RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/venezuelan-spring-11548624135

The latest Venezuelan effort to topple dictator Nicolás Maduro is a pivotal moment in Latin American history, as the international community is acknowledging.

Democratically elected National Assembly President Juan Guaidó took an oath to become Venezuela’s interim president on Wednesday, as prescribed by the country’s constitution. Within hours he was recognized by the U.S. and some 20 other democracies, 11 in Latin America. Other governments warned Mr. Maduro that he has to leave.

More than words are at work. Last week the Bank of England blocked Mr. Maduro from withdrawing $1.2 billion in gold reserves. On Friday the U.S. gave Mr. Guaidó control of Venezuelan government accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and other U.S.-insured banks.

Not since the fall of the Soviet empire has a nation risen with such fury and determination to throw off the yoke of socialism. And not since then has Marxist misery been so clear for all the world to see. Venezuelans are experiencing what millions of Russians, Chinese, Cubans and countless others have suffered. Destitute and angry, they want it to end.

How ironic that some American politicians, like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and newly elected New York Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez want socialism for the U.S. The tide of history is going the other way.

The U.S. has promised the Guaidó government $20 million in humanitarian assistance. It is certainly needed. Venezuela’s socialist revolution, created by the late Hugo Chávez, has produced rising infant-mortality, malnutrition and even starvation. Running water, electricity and toilet paper are now luxuries. Venezuela suffers from hyperinflation, disease and rampant crime and corruption. Millions of hungry, jobless Venezuelans have fled to neighboring countries, the U.S. or Europe.

Venezuelans have made numerous attempts since 2002 to restore the liberties lost when Chávez used his majority backing to dissolve civil rights and a free press. But they were never able to persuade the military high command, infiltrated by Cuba, to break ranks with the dictator. If this time is different it’s because Mr. Maduro can no longer guarantee the interests of the top brass.

Mr. Guaidó is rumored to be backed by Venezuela’s military rank-and-file and midlevel officers. There are also reports that some commanders of detachments around the country no longer support Mr. Maduro.

The regime is unleashing repression and the international community wants to avoid more bloodshed. The U.S. has offered the military high command safe passage out of the country, and if international efforts to cut financial channels for the leadership are successful, many may find it an attractive option.

Over the weekend the European Union said it would recognize Mr. Guaidó as interim president if Mr. Maduro doesn’t agree to fair elections by Feb. 3. That seems dangerous and overly generous: This problem didn’t spring up last week.

Mr. Maduro claims he was elected in May for a second six-year term. The EU, the Lima Group—14 Western Hemisphere countries not including the U.S.—the Organization of American States and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights all objected to that rigged election. The EU, the Lima Group and the Group of Seven refused to recognize the results.

Nevertheless, Mr. Maduro scheduled a swearing-in ceremony for Jan. 10. On Jan. 4 the Lima Group declared Mr. Maduro’s second term illegitimate and warned him not to proceed. He did anyway. On Jan. 10 Canadian Foreign Minister Chrystia Freelandwarned Mr. Maduro that he would not be recognized: “We call on him to immediately cede power to the democratically-elected National Assembly until new elections are held, which must include the participation of all political actors and follow the release of all political prisoners in Venezuela.” CONTINUE AT SITE

https://pjmedia.com/trending/highbrows-vs-deplorables/

“The idea of Europe is in peril.” Thus begins an 800-word open letter published on Friday in the French newspaper Libération and other several European dailies. Written by Bernard-Henri Lévy, the French philosopher, it was signed by thirty “top intellectuals” (as the Guardian put it) from twenty-one countries.

Now, anyone familiar with current affairs will readily agree that Europe – at least Western Europe – is imperiled. It’s imperiled by a European Union whose unelected leaders are determined to convert it into a sovereign superstate with its own army and with ever-expanding powers. And it’s imperiled by hordes of Muslim migrants who, having been forced upon it by those EU leaders, will, barring dramatic reversals, eventually turn the countries of Western Europe into sharia states.

But this isn’t what these “top intellectuals” mean. Note the wording of their letter: they’re not concerned with the well-being of the peoples of Europe; their preoccupation is with the idea of Europe, which is to say with the preservation and fortification of the European Union.

And their message is that the EU is imperiled by – who else? – Europeans themselves.

Who are these “top intellectuals”? The signatories include the renowned novelists Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, and Milan Kundera, plus an assortment of philosophers, historians, activists, and social critics, some more famous than others. Their tender concern for the EU’s health is not surprising. The EU was always a project of privileged highbrows, who helped it advance from strength to strength by lying to the governed, acting without their consent, and overruling their votes. Now, with Eastern European governments rejecting dictates from Brussels and with Western European electorates, at long last, demanding that their voices be heard and their wishes respected, the EU’s architects and partisans are balking at the audacity with which the deplorables – the peons, the peasants, the proles – are standing up to them. Lévy writes:

“Enough of ‘building Europe’!” is the cry. Let’s reconnect instead with our “national soul”! Let’s rediscover our “lost identity”! This is the agenda shared by the populist forces washing over the continent. Never mind that abstractions such as “soul” and “identity” often exist only in the imagination of demagogues.

Pace Lévy, a feeling of national identity has long been a potent force in the souls of men. For him and other devotees of the “idea” of an EU superstate, it has been Job One to try to eradicate that patriotism and replace it with a newly forged sense of “European identity.” Unfortunately, these EU boosters have discovered that that particular abstraction thrives only in their own demagogic imaginations, and that most of the people of Europe want nothing to do with it. CONTINUE AT SITE

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2019/01/25

The oil alliance of Opec and Russia has abandoned efforts to drive US shale out of the global energy market, accepting the hard reality of America’s irrepressible frackers for years to come.

“To really fight shale we’d need oil below $40 a barrel,” said Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s wealth fund.

“That is not good for the Russian economy and it is not good for the Saudi economy. It is not practical, and we are not going to try to fight it,” he told the World Economic Forum in Davos.

A string of Opec members would risk incipient insolvency if there were another oil price war along the lines of 2014-2016. Saudi Arabia’s ruling dynasty would struggle to maintain its cradle-to-grave welfare model needed to head off political dissent.

Mr Dmitriev, a key architect of Russia’s oil strategy, said his country was working tightly with the Opec cartel and was now pursuing prices of $60 to $70, deemed the optimal range needed to ensure long-term stability.

Brent crude has crept up into the bottom of this range after a dramatic sell-off in October and November on global recession fears and a soft US line on Iranian sanctions. The Opec-Russia deal last month to trim output by 800,000 barrels a day (b/d) has restored balance to the market.

Germany’s once-in-a-century experiment Energiewende will enter its hot and decisive phase next weekend. Germany is serious about being the only industrial country in the world to simultaneously abandon nuclear energy and coal-fired power.

The 31 members of the government commission “Growth, Structural Change, Employment” will decide on the final plan on Friday evening. It will not be a good plan. It is expensive, risky and will hardly benefit climate protection.

There are plans for a new political intervention in the energy market that is more serious and riskier than the decision to phase out nuclear power. According to the plan, five to ten large power stations are to be shut down by 2022. According to the plan, by 2030 half of the coal-fired power plants which currently provide around 50 percent of Germany’s electricity requirements, will have been shut down.

Power plant operators will receive billions of euros in compensation, the affected federal states and districts more billions as adjustment aid, the coal miners billions as transitional money. And because this massive state intervention in the market increases the price of electricity for everyone, Germany’s energy-intensive industry is also demanding subsidies of between 14 and 54 billion euros by 2030 so that it can survive international competition. All in all, it will cost many billions of euros. However, is all of that tax money well spent?