Venezuela's Maduro and Ethiopia's Mengistu: Brothers in crimes against humanity.

History repeats itself.

Dictator spends years denying there is a humanitarian crisis in his country and orders the importation of high cost luxury items while people die of hunger. Eventually the outcry of the humanitarian catastrophe forces him to allow humanitarian assistance to enter his country, but after years of suffering for the populace. A music concert is held to raise awareness and funds for humanitarian assistance.

In 1985 for Ethiopia and 2019 for Venezuela concerts were held to save lives.

This is Venezuela  today with Nicolas Maduro, but it was also Ethiopia in 1984 under Mengistu Haile Mariam. Both shared two things in common: Marxism-Leninism and a close alliance with the Castro dictatorship that included thousands of troops and intelligence agents to assist them. The first shipment of Red Cross humanitarian aide finally arrived on April 16, 2019.  According to Reuters, the "United Nations estimates that a quarter of Venezuelans are in need of humanitarian assistance, with 1.9 million suffering from malnutrition and some 300,000 whose lives are at risk due to lack of medicine."

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

Famine is not due to inefficiencies in the system or incompetence but rather it is a feature of the system that uses hunger to consolidate political control and power.  This is why in 1984 in the midst of hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians dying of hunger, Mengistu Haile Mariam was importing cases of Scotch Whisky and denying their was a crisis.

This is why over at least the past three years Maduro has denied there is a humanitarian crisis in Venezuela and rejected aid shipments as war material or more recently an imperialist provocation. One should not be surprised if one looks at who he idolizes.  

Mengistu's portrait hangs alongside a banner with Marx, Engels and Lenin in Ethiopia

Last year Maduro celebrated the life of Chinese mass murderer Mao Ze Dong on the anniversary of his death. On Monday, April 22, 2019 he celebrated the birth of Russian mass murderer Vladimir Ilich Ulianov, known better by his revolutionary name of Lenin, over social media claiming that "Lenin continues today to be living history."

It is important to recall that famine was used as a political weapon in Russia, China, and Ethiopia under the communists. It is also important to remember that the Cubans played a role in the manufactured famine in Ethiopia and may be doing it again in Venezuela today.

The Spanish scholar George Santayana was right, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."