that the Chavez regime might be less than perfect.

In fact, Palmer's exact words were: "Morale in the Venezuelan military is low, and the Colombian rebels are easily finding refuge in Venezuela." He also suggested that there was solid information that the US Treasury Department had identified three members of Chavez's inside cadre as helping Colombian drug-terrorists by supplying them with arms and assisting in their trafficking operations. Palmer spoke truth to power, he just picked the wrong power to tell the truth to.

So Chavez said he would reject Obama's appointee. Obama said "I dare you, and if you do, I'll expel your ambassador." Chavez replied: "I double dare you." To which Obama replied: "Lookee here, I double-dog dare you." This was a very high-tone diplomatic exchange.

The official State Deparment announcement following the yanking of the two ambassadors was: "We believe it's in our national interest to have an ambassador in Caracas so that we can candidly express our views and engage with the government of Venezuela." It seems to me that doing so was Palmer's big mistake. State Department spokesman Mark Toner said: "There are tensions in the relationship, and it's precisely because of that that we feel it's important to have appropriate diplomatic relations." And where would this country be without this great nation of ours?

So the socialist-by-choice in Venezuela has told the socialist-in-denial in America that his nation will not accept any ambassador in whose presence there has been heard a discouraging word. What a shame. Just a year-and-a-half ago the two were hugging each other enthusiastically at the international socialist conference for the western hemisphere. Part of the problem is that Chavez is within inches of succeeding in eliminating all political opposition, squelching speech entirely, and ruling by diktat. So there might be some jealousy involved. Obama has been trying to do the same thing, and has failed miserably, facing a fairly hostile Republican House when Congress returns next week. And speech is still allowed in America, though most of the press are in lockstep with the left wing of the Democratic Party.

Chavez is about to succeed in passing serious restrictions on the internet, barring messages that "disrespect public authorities, incite or promote hatred or crimes, or could create anxiety in the citizenry or alter public order." Since Obama has the same goal, perhaps there is hope for change in the seeming diplomatic impasse. The two leaders could conduct some private diplomacy, instruct each other on how to squelch dissent, then give each other big hugs as they reinstate their mutual ambassadors. All Obama has to promise is that no American ambassador to Venezuela will ever again slip and tell the truth. Peace for our time.
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Cubezuela

I know most of you don’t care about foreign affairs, but this one is kind of interesting. Ever since Castro came to power, he’s been trying to spread his revolution around the world. They’ve funded and supplied leftist rebels throughout South and Central America. They sent troops to Angola. And now, it looks like they’ve conquered Venezuela. Seriously.

When Hugo Chavez came to power in Venezuela, he did so democratically and with the backing of the vast number of peasants in Venezuela. Since that time, he’s signed all kinds of bilateral agreements with Cuba where Cuba provided technical know-how and advisors in exchange for oil, oil which bankrupt Cuba desperately needs since it lost its Soviet backers.

So how many Cubans are we talking about? At last count, Cuba has about 40,000 “advisors” in Venezuela. What’s more, they seem to be running the place. Here are some of things the Cubans control:

• Cubans control the training of the national police, an organization created last year and modeled on the Cuban secret police.

• Cuban agents occupy key posts in Venezuela’s military intelligence agency.

• Cubans built the digital radio communications system used by the security forces, which gives them access to antenna locations and radio frequencies.

• Cubans run the electrical system.

• Cubans control the ports.

• Cubans designed and control the computerized identification card system, which includes personal information on all residents.

• Cubans designed and control the passport control and immigration systems.

• Cubans designed and control the health care system.

• Cubans designed and control the public registries, the business registries, and the notary system.

In fact, Cuban control is so thorough that Cuban advisors are known to wield more power than the Venezuelan officials whom they supposedly advise. Coffee growers, for example, say they answer directly to Cuba’s former trade minister Barbara Castillo, rather than the Venezuelans who supposedly run the trade ministry.

