The day Maduro became certifiable and tore his panama

Globalization for all but Venezuela

We must note that on March 5 2014 we were relieved that Chavez had gone for a year now and we got scared to our wits by seeing Maduro come totally unhinged.

For his commemoration ceremony he planned how so tactfully a military parade in front of foreign dignitaries. He rubbed his state medal on his chest quite often. But it did not help.

See, only Raul Castro, the murderer from Cuba, Desi Bouterse, the narco from Suriname and poor Evo came, that I know of, plus the vice from Argentina.  Truly, not the most stellar gathering after the grandeur of one yer ago.

Whether it was the poor attendance, or that Maria Corina Machado got a much better one in San Cristobal or that Caracas was in large part a war zone today, the thing is that Maduro lost it, or as we say in French "il a pété les plombs".

I am just going to mention two. One, is that he accused the students to plan bombing 15 tunnels in Venezuela. First, I am not sure that there are indeed that many tunnels in Venezuela but I may be wrong. It depends if you count tunnel systems or individual tunnels, I suppose. Whatever it is, nobody is holding his or her breath waiting for the presentation of the guilty party, nor is putting in the car dust masks just in case they were to drive through such an explosion.

The second one is that in an hissy fit Maduro decided to courageously break relations with tiny Panama and told the OAS to never ever again come to Venezuela.  The official reason is that Panama asked the OAS to discuss the trouble in Venezuela, trying to find ways to help settle the issues least the trouble affects other parts of the continent, through commerce, trade, refugees, etc..  Nothing to it, even a chance for Venezuela to make its case and show its evidence that this is all a big conspiracy from the US against them.

But of course Venezuela has no evidence whatsoever against the US or Uribe or any of the usual conspiring villains. Chavez could pull that stunt, Maduro cannot.  So, rather than having to appear at an OAS meeting and look like a brutal repressive fool, it is better to turn over the table and refuse to play. See, Maduro and its Cuban masters are understanding that the regime image is so deteriorated that they cannot count on a favorable OAS verdict no matter how much they have spent to buy its votes.

In other words, pushed against the wall, Cuba ordered Maduro to start breaking up with the OAS, a long held dear dream of Castro and Chavez, with already sabotage to the OAS by supporting someone like its incompetent secretary Insulza or creating CELAC and UNASUR to annul OAS cover.

I need to add a footnote probably lost in translation. After the electoral fraud of April 2013 Panama's president was one of the rare few to travel to Caracas and visit Maduro as the real elected president. The reason was that Venezuela owes, I understand, more than a billion USD to Panama and that is a lot of money for a small country. Martinelli simply had to think of his people. But I suspect that he did not get paid anything for his troubles since Venezuela is bankrupt. So, he decided to screw Maduro by having Panama's ambassador called an OAS meeting on Venezuela. After all, breaking with Panama is going to cost Maduro more than what it may cost Panama. Probably it will aggravate our economic crisis and make corrupt chavista upset that their assets risk being sort of frozen in Panama.

Maduro, simply put, cannot deal with the heat. The situation is way too complex for his abilities. In fact today we had a tacit acknowledgment that he is afraid, really afraid that protests are going to start in neighborhoods that are supposed to be his strongholds. So he took the irresponsible and criminal step to ask colectivos and other assorted paramilitary groups to break up any protest that may start in their neighborhood. Notice: he did not ask them to go to Altamira and repress, he asked them to get ready to repress in their very own barrios...

And speaking of Altamira, repression was particularly brutal tonight in Chacao district.