How Humanitarian Assistance is an Existential Threat to Maduro's and Castro's Project to Build Communism in Venezuela

"In the future, there will be fewer but better Russians." - Greta Garbo, Ninotchka, 1939
 

Maduro's forces set fire to humanitarian aide

Nicolas Maduro, the former president of Venezuela, is ordering troops to burn humanitarian aid. The usurper claims that humanitarian assistance is an existential threat and provocation to his regime. This claim is also backed by the Castro regime. However, they are not being honest about the real nature of the threat.

Venezuelan Jean Pierre Planchart, a year old, weighs 11 pounds.

Maduro, along with the Castro regime, are attempting to install a communist dictatorship in Venezuela. One of the instruments that communist regimes have used to subjugate populations is famine and rationing food to those who are loyal and denying it to those who are not.

Famine is a tool communists have traditionally used to remake societies. 

The deadliest famines in the 20th century were not in Africa but in Europe (Ukraine) and China.
Social science research has demonstrated that famines "happen only with some degree of human complicity."  Human decisions "determine whether a crisis deteriorates into a full-blown famine."

Jean Pierre Planchart malnourished inVenezuela. Pic: Dr. Livia Machado

 In the case of Venezuela, Chávez and Maduro destroyed the market in food by imposing price controls "that resulted in underproduction when the official prices did not meet costs of production. Their governments expropriated farms, ranches, and even food distributors such as butchers. There’s very little if anything produced on these expropriated territories." Rhoda Howard-Hassmann's article "Famine in Venezuela" published on August 21, 2018 in the World Peace Foundation reports:

"By 2017 malnutrition was confirmed in Venezuela, precipitating the political unrest now roiling the country. According to Antulio Rosales (“Weaponizing Hunger is a New Low for the Venezuelan President,” Globe and Mail, March 12, 2018, p.A11) and Enrique Krauze (“Hell of a Fiesta,” New York Review of Books, March 8, 2018, pp. 4-7), by early 2018 more than half of all Venezuelans had lost between 19 and 24 pounds, and 90 per cent said they do not have enough money for food."

 TRT World's Ediz Tiyansan reporting from Caracas on December 30, 2018 published the article "Child malnutrition on the rise in Venezuela" that reveals that levels of hunger in Venezuela are that of a famine.

"The World Health Organisation says, a country with 10% of its children with malnutrition is at risk, at 12% it's considered famine. In Venezuela, a recent study conducted in five different states shows that we're at 14.8%," says Huniades Urbina, President of Venezuela's Childcare and Pediatrics Society.

Despite this reality, on February 4, 2018 Maduro shipped 100 tons of aid to Cuba and on February 6, 2018 Maduro, once again, ordered humanitarian shipments of aid to be blocked from entering Venezuela. Maduro continues to double down and block aid, or actually destroy it when it enters Venezuela.

Maduro blocks aide to Venezuela while sending it to Cuba as Venezuelans go hungry

This is not incompetence, but a sinister political and military strategy that has been successfully played out elsewhere.

Maduro's regime issued ration cards for food in a country were mass hunger is an ever present reality and it is understood by many that following regime instructions, such as going to vote in the last sham election, was necessary to be eligible for rations.  The electoral calculus was clear: "Everyone who has this card must vote," said Nicolas Maduro and continued, "I give and you give." 

This is a very old playbook.

According to Felix Wemheuer, professor of Modern China Studies at the University of Cologne, in his book Famine Politics in Maoist China and the Soviet Union," during the twentieth century, 80 percent of all famine victims worldwide died in China and the Soviet Union." 

Millions starved to death under brutal famine imposed by Joseph Stalin

However, to understand the nature of famine politics in communist regimes the monograph of Andrea Graziosi and Frank E. Sysyn in the East/West: Journal of Ukranian Studies titled "Communism and Hunger" is required reading. Consider the following:

"In fact, with the exception of the 1943 Bengal famine with its approximately two million victims, all of the other major famines of the twentieth century are directly connected to socialist "experiments": in 1921 and 1922 in Russia and Ukraine ( 1million - 1.5 million deaths); in 1931, 1932, and 1933 in the USSR (6.5 million - 7.5 million deaths, of which 4 million were in Ukraine and 1.3 million - 1.5 million in Kazakhstan); in 1946 and 1947 in the USSR (1 million - 1.5 million deaths); from 1958 to 1962 in China (30 million - 45 million deaths); from 1983 to 1985 in Ethiopia (0.5 million - 1.0 million deaths); and from 1994 to 1998 in North Korea ( estimates vary from a few hundred thousand to more than 2 million deaths)."