In another example, the former Venezuelan ambassador to the U.N. protested the seizure of his farm by turning over his ownership documents to the Cuban embassy rather than the Venezuelan authorities.

Chavez himself accidentally acknowledged this reality last year when he announced that a large number of medical clinics would be closing. His slip up was admitting that he had heard about this from Castro, rather than any Venezuelan officials, because data from the medical system goes to Cuba before it gets released to the Venezuelan government.

Chavez tries to downplay this, saying that: “Cuba helps us modestly with some things that I’m not going to detail. Everything Cuba does for Venezuela is to strengthen the homeland.”

But others aren’t buying it. Froilan Barrios of the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers says that the “oil and petrochemicals [industries] are completely penetrated by Cuban G2,” which is Castro’s intelligence service. He also says that when they threatened a strike in the oil industry, Cuban officials threatened them. Coincidentally, Venezuela sends 100,000 barrels of oil a day to Cuba. Moreover, the government will not allow the unionization of worksites run by the Cubans.

The military isn’t happy about this either. Former Brigadier General Antonio Rivero resigned in protest because of the control Cuba exerts over their military. Says Rivero, “They’ve crossed a line. They’ve gone beyond what should be permitted and what an alliance should be.” He specifically complains about Cuban officials running high level meetings, training snipers, and establishing a system of bunkers around the country where weapons are being concealed. He speculates that if Chavez loses in the next election, the Cubans could “become part of a guerrilla force.”

Interestingly, when Chavez flies to Cuba, he does so on board Cuban military jets. He also uses Cuban intelligence to spy on dissidents.

Castro and Chavez even got a time share on Sean Penn’s affections.

Sounds like a puppet state to me.


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The United Nations Serves A Purpose After All

I'm going to take a small side road away from my conservative friends and suggest that the United Nations does indeed serve a purpose. Yesterday's performances demonstrated that fact, in spades. I'm not sure it's worth the billions of dollars we burn supporting it, but then how can you put a genuine value on great theater? Or maybe I should say comic opera. The greatest collection of comedy stars since they broke up the Hollywood Studio System was gathered yesterday in one grand forum that was seen by the entire world.

Sadly, one of the poorest performances of the day was put on by the American president. Obama droned, spouted platitudes, spoke of American unilateralism, and looked far too serious for the silly non-message he was conveying. "Lookey--where would Earth be without this great planet of ours?" And he let us all down by failing to do his well-known levitation routine while raising his arms to heaven to establish the connection. Since we see the president at least once a day, every day, his performance was at best mundane. It's impossible to forget what he looks like, what he sounds like, and how very sincere he is in his own beliefs. So his General Assembly speech didn't have any surprises, we've heard it from him approximately 250 times over the past nine months.

But the rest. Ah, the rest were absolutely sublime. Venezuelan President-for-Life Hugo Chavez told us that the smell of sulphur left behind by President Bush had finally dissipated and had been replaced by the gentle zephyrs of hope which trail behind President Obama. And then he told the United States that it's making a good start, but it has to move faster on socialism (and possibly the one-man, one-vote, one-time concept). Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad threw a few flowers at Obama, and then went into his holocaust-denying schtick. That produced a highlight of the day--the mass walkout of all the friends of Israel, including all the delegates from the Anglosphere. He went on about how the huge nation of the Zionists was oppressing and murdering the entire tiny Arab and Muslim world. So naturally, Israel has to be wiped off the map.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu indicated "satisfaction" with Obama's speech. That is also known as "damning with faint praise." He then went on to channel lawyer Joseph Welch at the Army-McCarthy hearings by looking out disgustedly at the General Assembly, shaking his head, and saying: "Have you no shame? Have you no decency?" I didn't think Obama's speech was that bad. Oh, wait, he was referring to the body allowing the frothing-at-the-beard Ahmadinejad to speak at all. "To those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing, I say . . . what a mistake. What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations." Beside being very moving, it was also a refreshing change from the usual speakers condemning the United Nations for allowing Israel and the United States to survive.

