JD on Venezuela (all's well that gets oil wells)

Venezuela has suddenly become part of the news agenda, or maybe it is part of the 'fake news' agenda. It is hard to tell these days.

Unlike the majority of pundits and commentators, I have actually been to the country. For about three months in 1992 I was working in Caracas on a pipeline project bringing water to the capital to service the 'barrios' the shanty towns encircling the city. Most, if not all of these 'favelas' were without running water.

It was a long time ago and I have forgotten most of the details of what I was doing on the project but I did garner some vivid impressions of life there so here are a few. I will offer a few thoughts on the current situation later.

I had already worked for this company on another project in Zaragoza in Spain so I knew their ways reasonably well and they wanted me because I can speak Spanish and especially the engineering and technical terminology.

I was lodged in the CCT hotel which is itself incorporated into a very large shopping complex. First thing I noticed was the armed guards at every entrance to the shopping centre and not just one man with a pistol, there were four or five at each entrance and very visibly armed. Among all the shops were bars and restaurants as well as night clubs and through the windows of one I could see and hear some very lively and energetic dancing. Clearly these Venezolanos know how to enjoy themselves!
The office was somewhere downtown and a taxi from the hotel basement was the best way to get there. Taxis were all fairly nondescript American 'barges' which usually feel like floating about in a hovercraft. Up in the lift at the office block to the twelfth floor and sitting in the lift lobby was a uniformed guard with a gun and his back to the window. On the 12th floor? What sort of country is this?

As time passed I began to learn that Caracas is a sort of 'inside out' prison with all the good guys living their lives behind bolted and barred doors, and with all the bad guys free to walk the streets. I never felt threatened at any time but I was always aware of my surroundings. Lunch was a cafe/bar across the road and was very good. I especially liked the black beans with arepas, spicy and tasty.

I noticed that it rained every day regular as clockwork in the afternoons. A cloudburst of very heavy rain and it was literally a cloudburst. Something to do with the microclimate generated by the high altitude and the surrounding mountains. (Climate scientists do not like to acknowledge such things because it upsets their computer modelling; see previous post on climate.)

And then one day, during my final week there, our office manager was shot on his way home from work. He was driving home and was waiting at traffic lights when he had a gun pointed in his face through the open window. The robber took his watch and then shot him in the thigh. He then fired two or three bullets into the engine for some reason. I went to visit him in hospital and he was not seriously wounded but he did seem to have been traumatised by the episode and was nowhere near his usual cheery self. The hospital, by the way, was spotlessly clean and had an air of calm about it. I think our NHS could learn a thing or two from Latin America; a few years later I visited a colleague in hospital in Chile after he had a heart attack and it had the same air of unhurried calm and was spotlessly clean.

A couple of days before I left I was told by the senior project manager to go and get a ticket for the BA flight - "You have to be patriotic" or words to that effect.  So I went to the travel agent on the ground floor of the building to book the flight. Only two seats available, one in first class and the other one at the back among the backpackers. No contest, I'll have the first class ticket please! Project manager had gone back to Paris by this point so I didn't say anything and nobody checked in the weeks after. I am worth it anyway, that's my excuse! Later that afternoon there was a power cut in the building. When the power was restored we found out that there had been a bank robbery at the bank next door to the travel agent. The robbers had somehow interrupted the power supply which allowed them to do whatever they did.

I think I have related elsewhere how the company's 'Mr Fixit' took me to the airport and escorted me from kerbside to 1st class lounge in about 10 or 15 minutes just by waving his security pass at everyone! That's the only way to travel!

A few thoughts on the current situation starting with some background information taken from my copy of the South American Handbook, 1992:

* The Spanish landed in Venezuela (little Venice) in 1498, what they found was a poor country sparsely populated with very little in the way of a distinctive culture. It remained a poor country for the next 400 years or so, agrarian, exporting little and importing less.  Oil was discovered in 1914 and everything changed. It became the richest country in Latin America and the known reserves were estimated to last for 40 years. (i.e. until 2032)

* Only about 20% of the land area is devoted to agriculture and three quarters of that is pasture. (In effect, animal husbandry with little in the way of food crops)

* 84% of the population live in urban areas.

* Venezuela is Latin America's fourth largest debtor despite having foreign reserves of approximately US$20 bn accumulated by the mid 1980s from oil wealth.