This was not due to poor central planning and socialist inefficiencies, but a deliberate policy of genocide against targeted population to consolidate political control by eliminating those who do not support their regime. The percentage of victims in the USSR and China relative to their respective overall populations were the same (5%). In the case of the USSR that meant around 7 million deaths out of a population of 160 million and in the case of China  estimates between 30 million and 45 million deaths out of a population of 600 million.

Famine victim in China

According to Graziosi and Sysyn, "most of Ukraine's four million deaths - more than sixty percent of all the famine victims in the USSR - were concentrated in the few weeks between the beginning of April and the the end of June 1933. This points to a political decision to use famine as a weapon to solve a specific "national" problem.  

Starving mom holds her child at height of Holodomor. USSR.1933.

Furthermore, according  to Andreas Graziosi in her 2016 monograph Stalin and Mao's Famines: Similarities and Differences,  outlines the role played by "ideology; planning; the dynamics of the famines; the relationship among harvest, state procurements and peasant behaviour; the role of local cadres; life and death in the villages; the situation in the cities vis-à-vis the countryside, and the production of an official lie for the outside world."

Maduro, and his Cuban allies issued denials about the extent of the problem of hunger in Venezuela. The rejection and destruction of humanitarian assistance combined with images of tons of humanitarian assistance shipped from Venezuela to Cuba appears bizarre, but it needs to be placed in the context of previous episodes involving other communist regimes.

Both the USSR and China used Western journalists, such as Walter Duranty in Moscow and Edgar Snow in Beijing to deny that a famine was taking place and to defend the official lies of the regime. This practice continues today in Cuba, Venezuela and elsewhere.

Fidel Castro lounging with Mengistu Haile Mariam, in Ethiopia in 1977

In Ethiopia, Mengistu Haile Mariam's regime, reproduced Soviet and Chinese practices when he blacked out communications, and refused access to aid agencies. 

In December 1979, during an Ethiopian military offensive, this time including Soviet advisors and Cuban troops, it “was more specifically directed against the population’s means of survival, including poisoning and bombing waterholes and machine gunning herds of cattle.”

Worse yet, as starvation took hold in Ethiopia, Mengistu ordered planeloads of whisky to celebrate the tenth anniversary of his taking power. Denying that a famine was taking place. Once that could no longer be denied he then used the famine as a cover for ethnic cleansing and removing opponents.

 This history, and the role played by the Cubans, Russians, and Chinese needs to be taken into account when looking at the situation unfolding in Venezuela now.

From Maduro's twitter on September 9, 2018

The population of Venezuela today is approximately 32 million of which 1.6 million is 5%. Based on 90 years experience of communist regimes is that the number that needs to be killed through hunger to successfully terrorize and subjugate a people?

If that is the case then the efforts of the United States and other countries to deliver tons of humanitarian aid to Venezuela and break the death grip of an emerging famine in that country is in and of itself an existential threat to Maduro and his Cuban allies project of imposing communism on  Venezuelans.

It is no coincidence that Nicolas Maduro admires and celebrates the legacy of Mao Tse Tung. 

This is the real reason why humanitarian aid is considered a great provocation by the Maduro regime and his Cuban allies. It takes control from their ongoing effort to kill a lot of Venezuelans to impos their political model.

Furthermore, it is why it is important to hold those responsible for carrying out this policy accountable and brought to justice.

Honoring the memory of over 100 million victims of communism

"To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.” - Elie Wiesel, Night 



Friday, June 9th starting at 9:00am on the corner of Massachusetts and New Jersey Avenues NW in Washington, DC for the tenth year there will be a Roll Call of Nations Wreath Laying Ceremony at the Victims of Communism Memorial.  This annual event is hosted by the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. Government representatives of formerly captive nations, civil society groups and victims of communism will gather to honor the memory of the more than 100 million persons killed  by communism over the past century.

Communists massacred the Russian royal family in 1918

 Last year I was physically present and humbled to translate for Cuban dissidents Oscar Elías Biscet and  Sirley Ávila León at the Roll Call of Nations at the Victims of Communism Memorial.

Roll Call of Nations Wreath Laying Ceremony at Victims of Communism Memorial

 This year I will be unable to physically but will be there in spirit and lament that I will not be able to once again meet such great heroes of freedom as Mart Laar of Estonia and Vytautus Landsbergis of Lithuania.  They not only played crucial roles in the liberation of their perspective countries but have been steadfast champions for the freedom of Cuba.

