Coming soon to the U.N.S.C.: Anti-imperialist ramblings (with Special Guest Star Maby80)
It’s done. The Bolivarian Government has won (unopposed) the Latin American seat for the United Nations Security Council for the 2015-2017 period. This time, there was no major drama – unlike the previous attempt back in 2006. They won it easily in the first round with 181 votes, way more than the magic number of 129 they needed. The government is already uncorking the champagne.
For the record, Venezuela has already been in the Security Council four times before (1962–63, 1977–78, 1986–87, 1992-93), but don’t be surprised if the hegemony sells it like a virgin, there for the very first time. After all, events in the B.C. period (Before Chávez) are already classified as terrible and, therefore, don’t really count in the new A.C. era (After Chávez).
Of course, a lot of things have changed in the last eight years. But the central government will sell this a massive political victory. Even if there wasn’t any real challenger and the U.S. decided it wasn’t worth the effort to block it.
These news arrive just in a time when the State is having a serious beef with another section of the United Nations: the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. This independent panel has requested the release of both Leopoldo López and San Cristobal former Mayor Daniel Ceballos, after finding the detention of both as “arbitrary” and “unlawful”. The response in masse from the Venezuelan State has been more or less on the same page: “Butt out!”
Taking the post is up to the U.N. Ambassador (currently Samuel Moncada), but lots of attention will be placed on the newest member of his delegation, Alternate Ambassador Maria Gabriela Chávez, i.e., the daughter of Hugo. She will surely attend the sessions, taking her seat next to the delegation from the country that inoculated her father with cancer.
Another thing to watch is if Nicolas Maduro himself will pull off an Obama and personally lead a Security Council meeting when the country assumes the presidency for a month (exact date TBA). Because the comandante eterno would have done it, had fate and politics not intervened.
Caracas Chronicles 
Just as well the world is not likely to face any major problems in the next couple of years, ones that might require serious diplomacy as opposed to mindless slogans, knee-jerk solidarity and self-centred foot-dragging.
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… or automatic siding with China and Russia.
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Juan, i think that counts as a mindless slogan.
After all, China is still ruled by the Communist Party and the Soviet Union never fell.
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“Just as well the world is not likely to face any major problems in the next couple of years…”
Uhhh… Are we talking about the same world? The one I live in is fraught with more instability than at any time in my life. I would say we are nearly guaranteed to face major problems during the next couple of years that will absolutely require serious diplomacy.
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Must be tongue -in -cheek, to be followed by foot-in-mouth if/when Maduro assumes the presidency for a month.
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I am wondering, if/when one of those major problems at the UN security council becomes Venezuela, Venezuela can participate in votes on those resolutions.
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No wonder so many US politicians on the right have a hissy fit when funding the 22% of the UN’s budget to the tune of $3.6B. They had a field day a few years ago whenChina and Cuba were in the Human Rights Commision.
I can just imagine the fodder that Maria Gabriela Chavez and Maburro can provide if they decide to push their new found prominence in the best Chavista kitsch.
On the other hand, it makes you wonder if the UN has any sense of self preservation of their relevance. It is interesting to note that the new (or new installment, as you wish) of the war in Iraq against ISIL pretty much bypassed the UN altogether.
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Keep in mind, it wasn’t the UN but Latin America. Tradition states that Latin America gets two seats, and they decide amongst themselves who gets to go.
The drama from the last time was that the Latins chose Venezuela, and the US decided to group together a group of breakaways and sponsored Guatemala. After many rounds of deadlock, the world settled for Panama, a consensus candidate.
This time around, there was no energy for playing that game. Latin America acquiesced, not the UN.
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Latin America acquiesced.
And the price was …?
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Dignity.
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Actually, Guatemala had been the candidate all along because they had never been in the SC. Venezuela challenged the nomination and got support from most latin american countries though not consensus. That’s why they left the decision to the General Assembly
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Exactly. A pitiful display of hypocrisy and spinelessness. The gimp is an ignorant, resentful, trantrum-throwing thug, but so long as the gimp has oil and the blessing of an aging dictator in a track suit, we will defer to the gimp.
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Hey, y’all elected the fools and allow them to stay in corrupt power. Until you solve the problem yourselves, the world is stuck with your malandros at the UN. The rest of us will have a good laugh at their antics while the reputations of Venezuela and Latin America continue to slide off the scale.
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Salt. Wound.
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Rinse. Repeat (forever).
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In this predominantly pro-opposition blog, you really have a nerve to say “we all” voted for them. Many of us never supported the Chavez regime to begin with. The parish I live in has always voted against chavismo with truly overwhelming margins, but it’s not our fault the rest of the country decided to vote chavista.
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There is something you cannot scape called society. What is the planet your parish is located in?
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That doesn’t mean all of us support (or supported) this regime or voted for it. To say we are all guilty for it is a lie.
