Lima Group shows how much it cares

Image from Red Bubble.com

Lima Group shows how much it cares

They could make it as short order cooks considering how little time it took to rustle up their official list of recommendations.

Lima Group Declaration February 04, 2019

Oh, who are we kidding; the list was drawn up a long time ago. The Lima Group are coming across as merely a bunch of willing ratifiers.

The real objective was saved to next-to-last:

• They call on members of the international community to take measures to prevent the Maduro regime from conducting financial and trade transactions abroad, from having access to Venezuela's international assets and from doing business in oil, gold and other assets.

Yep, grab the goodies, by all means.

The final item may or may not reflect a measure of concern for human rights (Optics, it's called):

• Finally, they reiterate their support for a process of peaceful transition through political and diplomatic means without the use of force.

But look how openly generous we Canadians are:

CBC: Canada pledges $53M to help Venezuelan refugees as Lima Group allies meet to discuss 'dictator' Maduro

Well, that should go a long way to ease some consciences. They don't say who will distribute the funds nor to specifically whom, but I bet there are NGO's falling all over themselves to get a piece of that action.

Canadians certainly should want to ease the situation for the frantic poor, especially if what Maduro says is true that the US has deliberately created the food shortage.

But many of the commenters to the above-linked CBC article just want to keep Canadian money at home, although one commenter does seem to grasp the big picture:

chris gillespie 

Is the 53 million meant as a sorry for organizing a coup and destroying Venezuela through the upcoming civil war?

I'm not sure 53 million is going to cover the reparations we will owe the Venezuelans for destroying their country?

Fascinating that Mexico did not attend the Lima Group meeting and has reportedly taken a "neutral" stance:

AmericanMagazine: Mexico stays neutral in Venezuela crisis, calls for international summit

• Its new left-leaning president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has taken a stance different from that of his predecessor on Venezuela, going so far as to invite Maduro to his inauguration.
• Some feel the second largest Latin American country is being needlessly timid in the face of the disorder in Venezuela

I wonder if "timid" is the right word for it, considering the pressures that can be brought to bear on anyone interfering with US aims for Venezuela. (Timid Trudeau, maybe, for going along with this fiasco.)

The Mexican response ... 

• has its roots in the very painful experience of Mexico-U.S. relations in the 19th century,” said Mr. Soriano-Nuñez, referring to the Mexican-American war of 1846-48, during which Mexico lost half of its territory to its northern neighbor. “We were the very first country to experience the consequences of U.S. imperialism."

That wall that Trump so badly wants; any chance it could prove useful in keeping out the Americans?

Don't tell anybody this, but sometimes I wonder if Canada wouldn't be better off joining up with Russia. Geographically, it makes sense. Of course, we too would have to build a wall between us and US-style "democracy", and we'd have to get rid of US-dominated NORAD in favour of Russian/Canuck lookouts instead.  And we'd have to grab Alaska, because it's up to no good for sure. But face it, Russia and Canada occupy the same part of the globe, side-by-side, with the same climate and the same staid approach to life in general, and with just a smidgen of water between us. Plus, we'd have access to that darling nuclear deterrent, and instead of having to kiss the US hiney we could just ask our neighbour to wag a bomb at them instead...

Where was I?  Oh, yes ...

Does nobody remember the situation of the Venezuelan poor in the days before Chavez?  The media are holding out the myth that it was a rich country and Chavez made it poor. The truth is there were some very wealthy people there, but many, many more who were dirt poor.

Misión Cultura storytelling project:

• The anti-neoliberal orientation of the Chávez government and its alliances with social justice movements in the country and across the region enabled distinct options for grassroots social action, and that range is also apparent within the Misión Cultura storytelling project.

When it was a so-called "democracy," the US businesses and Venezuelan wealthy land-owners profited mightily from the cheapest of labour, while tightly closing their eyes to the sad existence of the people who served them and cooked for them and cleaned their houses and mowed their lawns and suffered their beatings. Remind you of somewhere else? The American south, for instance? While calling itself a democracy?

Bravo to the US brainiacs who managed to restore starvation to Venezuela by controlling the prices of oil and gold in order to ultimately shift the country back to the rich. That's what democracy is, you know.  It's unadulterated Capitalism -- the right to be filthy rich on the backs of the poor.

The exact words have yet to be used but "Let them eat cake" would not be surprising if blurted out by Trump or Trudeau/Freeland, none of whom has ever known material want of any kind in their lives.