Communists today celebrating a bloody and murderous legacy

 2017 has an important historic significance because it marks the 100th anniversary of a tragic event, the founding of the first communist dictatorship that murdered the Russian royal family, plunged Russia into what would be a bloody century of war, repression, manufactured famines and terror that claimed tens of millions of lives.  Children were not spared. Like their totalitarian Nazi counterparts the Communist Party of Great Britain will be celebrating this criminal enterprise.

Communists manufactured famines to liquidate class enemies started in the USSR

However the apologists for communism will downplay the human cost and the 1939 Molotov - Ribbentrop Pact where the Soviet Union, the first communist regime, allied itself with Nazi Germany to divide up Poland and usher in World War II.

German Nazi and Russian Communist soldiers greet one another in Poland (1939)

Think of it for a moment, over a 100 million lives over the span of a century. One million state engineered violent deaths a year for one hundred years. The death toll of communism can clearly be seen today rising in places like Venezuela, North Korea, and China but the killings although lower profile also happen in other communist regimes.

We owe it to both the victims of communism from the past and of today to remember them and denounce what has happened and is still happening now in order to finally bring an end to the communist death toll. Below is a partial list of the dead reaches 102.566 million dead.

Communist death toll (estimate)*

Soviet Union 61 million dead

Peoples Republic of China 35 million dead

Khmer Rouge (Cambodia) 2 million dead

Communist Vietnam 1.670 million dead

North Korea 1.663 million dead

Communist Ethiopia 725,000 dead

Communist Rumania 435,000 dead

Communist Cuba 73,000 dead

Please if you live in or near the nation's capitol then this Friday, June 9th at 9:00am join in this vigil for justice for victims of communism on the corner of Massachusetts and New Jersey Avenues NW in Washington, DC. I'll hold a moment of silence at that time in remembrance of the victims. Either way please consider sending a tax deductible donation to the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation because they are doing important work educating America's youth on the real nature of communism.



 *Source: HOW MANY DID COMMUNIST REGIMES MURDER? By R.J. Rummel

Cuba's role in the crisis in Venezuela and how it can also hurt Americans

Venezuela in crisis

Venezuelan women march on May 6, 2017 against repression in Cuba

Protests across Venezuela continue
Thousands of Venezuelan women, dressed in white, marched through the streets of Venezuela on Saturday denouncing repression by security forces. Some of the women flashed their breasts waving posters that read: "We have no firearms, just breasts." Young Venezuelans continue to be shot in the head by paramilitary groups working together with the police and national guard. Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado pleaded: "We beg the armed forces: don't open fire on unarmed people."

Young Venezuelans peacefully demonstrating the Maduro regime continue to be shot in the head and killed some victims from over the past month are: Hecder Lugo (age 20), Miguel Medina (age 20), Jairo Otriz (age 19)  Carlos Moreno (age 17) and although not shot in the head, but in the throat, was 18 year old violinist, Armando Cañizales. This last death led the Venezuelan director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gustavo Dudamel,  to say "It is time to listen to the people: Enough is enough.”  There is a long list of Venezuelan youth murdered by the Maduro regime.   

Where is Leopoldo?
Venezuelan prisoner of conscience Leopoldo López Mendoza has not been seen in a month. Rumors are circulating that he has been murdered. Considering that the same Cubans who are advising Maduro also murdered an international human rights figure like Oswaldo Payá Sardiñas, the fears for Leopoldo's well-being are not unwarranted.

Nicolas Maduro with his rubber stamp Supreme Court

Venezuela's downward spiral into totalitarianism continues with the Nicolas Maduro regime ramping up control and repression causing millions of Venezuelans to resist it then pause for a while until the protests die down and then begin again. The latest round began on March 30, 2017, the Maduro controlled Supreme Court stripped the National Assembly of its powers provoking the latest round of mass protests in Venezuela and international condemnation. President Maduro, following the escalating protests, called on the Supreme Court to reverse itself and they did. However at the same time Nicolas Maduro announced the activation of the green phase of Plan Zamora reported by Caracas Chronicles as:

an exercise of “integral anti-imperialist action (…) meant to strengthen the national deployment of civilian-military union to defend the nation.” The description’s made worse by the threats made by several regime members since Monday, concerning the plan to align all of their paramilitary groups – colectivos – and PSUV’s fighting corps towards the same goal of “defense”.