But no report on the opening session would be complete without a full and fair discussion of the featured speaker, Moammar Qaddafi (please don't correct my spelling, this guy has changed the spelling three times himself). At the end of his speech, it looked like he had just run out of gas on his mission to out-talk Fidel Castro (who set the record for yapping for four hours and twenty minutes). But he did manage to out-crazy Castro. Much of he said was rambling, incoherent, and garbled (even his Arabic translators were having trouble understanding him).

Unlike the others, Qaddafi was effusive in his praise for Obama. After pausing for a bit, he decided it wasn't enough. So he wished out loud that Obama could be America's president forever (all the rest of the guys had to settle for president-for-life). Maybe Qaddafi was buying into the divinity thing for Obama, but I don't think Mohammed or Allah would be too pleased.

After references to the "King of Kings of Africa," and referring to Obama as "our son," he went on to lecture on the JFK assassination, the Martin Luther King assassination, and the origins of swine flu (created in a military lab, or a private pharmaceutical lab, he couldn't decide which). Then he asked the very telling question: "What's next? Fish flu?" What a wit. And for a change of pace, he spent much of the speech excoriating the United Nations itself. Mostly he was ticked off at the Security Council which had declared him a terrorist and his nation a rogue nation a couple of decades back. So he called it "the terrorist council." And to punctuate the thought, he said "now, brothers, there is no respect for the United Nations, no regard for the General Assembly" while tearing off a corner of the U.N. Charter to wave around.

Onward and upward. Next target--Europe. He had gotten his accountants to make a careful calculation, and he had determined that Europe owed the Africans 7.7 trillion dollars for its former colonization of the dark continent. And if they don't pay, "the Africans will go get the money themselves." After 90 exhaustive minutes, Qaddafi probably just forgot to mention the Lockerbie plane bombing, 270 dead passengers, and the triumphal return home of the bomber Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al-Megrahi.

So--why do I think the U.N. is still important? Every cuckoo who showed us what they really are, and what they really stand for is why I think it. We need to be reminded that these people are not simply pictures from Reuters and AP, exotically sitting in faraway lands, just trying to get along. Each of the vile dictators and oppressors who spoke put himself in our living rooms--up close, and personal. And that is an important thing. We need to see who the enemies are, not just of America, but of everything that is right and decent. We need, as Admiral Yamamoto is attributed with saying, to be an awakened sleeping giant, filled with a terrible resolve.

But I saved Qaddafi for last for a reason. He messed with the United States a few times too often when we still had real leaders. His adopted daughter got blown up by a bomb in 1986 after Qaddafi sponsored several terrorist attacks resulting in American retaliation. For most of the 90s, Qaddafi's country was under international sanctions for refusal to turn over two of the Lockerbie bombers to American or international courts. But in 2003, apparently after hints that the Bush administration might consider Libya to be the next American target for rooting out terrorist havens, he turned over the bombers and renounced his nation's nuclear ambitions.

Since 2003, Qaddafi has been flying under the radar, pretty much ignored by Americans and the American press. He convinced the liberal/left in America that his abandoning of Libya's nuclear plans was strictly humanitarian peace-making. And the New York Times gladly gave him editorial space to make the claim. His fellow dictators didn't believe the conversion, but they certainly believed the deception was working. He was elected head of the African Union and was touted as a great unifier. The Western press bought it hook, line and sinker. They saw a "road to Damascus" conversion in his 2003 actions, and were determined to promote it, but not too loudly. Qaddafi's public redemption continued unabated.

Now look at the effect it has had in Africa. Before 2003, democratic leaders in Africa were free to speak for their nations opposing Qaddafi and his murderous policies. After 2003, no so much. Very recently, Kenya's Prime Minister was interviewed by The New Republic. Raila Odinga offered a very strong critique of the African Union and the dictators involved in unrest on the continent. But when asked how he thought Qaddafi, as head of the AU, could possibly play a constructive role in promoting human rights, he responded that leaders like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe deserve condemnation but don't get it because most of the other leaders don't want their own human rights violations exposed in the process. The New Republic writer pressed the issue by reminding Odinga that he had asked specifically about Qaddafi.