Carlos Andres Perez was president of Venezuela while I was there in 1992 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Andr%C3%A9s_P%C3%A9rez

Note the importation of 80% of food during his first term and the huge loan from Washington during his second term. If there are food shortages it means the supply chain has been cut and knowing how and why that has happened will be a clue to the reason for the current crisis. All of those loans will come with strings attached and any spending will be monitored by the 'money changers' with very little leeway.

 I watched the TV programme about Chavez last week and both Chavez and CAP seemed to me to be pursuing similar policies, trying to improve the living standards of their people. But they also made the same mistakes; relying solely on oil revenues and not investing in the future for when the oil runs out. The conditions attached to the various loans will probably mean that the social programmes of both Chavez and CAP will be abandoned in favour of 'austerity' as is happening in Europe.

During the last few days (at the end of January) the US policy on Venezuela has become blatantly obvious: regime change. And I look at the history of the continent and I cannot help but see that the US has supported every dictator in Latin America.

Since 1492 the imperial powers of Europe have sought to control the whole continent, both north and south. Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, French and British have been playing a perpetual power game in order to exploit the 'Eldorado' of the new world. Now the US has joined the game and their main objective is oil, it is always oil for the US. It is the foundation of their foreign policy. I saw a comment somewhere that it wasn't really about oil because the US has more than enough oil in their own country. A very naive comment indeed; I first worked in the oil industry in the 70s and it was made clear to me that there were indeed massive resources in the US. Hundreds of wells have been drilled and capped and they serve as their reserve. Almost all of the American engineers I encountered would gleefully boast of how they were going to deplete the resources of other countries. After all, the supply is finite. The earth is not manufacturing oil any more. It was a great joke among Americans that when all of the foreign resources had been fully exploited then they would open the taps on their own wells.

With the whole world supporting the US actions except Russia and China who are lining up behind Maduro and the Venezuelan people, this is not going to end well so I leave the last word (28th January) to Ron Paul -
http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2019/january/28/trump-s-venezuela-fiasco/

___________________________________________
Sackerson adds: these stories seem to imply that Venezuela "needs saving from itself"...

World Bank Reports Venezuela Oil Output Falling Since 2000

Venezuela’s collapse: How far will oil production fall? 

"Kill them all, God will know His own!"

... said the Abbot.

1. Abortion up to the moment of birth (New York State, 2019):

"The law also now allows medical professionals who are not doctors to perform abortions in New York... The law also addresses late-term abortions. Under New York's Reproductive Health Act, they can be performed after 24 weeks if the fetus is not viable or when necessary to protect the life of the mother." - https://edition.cnn.com/2019/01/23/health/new-york-abortion-measures-trnd/index.html

(Interestingly, CNN here leaves out the real hole in the law, that will let through the coach and horses: the words "or health" to be inserted after "life" in the quote above. In the UK, 97% of abortions are justified by reference to mental health.)
-  https://www.news10.com/news/local-news/full-text-read-the-full-text-of-the-reproductive-heath-act/1718439748
- https://www.spuc.org.uk/news/news-stories/2018/may/dont-use-mental-health-to-justify-abortion-law-change-psychiatrists-warn

2. Arguments for abortion after birth (British Medical Journal):

"Abortion is largely accepted even for reasons that do not have anything to do with the fetus' health. By showing that (1) both fetuses and newborns do not have the same moral status as actual persons, (2) the fact that both are potential persons is morally irrelevant and (3) adoption is not always in the best interest of actual people, the authors argue that what we call ‘after-birth abortion’ (killing a newborn) should be permissible in all the cases where abortion is, including cases where the newborn is not disabled."
- https://jme.bmj.com/content/39/5/261

3. Drifting towards euthanasia (Royal College of Physicians):

"In a statement, the RCP said: “following this new poll, the RCP will adopt a neutral position until two-thirds of respondents say that it should be in favour of or opposed to a change in the law”. That is to say, unless two thirds of respondents say they oppose euthanasia, the College will change its position to one of neutrality."
- https://www.bioedge.org/bioethics/royal-college-of-physicians-polls-members-likely-to-go-neutral-on-euthanasi/12938

Already a man has been euthanised for being an alcoholic:
- https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/man-holland-netherlands-dutch-euthanised-alcohol-addiction-alcoholic-netherlands-a7446256.html

Soon, it may be disabled young people and adults; the old and/or decrepit; the poor...

Will only prisoners convicted of a capital crime be safe?