Cuban role in the rise of Chavism
In addition to domestic repressive forces there is a foreign presence heavily embedded in the Venezuelan military and intelligence services. Last year the head of the opposition National Assembly of Venezuela on May 15, 2016 was complaining, over social media, of the presence of 60 Cuban officers. This included a Cuban general, who he identified by the last name Gregorich, who had a leadership role that included issuing orders to Venezuelan troops. Capitol Hill Cubans identified the Cuban General as Raul Acosta Gregorich. 

Castro regime's number three man, Ramiro Valdez with Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro

It is also surprising that when reviewing Cuban involvement in Venezuela that the February 2010  hiring of Ramiro Valdes, then age 77, "as a consultant for that country's energy crisis" did not raise more eyebrows. He is viewed by some Cuba experts as "the No. 3 man in the Cuban hierarchy." Afro-Cuban scholar Carlos Moore offers the following background information on Commander Valdez :

"Ramiro Valdez was an inflexible, totalitarian and brutal person. He was the most feared man in Cuba. The repressive policies of the regime were crafted by him. Valdez struck fear into the hearts of Cubans (even revolutionary ones). Today, he apparently continues to be the same dogmatic, sectarian and brutal person he was at the height of his power."

The Castro regime's interest in Venezuela began from the earliest days of the dictatorship. Venezuelans understood the threat poised by the Cubans by 1960 when Ernesto "Che" Guevara was giving unsolicited advice to Rómulo Betancourt, the democratically elected president of Venezuela. Guevara called for Betancourt to use the firing squad against his "rightist opponents." In 1963 Congressional Quarterly reported on how:

"Riots led by Communists and other pro-Castro elements in Caracas [in the autumn of 1960] took the lives of 13 persons and injured 100. Venezuela recalled its ambassador to Cuba, and Betancourt ordered out the army to end the rioting, which he termed an attempt to “install a regime similar to that in Cuba.”

Cuban Communist leader Blas Roca, told a Havana rally on January 23, 1963 that when the communists gained full control and “make themselves owners of the great riches in oil, aluminum and everything their earth imprisons, then all of America shall burn.”  A cache of three tons of weapons was found on a Venezuelan beach in November 1963 that was to be used to disrupt the democratic elections there.

Fidel Castro meeting with President-elect Rómulo Betancourt in 1959

Fidel Castro would continue to agitate for revolution in Venezuela. A well documented incident occurred on May 8, 1967 and was reported by Francisco Toro in The Washington Post who described how: "two small boats carrying a dozen heavily armed fighters made landfall near Machurucuto, a tiny fishing village 100 miles east of the Venezuelan capital, Caracas. Their plan was to march inland and recruit Venezuelan peasants to the cause of socialist revolution." An all night gun battle with the Venezuelan military led to nine guerrillas dead, two captured, and one who had escaped.

The Castro regime's efforts would not begin to bear fruit until December 1994 with the arrival of Hugo Chavez in Havana to a hero's welcome following two years in prison for a coup attempt in Venezuela. Four years later Chavez had won the presidency of Venezuela and the Castro regime finally had its entry to Venezuela.  By 2007, Chávez had declared that Cuba and Venezuela were a single nation. “Deep down,” he said, “we are one single government.”  When Hugo Chavez died in 2013 the succession to Nicolas Maduro was planned in Havana.

 Diosdado Cabello target of the DEA with General Raul Castro and his Foreign Minister

Consequences of Cubazuela
The name of this "single nation" is Cubazuela and is a term that has been used by mainstream press publications such as The Wall Street Journal. The consequences to the people of Venezuela are well known. Violence has escalated during the Chavez-Maduro era to levels never seen before. There is widespread hunger now in Venezuela. Civil liberties and the rule of law are rapidly disappearing.

What is not generally known are the consequences for the United States and the role the Castro regime plays in this. There are numerous news reports about the Venezuelan regime's links to international drug trafficking, and that U.S. investigations point to high ranking  officials in Venezuela turning the country "into a global hub for cocaine trafficking and money laundering," but little is said about the Castro regime's decades long involvement in it that still continues.  Panamanian police seized more than 400 kilograms of cocaine in a Cuban ship on its way to Belgium in April of 2016.

Cuba was placed on the list of state sponsors of terrorism on March 1, 1982, less than three months after the US State Department confirmed that the Cuban government was using a narcotics ring to funnel both arms and cash to the Colombian M19 terrorist group then battling to overthrow Colombia’s democratic government.