Odinga is the leader of a nearly-western style democracy, and seems genuinely disgusted with the African dictators. But when pressed on Qaddafi, he replied simply: "I don't want to comment on the head of a state which has got a diplomatic relationship with Kenya." It was OK to go after Mugabe and others, but Qaddafi's redemption had reached such a point that even a good man could not bring himself to criticize Qaddafi's ongoing brutal suppression of his own people and attempts to undermine neighboring countries, particularly Chad.

So the Qaddafi U.N. speech served a very useful purpose. There is buzz all over Africa about "the crazy man." And neutral Americans who either didn't know or had forgotten that Qaddafi is a dangerous lunatic were treated to Moammar at his best. All the conservative talk about Qaddafi wasn't worth one minute out of the 90 minutes that Qaddafi used to prove he is stark, staring, nuts and doesn't deserve to sit on an international body, let alone lead anything. Sadly, today (this was written on Thursday) he is sitting in the Security Council a mere five seats away from the American president who is still basking in the glow of his own brilliance and too distracted to know there's a loony in the room.

So I agree with the idea of keeping the United Nations functioning. But I also agree with Qaddafi who thinks it should be moved out of New York. His reasons are somewhat different from mine. He is just angry that it "felt like he was in Guantanamo Detention Center, cut off from the outside world." Mostly he was ticked off that nobody would give him space to set up his gigantic tents and camp out with his multiple female assistants. But the guy with the visage borrowed from Leatherface, and clothes borrowed from Scarlett O'Hara has a point.

My suggestion is Antarctica, where the dictators can go outside the building and strut around with the emperor penguins. The annual dues should be modified as well. Every country, including the United States, should pay $4.98 annually toward the advancement and improvement of the body. All enforcement powers and peace-keeping operations should be terminated immediately. The Security Council should be abolished, and the General Assembly should be renamed "The Generally Crazy Debating Society." Hell, I'd be willing to have the United States double its dues to $9.96 annually just to be able to watch that perpetual TV soap opera about an international lunatic asylum.
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Why China Is A Danger To Us. . .

I wrote an article some time ago in which I pointed out that the obsession with China surpassing us economically was all a bunch of paranoid garbage. . . and it is. But that doesn’t mean that we should not be worried about China. Here’s what should concern you. . .

China: The Military Threat

About ten years ago, China came to an interesting realization. It knew it could not compete with the United States military as a world power. But what if it didn’t have to? After much rethinking, China concluded that it didn’t need to compete with the United States militarily as a world power, it only needed a strong enough military to outclass whatever the United States could bring to the region in the event of conflict. In other words, it didn’t need to prepare to fight the United States around the world, it only needed to be strong enough to intimidate the United States into staying out of whatever regional conflicts it chose to start, e.g. Taiwan.

Putting that plan into motion, China began modernizing its military with EU and Russian weapons. In 2002, when I first started paying attention to this issue, China began buying old Russian Kilo-class submarines. Those subs are equipped with long-range, anti-ship missile systems. The Chinese also bought destroyers, anti-aircraft missiles and fighter-bombers from the Russian at the same time. They also began building large numbers of missiles that could reach other countries within the region, and they began doing war games that involved simulating attacks on Taiwan.

According to experts at the National War College, those submarines would “very significantly enhance the Chinese navy's ability to influence events in the East China Sea. First, by enforcing a blockade against Taiwan, if Beijing adopts that course of action, and also by posing a serious problem for opposing naval forces attempting to operate in the area.”

Now Defense Secretary Robert Gates has acknowledged this threat. Said Gates on Wednesday:

“When considering the military-modernization programs of countries like China, we should be concerned less with their potential ability to challenge the US symmetrically -- fighter to fighter or ship to ship -- and more with their ability to disrupt our freedom of movement and narrow our strategic options. Investments in cyber and anti-satellite warfare, anti-air and anti-ship weaponry, and ballistic missiles could threaten America's primary way to project power and help allies in the Pacific -- in particular our forward air bases and carrier strike groups.”