Abortion and Google, the BBC and "unbiased" advice

As New York State has now legalised abortion up to birth, many people must now be looking around for information to work out how they feel about the issues involved.

But Google may be quietly making their minds up for them:

"According to the Breitbart source, a Google software engineer started the discussion thread after learning that abortion-related search results had been manipulated. 

"The source said the manual intervention was ordered after a Slate journalist inquired about the prominence of pro-life videos on YouTube. 

"In response, pro-life videos were allegedly replaced with pro-abortion videos in the top ten results, the software engineer said, calling that change a 'smoking gun'."

- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6599341/Leak-claims-Google-regularly-intervenes-YouTube-search-results.html

And when I look for statistics on the British Pregnancy Advice Service, to see if there may be any bias in their advice to expectant mothers, on Google I find nothing.

However the tone of their chief executive, Ann Furedi, is interesting:

“The answer to unsafe abortion is not contraception, it is safe abortion. When you encourage women to use contraception, you give them the sense that they can control their fertility – but if you do not provide safe abortion services when that contraception fails you are doing them a great disservice.  Our data shows women cannot control their fertility through contraception alone, even when they are using some of the most effective methods. Family planning is contraception and abortion. Abortion is birth control that women need when their regular method lets them down.”

- https://www.bpas.org/about-our-charity/press-office/press-releases/women-cannot-control-fertility-through-contraception-alone-bpas-data-shows-1-in-4-women-having-an-abortion-were-using-most-effective-contraception/

Furedi's background may be relevant, for although the BPAS site says "We support pregnancy choices and trust women to decide for themselves," her past history may give us some clues:

"Furedi has worked in pro-choice organizations for more than 20 years, mainly in policy and communications. She ran the press office of the UK Family Planning Association before leading Birth Control Trust, a charity that advocated the need for research and development in methods of contraception and abortion. Before joining BPAS, as its chief executive in June 2003, Furedi was Director of Policy and Communications for the UK regulator of infertility treatment and embryo research, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA). She is regarded as a leading pro-choice advocate and spokesperson, often appearing in the media representing this perspective.

"Prior to her career in pro-choice organizations, Furedi was a journalist, specialising in healthcare features for women's magazines, including Cosmopolitan and Company, sometimes writing under her "maiden name", Bradley. She is also known as Ann Burton. In the early 1980s, she worked for the National Council for Civil Liberties as its Gay Rights Officer, using the name of Ann Marie Bradley.

"In 1982, she married Frank Furedi, the founder and then leader of the British Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP)."

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Furedi

Broadcast media may be no more help to those who want unbiased discussion - see this complaint by the pro-life organisation Life:

- https://lifecharity.org.uk/news-and-views/bbc-complaint-abortion-trial/

Years ago there was an office in the Birmingham Bull Ring for something called the Solid Fuel Advisory Service; run, of course, by the Coal Board. I assumed their advice would go something like this:

Should I have a gas fire, or a coal fire?

- Coal.

And if a woman comes to the BPAS and says, "I'm pregnant and I'm not sure what to do," what (when there's no cameras or voice recorders) will their advice be?

- And do they put it in writing?

FRIDAY NIGHT IS BURNS NIGHT, by JD

Tonight is Burns Night once more. A celebration of the life of Scotland's national poet; more whisky, more haggis please!

Last year we had a selection of his songs and they can be reprised here - https://theylaughedatnoah.blogspot.co.uk/2018/01/music-for-burns-night-by-jd.html

As a musical celebration this year, something slightly different. But first a cautionary tale from Scots comedian, Danny Bhoy:

Abortion and the law

Yet another area where there is far more heat than light. But since New York has just passed a new law on abortion, I'd be interested in some clarification.

"§ 2599-BB. ABORTION. 1. A HEALTH CARE PRACTITIONER LICENSED, CERTIFIED, OR AUTHORIZED UNDER TITLE EIGHT OF THE EDUCATION LAW, ACTING WITHIN HIS OR HER LAWFUL SCOPE OF PRACTICE, MAY PERFORM AN ABORTION WHEN, ACCORDING TO THE PRACTITIONER'S REASONABLE AND GOOD FAITH PROFESSIONAL JUDGMENT BASED ON THE FACTS OF THE PATIENT'S CASE: THE PATIENT IS WITHIN TWENTY-FOUR WEEKS FROM THE COMMENCEMENT OF PREGNANCY, OR THERE IS AN ABSENCE OF FETAL VIABILITY, OR THE ABORTION IS NECESSARY TO PROTECT THE PATIENT'S LIFE OR HEALTH."
- https://www.news10.com/news/local-news/full-text-read-the-full-text-of-the-reproductive-heath-act/1718439748

What counts as "health" in this context? Is this defined in other legislation?

The Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child - founded by Christians but not limiting its membership to them - says:

"... 97pc of the almost 200,000 abortions which occur annually in the UK, take place under the 'mental health' ground.

"In fact, these abortions [in Ireland] are almost always for socio-economic reasons," a fact acknowledged by the Joint Committee on the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, which said in its report of Irish women who travel for abortion or obtain pills: "What became clear during evidence is that the majority of terminations are for socio-economic reasons"."
- https://www.spuc.org.uk/news/news-stories/2018/may/dont-use-mental-health-to-justify-abortion-law-change-psychiatrists-warn

Is it necessary to be a Bible-thumper to feel concerned at the potential inhabiting this seemingly vague legal terminology?

Is this a "freedom" cause for the Left and/or libertarians, and/or does it suit those (on the Right?) who see aborting the poor as a way to reduce crime, as per the findings of the authors of "Freakonomics"?

Or should one not ask any of these questions, and pass by on the other side, pretending not to notice?

The balloon goes up: has Parliament cut its own string?

As Parliament continues to try ways to subvert the results of a Referendum it previously assured us would be binding, "Raedwald" detects what I call "a dangerous groundswell" in public opinion.

I go on to comment:

"I'm reading a potted history of the English Civil Wars and there are points of similarity between the 1630s/1640s and now: arrogant and slippery Government, discontent with the system of representation in Parliament, multiple ideological fracture lines in the populace. 

"Charles thought he could dodge round it all and carry on. Our current political establishment seems to think it can do so, also."

At this time we begin to hear calls for direct democracy, or at least closer ties between the people and their MPs in an age where travel and electronic communication have almost abolished our separation from Parliament. However, enthusiasts for direct control overlook how divisive voting can be, and how intemperate, prejudiced and ill-informed are many of the participants.

So, who is fit to decide?

We go back to the New Model Army's Putney Debates of October-November 1647. One of the issues was Parliamentary representation: the system was out of balance, constituency sizes varying from "around a dozen to several thousand."(1) The first demand of the Levellers faction, stated in their draft "Agreement of the People", was:

"1. That the people of England being at this day very unequally distributed by counties, cities and boroughs for the election of their deputies in parliament, ought to be more indifferently proportioned according to the number of the inhabitants: the circumstances whereof, for number, place, and manner, are to be set down before the end of this present parliament."

The word "inhabitants" needed clarification.

Colonel Thomas Rainsborough, for the Levellers, argued that owning or renting property should not be a criterion. For him, the franchise should be universal for all adult men:

"Really I think that the poorest he that is in England has a life to live as the greatest he; and therefore truly, sir, I think it's clear that every man that is to live under a government ought first by his own consent to put himself under that government; and I do think that the poorest man in England is not at all bound in a strict sense to that government that he has not had a voice to put himself under."

General Henry Ireton saw a potentially destabilising implication in this:

"In choosing those that shall determine what laws we shall be ruled by, no person has a right to this, who does not have a permanent fixed interest in the kingdom…if we take away this law, we shall plainly take away all property and interest that any man has."

Rainsborough was swift to deny that he was arguing for anarchy, but Cromwell intervening and attempting to take some of the heat out of the discussion, still noted that there was such a potential in the proposal:

"No man says that you have a mind to anarchy, but [that] the consequences of this rule tends to anarchy; for where is there any bound or limit set if you take away this [limit], that men that have no interest but the interest of breathing [shall have no voice in elections]?"(2)

When the property qualification was at last abolished in 1918, and women to some extent were also enfranchised, the size of the electorate tripled. Later, all adult women could vote; then (in 1969, and presumably because he thought young people would be more like to vote Labour) Harold Wilson dropped the minimum voting age from 21 to 18. In 2015, Labour's Ed Miliband was proposing to drop it further, to 16; last year, a Cambridge professor mooted a reduction to age 6.

Surely there must be some age below which people cannot be judged capable of mature understanding. But we don't have educational or IQ bars to voting, so why age?

And one could argue that the right to vote is not to do with having sufficient judgement to direct public affairs, but instead to register one's desires, since governments are now involved in almost every part of our lives.