In a 1991 Frontline documentary, Cuba and Cocaine, U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Commander Jeff Karonis, stated, "We would observe in the middle of the day an air drop going on inside Cuban waters. The scenario would be for a small twin-engine airplane with maybe 1,000 to 2,000 pounds of cocaine to fly over Cuba, drop the drugs to a predesignated rendezvous point to several boats. Then it would exit back down off Cuba, and many times a Cuban military vessel would be in the immediate vicinity, right on scene with them.''

Venezuela: Global hub of drug trafficking
Jackson Diehl in The Washington Post reported on the Venezuela, FARC, Cuba trafficking axis on May 24, 2015 in the article "A drug cartel’s power in Venezuela":

Ever since Colombian commandos captured the laptop of a leader of the FARC organization eight years ago, it’s been known that Chávez gave the Colombian narcoguerrillas sanctuary and allowed them to traffic cocaine from Venezuela to the United States with the help of the Venezuelan army. But not until a former Chávez bodyguard [ Leamsy Salazar] defected to the United States in January did the scale of what is called the “Cartel of the Suns ” start to become publicly known. [...] The day after Salazar’s arrival in Washington, Spain’s ABC newspaper published a detailed account of the emerging case against Cabello, and last month, ABC reporter Emili Blasco followed up with a book laying out the allegations of Salazar and other defectors, who say Cuba’s communist regime and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah have been cut in on the trafficking. That was followed by a lengthy report last week in the Wall Street Journal that said Cabello’s cartel had turned Venezuela into “a global hub for cocaine trafficking and money laundering.”

Wikileaks revealed that American diplomats also know that the Castro regime provides safe haven for the FARC in Cuba. Considering the close working relationship between Cuban and Venezuelan officials and the rampant drug trafficking and money laundering in Venezuela the claim that officials of the Castro regime are not involved seems highly unlikely. Furthermore in confronting the problem of rising levels of drugs flooding the United States, U.S. officials should re-visit sharing drug intelligence with the Castro regime.

Outlaw regimes in Venezuela also allied with Cuba

North Korea
"Our government, our people, our party, in addition to condemning any imperialist attack, will fight with Venezuelans to safeguard the Bolivarian Revolution" - North Korean Ambassador Jon Yong Jin, 10/3/13 

A report appeared on May 18, 2016 that North Korean Special forces and the Chinese People's Liberation Army are in Venezuela conducting military exercises with their Venezuelan counterpart. 

In March 2016, the same month that President Obama visited Cuba, the Castro regime signed a confidential military cooperation and intelligence-sharing agreement with North Korea reports the Paris based publication Intelligence Online. The Cuban dictatorship, under Raul Castro, has had extensive relations with the Hermit Kingdom that has included violating international sanctions to smuggle tons of weapons.

North Korea reopened an embassy in Venezuela on June 20, 2014 following a high level meeting in October 2013 with North Korea's ambassador to Cuba Jon Yong Jin who was executed in a purge in December of 2013.  Venezuela recognized North Korea in 1974 but due to North Korea's economic crisis in the 1990s it shut down its embassy in Venezuela at the time.  Venezuelan officials who met with the North Korean diplomat showed an interest in grafting elements of the North Korean governing philosophy onto the Bolivarian Revolution.

The official claim by the Maduro regime is that all this is being done to combat the threat of U.S. imperialism, but the reality appears that this has more to do with maintaining and consolidating control over Venezuela. 

Iran
"I've visited Iran more than 20 times, I deeply know the good nature, the good, deep spirit of the Iranian people and I love it. I love Iran as much as I love our Commander Chavez.” - Nicolas Maduro, August 30, 2016

Fox News reported on April 17, 2017 of a serious security threat for the United States:

A former director of Venezuela’s Office of Identification, Migration and Foreigners said that during his 17 months in the post, the socialist government gave at least 10,000 Venezuelan passports and other documents to citizens of Syria, Iran and other Middle Eastern countries.

In an interview with El Nuevo Herald, Colonel Vladimir Medrano Rengifo said the operation was headed by current Vice President Tareck El Aissami.
He said most passports and visas were granted in the Venezuelan Consulate in Damascus, Syria’s capital.

"Today we don’t know where these people are, nor what they are doing,” said Medrano, who currently resides in the United States.

 The crisis in Venezuela is having tragic consequences for Venezuelans and, with the rising levels of drugs entering the United States, also for Americans. However the relations with outlaw states points to more ominous dangers that need to be taken into account. Lastly ignoring the role played by Cuba is a mistake.