Venezuela’s Red Regime Rocks, Castro Squeals – But Don’t Trust Obama!

Excellent article in the Miami Herald, by Roger Noriega, whose credentials as a perceptive writer are at once confirmed by his description of Fidel Castro as ‘an imperious bully!’

When we have a clutch of ghastly gliteratti in the USA constantly eulogising the blood-stained old tyrant, it’s refreshing to see him nailed so accurately!

Noriega focuses on the threat Castro sees looming if Chavez, who has cancer, is removed from the Latin American equation. ‘What the Cuban dictator fears most is that his bankrupt regime in Havana is about to lose billions in critical aid and oil.’

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Chavez and Castro – Blood Brothers?

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Now Venezuela has not yet been reduced to Cuba’s state of servitude, and is due an election soon, in October.  Patriotic democrats there are organising to  take power away from Chavez’ marxist clique, but if they succeed, says Castro, there will be a ‘river of blood!”

That’s about as open an admission as we need that the Reds in Caracas will not relinquish power via any sort of peaceful transition back to proper democracy. Indeed, Castro’s terminology does not encompass free elections. That may be understandable, because he has neither experience of, nor any taste for, such institutions.

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But Castro speaks of an ‘oligarchy’ and broods darkly on Chavez’ possible  ‘overthrow’ by the USA. What does he mean?

Noriega tells us – ‘the intensified effort of U.S. law enforcement — primarily the Drug Enforcement Administration and Department of the Treasury — to hold officials of the Chávez regime accountable for their complicity with drug trafficking and terrorism.’

Well, narco-terror and communism go hand in hand. The FARC reds in Colombia (friends of the IRA, BTW) have long been known as dope-pedlars extraordinaire, but how come Castro has suddenly got his faded combat gear in a twist about this?

Again, Noriega sheds useful light. ...a former Chavista supreme court justice, Eladio Aponte Aponte, has sought refuge in the United States…the Chavista leadership is in a panic because they know that Aponte Aponte is just the first of many defectors who will help U.S. prosecutors expose an international criminal conspiracy implicating Chávez and his most trusted operatives.

And Noriega names and shames those likely to face embarrassment, to say the least. Diosdado Cabello, Gen. Henry Rangel Silva and Gen. Cliver Alcala, whom Chávez had named to crucial posts in the National Assembly, ruling party and military, in spite of their notorious ties to drug trafficking.

But here’s where Noriega may go wrong in an otherwise clever piece of journalism. He reckons that

A Castro is aware that  any federal prosecutor considering the indictment of a senior official of the Venezuelan government must obtain the prior approval of the Justice Department in Washington, DC.

That’s undoubtedly true. Castro is wicked but not stupid. But Noriega also thinks..

B Castro is promising bloody mayhem if such indictments occur, because he ‘ll thus dissuade Obama from allowing such legal proceedings.,. and, says, Noriega, ‘the idea that the White House would ask beleaguered Attorney General Eric Holder to intervene to save drug traffickers in Caracas is Castro-crazy.’

And there we beg to differ.

Obama has always used Holder, and Holder has been delighted to be used, as a thoroughly dishonest political hack. Look at the Black Panther case, and even worse, Fast and Furious.

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And it’s fair to say that Obama, with his own far-left background, is not unsympathetic to Chavez, and to Castro.

So while Noriega is irrefutably correct when he predicts that Chavista violence will rear its head if the patriots win the election, and that  ‘democratic opponents will be branded as collaborators,’ that situation will be due NOT to any positive decisions by Obama, but simply to the nature of the communist beast. 

Not enough of us overseas conservatives pay attention to Venezuela, but we should remember how Reagan’s determination to support the Freedom Fighters, the Contras, in Nicaragua, ensured that the reds there came to terms with the need for a democratic outcome.  Noriega relevantly reminds us that there are thousands of Cuban triggermen and Venezuelan militia members, who are armed to the teeth with Russian weapons.

I frankly think there’s not a snowball’s chance in Hell of Obama emulating Reagan’s honourable example. Noriega takes a different view.

I honestly hope I’m wrong and he’s right…but I doubt it!

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/05/06/2783953/castros-desperate-warning.html#storylink=cpy