The plan for Venezuela
You may be surprised to know that there is a plan; Secretary of State Rubio describes it here. I’ve cued up two short segments:
And here is some truly fascinating background from a Venezuelan with an improbable name:
The New Neo
A blog about political change, among other things
This is wonderful. Thanks for putting it together.
We see the video title “Why Venezuela is nothing like Iraq”. And we can immediately marvel at the similarities of Venezuela with Iran; their oil economies under severe sanction, their wider economies melting down due to decades of mismanagement; goverments incapable of building a stable future for their discontented suffering people; an overwhelmingly unarmed populace opposing a murderous fraction of overlords, rulers willing to imprison, torment, torture and kill in order to maintain their political power to dispose of the nation’s wealth to their own benefit. We can expect the potential to see either country collapse into an anarchy instantly upon any sudden removal of those repressive rulers; a veritable recipe for warlords eager to seize abandoned powers in the disorder, what with the machineries of warfare sitting in the hands of armies of thugs dispersed throughout the lands.
So if we can begin to imagine this plan for Venezuela, how — we might wonder — could some comparable vision for Iran take shape?
What levers with which to pry who (some interim strong-armed) in Iran to do our bidding in their co-operative self-removal? It’s a puzzle of enormous consequence. I don’t see the path, but that hardly means that there isn’t one for those more knowing than I.
Not pertinent, but fun (at least I think so!) … here’s a squib that was in The New Yorker decades ago:
Native huts perched above the still waters of Lake Maracaibo gave Venezuela its name. The name is Spanish for “Fortunate are those who are unmarried, independent, and living near the British Museum.”
In response to which The New Yorker mused, “We never did well with languages.”
As Dave Barry would say, I’m not making this up.
This is a bit old now (last week’s news cycle!), but I thought it was rather amusing.
https://www.businessinsider.com/nicolas-maduro-lawyer-power-struggle-venezuela-president-pollack-fein-2026-1
“Bullet points” from the summary at the top of the post:
Gonna be tough rooting out the local equivalent of cartel gunmen and organizations.
I finally had a chance to watch the whole video. It was excellent, thank you. I have a connection with some people in and from Venezuela and they are all ecstatic that Maduro is gone.