Apparently all of that “anti-imperialist” rhetoric from Caracas was just a farce for public consumption. As Venezuela’s economy implodes amid skyrocketing inflation and crippling shortages of practically everything, Socialist strongman Nicolás Maduro (shown) has a new plan to prop up his imploding regime: annex two thirds of neighboring Guyana’s territory and almost one third of its population. The area eyed by Maduro’s autocracy is especially noteworthy now that potentially lucrative oil deposits have been discovered offshore. Unsurprisingly, a powerful alliance of the region’s socialist strongmen and their allies has sided with the regime in Venezuela. Talk of war is escalating. Now, the United Nations is getting involved, too.
The fresh dispute over the massive stretch of Guyana’s territory, known as the Essequibo region, first flared up again in June. Maduro, faced with a domestic uprising among impoverished and oppressed citizens, issued a presidential decree purporting to claim sovereignty over the entire 65,000 square miles of Essequibo, which accounts for the overwhelming majority of Guyana’s landmass and some 200,000 of its 750,000 citizens. Also included in the area claimed by Maduro is the vast stretch of ocean where energy giant Exxon-Mobil, under contract with Guyanese authorities, recently announced the discovery of oil. Maduro outlined a “defense” zone offshore that, if allowed to stand, would reportedly block Guyana’s access to the Atlantic Ocean.
The decree by Maduro came just weeks after the U.S. energy company found the oil deposits.
When things are r, an almost passive assumption arises that those with stuff should just share it. Inherent to that is a revulsion at the thought of people violently seizing things. As resources contract, that morphs into a burning desire to raid, and a passive assumption that might makes right.
Meanwhile, in America, our own K-strategist openly embraces the K-strategy:
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on Monday he supported the use of US ground troops to fight Islamic State militants in the Middle East.
Speaking on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” program, the billionaire businessman said it would take American soldiers to target the militant group, also known as ISIS or ISIL.
“They have great money because they have oil,” Trump said. “Every place where they have oil I would knock the hell out of them.
“I would knock out the source of their wealth, the primary sources of their wealth, which is oil,” he told MSNBC. “And in order to do that, you would have to put boots on the ground. I would knock the hell out of them, but I’d put a ring around it and I’d take the oil for our country.”
Again, things are changing. Nobody would have said this at the height of the dot-com boom. It had been driven almost completely from our political discourse. Yet now it is back. At the same time as the Hugos, gamergate, the new Black militancy of #blacklivesmatter, the anti-immigrant sentiment in Europe, and the support for deporting illegals here. These are the soft tremors which send animals fleeing for higher ground before the tsunami hits. This is the angst. It will become something historic in proportion, and we get to watch it develop from the beginning.
Be grateful.
Apocalypse comth™
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