Short of starting an arms race in the region, combating this threat will be extremely difficult, especially with an administration that pays no attention to world affairs. Perhaps discouraging further arms sales and allowing Taiwan to buy more modern American military hardware would be a good start? Of course, that could cause China to stop buying the bonds Obama needs to sell so that he can keep up his deficit spending.

China: The Foreign Policy Threat

At the same time, China has undertaken a much more aggressive approach to foreign policy throughout the rest of the world. Meet the “Bamboo Republic”:

Do you remember the banana republic? “Banana republic” was the term for countries that were essentially ruled by fruit companies. British or American companies would head to places like South America and set up banana and rubber plantations. They would then use their considerable wealth and power to shape/control the local governments to ensure that their investment was protected. The banana republics came to end as result of various means, most often revolution.

Now they are back, and China is the biggest purveyor. At a time when most governments in the world are content to step back and let NGOs -- non-governmental organizations -- address the problems of the Third World, China has stepped into the vacuum. Using hard currency, they have bought up massive amounts of resources in these countries, everything from oil, to minerals, to huge tracks of land. They also bought up the companies that were doing the extracting and they have created companies to manage the land. In this way, they are securing the oil, the copper, the iron ore, and the wheat that they need.

The question that remains unanswered is how this will affect the governments in those countries. Will this predispose them toward a favorable view of China? Will they feel held hostage to China’s demands? Will they become Bamboo Republics? And is this good for these countries, or have they simply traded white colonial masters for Chinese colonial masters? Moreover, how will this affect countries like the United States, as, for example, copper mine after copper mine comes under the influence of the Chinese government?

Like it or not, resources are limited and it’s time to consider the wisdom of letting a government like China monopolize the things upon which modern economies depend.

China And The Coming Oil Shortage Threat

Similar to the Bamboo Republic threat comes a threat of massive disruption to our oil supply. Everyone knows that oil is a commodity, and, thus, it doesn’t matter where you get it, right? Well, no.

In fact, there are different types of oil. Indeed, one of the reasons that Iran is seeking nuclear power even though it is “sitting” on a ton of oil, is that its oil is “sour crude”, meaning it contains a great many impurities -- particularly sulfur. Those impurities need to be removed before the oil can be processed. This makes the oil expensive to use and not well suited to being turned into gasoline (it tends to be used for heating oil or diesel).

A second, more important fact is that oil is not dumped into a market where it can be picked up by anyone like bread from a bin at a grocery store. Oil comes from certain countries and is often designated for specific countries. Indeed, the United States gets most of its oil from Canada, Mexico and Saudi Arabia. But coming in a strong fourth, and providing around 1/6th of the oil supplied to the United States, is Venezuela.

And this rubs Hugo Chavez wrong. Thus, he has stated several times that if he could find other buyers, he would stop selling oil to the United States entirely -- thereby cutting off 1/6 of the oil supply to the United States. The reason he hasn’t been able to find too many buyers is that Venezuela also sits on sour crude, which not everyone can refine. Last week, China signed a deal with Venezuela to start developing oil fields in Venezuela.

This remains speculation at this point, but it will not likely take long after China develops the infrastructure needed to process and transport oil from Venezuela to China, before Chavez starts selling all of his oil to China instead of the United States. Where will the United States suddenly find enough oil to replace 1/6 of its requirement?

Conclusion

The Chinese are not fools, nor are they content with being second class. They have made it clear that they view the world now as bi-polar, with the United States on one end and China on the other, and everyone else nothing more than pawns. We need to make sure that we are not dependent on China in any way, and that China does not find a way to hold us over a barrel. We also need to think about balancing China’s power within its own region by fully supporting our friends, before they stop being our friends and instead fall under the influence of a new Chinese Empire.

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