{"id":43142,"date":"2019-01-25T07:02:56","date_gmt":"2019-01-25T12:02:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43142"},"modified":"2019-01-25T07:02:58","modified_gmt":"2019-01-25T12:02:58","slug":"the-cia-lost-in-the-orinoco%ef%bb%bf","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=43142","title":{"rendered":"The CIA, Lost In The Orinoco\ufeff"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theautomaticearth.com\/2019\/01\/the-cia-lost-in-the-orinoco\/\">The CIA, Lost In The Orinoco<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.wikiart.org\/en\/rene-magritte\/black-flag-1937\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/3r8md7174doo44lgpk3kou79-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/MagritteBlack-flag-1937.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"text-align:center\">Ren\u00e9 Magritte\u00a0<strong>The black flag\u00a0<\/strong>1937<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One thing I am not is an expert on Venezuela. What I know is the country has the world\u2019s largest oil reserves, mainly in the Orinoco Belt, but they come in a form of tar sands that while they are not as hard to exploit as Canada\u2019s (viscosity), they\u2019re far from easy, and buried deep. And I know Venezuela had Hugo Ch\u00e1vez as its president, who, for a socialist, was quite successful at what he did (depending who you ask).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And I know of course that the US yesterday recognized an opposition leader, Juan Guaido, as the \u2018real\u2019 president of Venezuela, instead of the elected Nicolas Maduro, whom Ch\u00e1vez picked as his successor. Soon as I read that, I thought: CIA. If Ch\u00e1vez, and Maduro, are hated in one place in the world, look no further than Langley, Virginia.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So I looked up a few articles I though would be interesting to read. The first comes from a site called Venezuela Analysis, an entity recommended for Venezuela news. They had the article below, but also this enlightening picture:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/3r8md7174doo44lgpk3kou79-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/VenezuelaClown600.jpg\" alt=\"\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Note: in 2002, coincident with the attempted coup against Ch\u00e1vez, half the employees at state oil company PDVSA went on strike. They must have felt like clowns, too, 48 hours later.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The article explains what happened in terms you can find everywhere (but are perhaps good to note), except for the last bit:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/venezuelanalysis.com\/news\/14244\"><strong>Venezuelan Opposition Leader Guaido Declares Himself President, Recognized by US and Allies&nbsp;<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p><em>Opposition leader Juan Guaido swore himself in as \u201cinterim president\u201d of Venezuela on Wednesday, a move which was immediately recognized by the United States and regional allies. \u201cAs president of the National Assembly, before God and Venezuela, I swear to formally assume the competencies of the national executive as interim president of Venezuela,\u201d he declared before an opposition rally in eastern Caracas.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>&nbsp;\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The CIA, Lost In The Orinoco Ren\u00e9 Magritte\u00a0The black flag\u00a01937 One thing I am not is an expert on Venezuela. What I know is the country has the world\u2019s largest oil reserves, mainly in the Orinoco Belt, but they come in a form of tar sands that while they are not as hard to exploit [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[24127,130,135,24128,426,8764,2493,24129,16928,13924,1343,694,4053,2799,5177,10522,818,851],"class_list":["post-43142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-chavez","tag-china","tag-cia","tag-guiado","tag-inflation","tag-lavrov","tag-maduro","tag-orinoco","tag-puppet","tag-raul-ilargi-meijer","tag-regime-change","tag-russia","tag-shortages","tag-socialism","tag-the-automatic-earth","tag-trump","tag-turkey","tag-venezuela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43142"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43143,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43142\/revisions\/43143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}