Besides, isn't the exercise of skilled and well-informed judgement the role of the Parliamentary representative? Thus (htp: Michael St George) Edmund Burke in 1774:

"To deliver an opinion, is the right of all men; that of constituents is a weighty and respectable opinion, which a representative ought always to rejoice to hear; and which he ought always most seriously to consider. But authoritative instructions; mandates issued, which the member is bound blindly and implicitly to obey, to vote, and to argue for, though contrary to the clearest conviction of his judgment and conscience,--these are things utterly unknown to the laws of this land, and which arise from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and tenor of our constitution.

"Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where, not local purposes, not local prejudices, ought to guide, but the general good, resulting from the general reason of the whole. You choose a member indeed; but when you have chosen him, he is not member of Bristol, but he is a member of parliament."

In any case, how can an MP fairly represent a constituency deeply and almost equally divided on some great matter?

So for most of the time we may accept the argument that MPs have the good of the nation as a whole for their guiding star.

But what sharpens the contest over Brexit is the sense that politicians are acting neither in accordance with the manifestos on which they stood at the last General Election, in which undertakings were given to see the Brexit process through to its conclusion; nor in accordance with the will of the majority of the electorate in the Referendum; nor (as that majority judged) in the people's best long-term interests.

This raises questions about the status of party manifestos; about "First Past The Post"(3); about the power to reselect MPs; about the potential conflict of personal and career interests of MPs with their duty to the public; about whether it is or was ultra vires for Parliament to compromise or give away national sovereignty without a most serious, carefully balanced debate and plebiscite; about the authoritative status of that plebiscite.

For it was a plebiscite, not a referendum: leading politicians and the Referendum pamphlet itself made it clear that what the people decided would be the last word on the matter.

A fine and dangerously fractious mess.

As I said on Raedwald's:

"In 2016 the Government could have said, decision made; we shall implement it, negotiate a sensible settlement with the EU in the interests of the country as a whole, and assiduously seek to reunite the people as we go forward.

"It is not too late to do so, even now; but it is getting late."
_______________________________________________

(1) John Miller, "The English Civil Wars," Constable and Robinson (2009), p. 167
(2)  Keith Lindley, "The English Civil War and Revolution: A Sourcebook," Routledge (1998) pp. 152-155
(3) It's interesting to see that the Alternative Vote was already being used in the twentieth century:
"The universities constituencies which returned more than one Member used the single transferable vote system to elect the Members."
- "The History of the Parliamentary Franchise," House of Commons Research Paper 13/14 (1 March 2013), p. 43

Should we keep up the fight against drugs?

I've been pleasantly surprised to have a civilised discussion with someone on Facebook. He makes the points that the ban hasn't worked and illegal drugs aren't controlled for quality; if legalised they can be controlled and the tax used for education and medical treatment; drugs have always been around and shouldn't be in the hands of ruthless dealers who will sell to anybody; we should legalise, regulate, educate and tax.

Fair points, well made.

I reply:

"The PTB have quietly abandoned any serious attempt to tackle the trade over the last 40+ years, partly because they, their pals and sons and daughters indulged themselves, so we don't know what might have happened if they'd got a grip instead.

"And drugs used to be taken in a socially controlled context - e.g. the old men past work sitting under the Tree of Idleness in Kyrenia. Even here not so long ago, pub landlords were supposed to manage drunkenness.

"It's not just the physical harm aspect - alcohol is plenty bad too - though the way drugs get to us also involves harm (perhaps a phial of victim blood should be attached to every baggie, as a reminder?) - it's that with young people, it's like tying their legs together at the start of the hundred-yard dash, so that if and when they're ready to start a career they're years behind their contemporaries. There's lots of youngsters struggling against it - I've known at least one teenage Asian lad (re)turn to Islam in an attempt to get himself off what he called "bud, Bu-ddha"; unfortunately the meditation disc he was given to listen to segued into a Jew-hatred harangue once the trance was well on...

"But there's big money to be made in this, as well as tax, so I expect it can't be stopped.

"People cite Prohibition in the US as though it was a failure - it wasn't (and it didn't forbid drinking alcohol - only commercialising it.). It was repealed because the Depression had set in and the government needed money, plus the brewers and their workers saw an opportunity to better their fortunes."

And now that our government is strapped for cash, here we go. Please, not Mr Branson, though.