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Jose, pero aunque no queramos muchos fuimos corresponsables por acción u omisión, yo recuerdo haber salido a entregar volantes en el metro por el No en el referéndum de la constituyente y donde me pare como una pendeja? En la entrada del metro de chacao, porque ni loca me atrevía a pararme en el metro de las adjuntas donde sabía que el 85% los apoyaba. Tuve miedo de arriesgar más y me pregunto cuantos pueden decir que han hecho todo y más en todo momento para evitar que el fenómeno del chavismo (que ya venía cantado por muchos) se diera con tanta fuerza y derrumbara lo poco de vida cívica que teníamos? Fallamos todos, los intelectuales, los medios, los partidos, los burócratas, los ciudadanos. Y el barbarazo arrasó…
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Y si supieras que esa acción no fue en vano, porque la participación en un municipio, por más pro-oposición que sea, importa bastante en una elección.
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I am sorry but this is called delusion. If you are Venezuelan, you are in the same shithole as we all are. Think about it, you did not vote for this disaster but you suffer it. Why? Because believe it or not you are part of something bigger called society. A society is something much bigger than just few responsible citizens. I have always thought that Chavez’ uglinness consisted on being so Venezuelan. If you’d manage to put the whole Venezuelan society in front of a mirror, do you know how would it look like? A small pixel of that ugly image of Caliban would belong to you, to your family, to your street, to you parish…
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I just don’t see your point? I do not neglect a society exists, nor I’m having delusions that we should be counted as a separate entity when it comes to who governs us. I’m just saying that maybe, if the Venezuelan society is to blame because Chavez won all of his election with more than 10 points in each one of them (meaning he had a vast approval among citizens); to say we ‘all’ voted for him is nonsense.
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Jose M.
In a very real sense, I disagree. If you accept that democracy means that collectively the entire public has the right to choose leaders and decide on public policy, then the responsibility for the public’s decisions and and the policies that result lies with that same public. If the majority of the public decides wisely, all of the population benefits from the wisdom of the majority, not just those who elected wisely. If it decides poorly, than all bear the responsibility for the consequences. Those Venezuelans in opposition, have also repeatedly failed to successfully defend there democratic constitution when needed. Furthermore, it was the failures of previous elected governments that led the current extremist and polarized political situation Venezuelans now face.
By the very concept of democracy, if a people are faced with a tyranny, they are responsible for overthrowing that tyranny. No people of a democratic republic can escape the responsibility for what their government does in their names.
In WWII many Germans opposed Hitler and voted against them. Nevertheless, Germans understand that they all bear the collective guilt for the atrocities committed. When I hear Venezuelans crying, “I didn’t vote for him!” it sounds like a whiny child when asked who made the mess blames his baby brother and the dog instead of taking responsibility.
Stop whining, grow up, and do the right thing!
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It’s like your baby brother trying to jump from the 5th floor, and you failing from saving him. If he falls, and consequently dies, no one will be crazy enough to call you a “murderer”, but rest assured that everyone will think that you were at least lenient and incompetent in the way you looked after him that day. It’s the same thing regarding Venezuela. You can’t blame the opposition directly for Venezuela having become an infeasible country, but you can blame them for naivety, complacency and even lazyness, yes. How many Venezuelans in the upper-classes had had no idea about what Chavez wanted back in 1999? Or better yet, how many Venezuelans who are now living abroad had actually said that Chavez was not “that bad” back then? Many in the opposition acted like Chamberlain after that infamous meeting with Hitler. They lifted the gate for the Trojan horse to enter.
As my father says, if you don’t try to exert some influence on your relatives, neighbours, co-workers; someone else will. In the case of Venezuela, Chavismo occupied the void left by people like the ones commenting here. Do an experience, let your baby boy or baby girl with someone else and go travel for six months, when you return he will hardly want to go back to your arms. By analogy, you can call this “someone else” Chavismo. What Venezuela teaches us is that if you want loyalty, you must keep the vulnerable close to you. And if you just ignore them and let them rot outside your gated community, they will be “adopted” by someone else. But now it’s too late, and the vulnerable have become victims just like the opposition, the common enemy will unite both.
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Well said. Thanks for understanding my comment above. It isn’t something most Venezuelans want to hear.
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Lemme see. Two foreigners not only comment on the Venezuelan political system, but weave analogies to lay the blame on the entire opposition for what has transpired politically prior to and since chavismo.
Now I’m not saying that the blame is totally unwarranted. But life is more complicated than being reduced to the ego-tripping finger-wagging of some who use logic that doesn’t totally cut the mustard.
Case in point.
If Roy, with whom Marc agrees, states: ” In WWII many Germans opposed Hitler and voted against them. Nevertheless, Germans understand that they all bear the collective guilt for the atrocities committed. ”
And Marc says: “Many in the opposition acted like Chamberlain after that infamous meeting with Hitler.”
Then I’m left to infer that all citizens in the UK were also responsible for the atrocities committed by Hitler, given that they were too lazy to choose a more appropriate representative than Chamberlain, who, in turn, opened the door to the Trojan horse. As such, collectively, UK citizens lifted the gate, and therefore caused the bombings over their own capital city.
You see, when jewels wag their fingers with sweeping statements of pseudo-morality, they can’t have it both ways. Meaning, my precious jewels, life is a more complex than either of you would want to acknowledge. It’s time you both grew up.
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“And if you just ignore them and let them rot outside your gated community…”
It’s almost amusing to see how quick people in this country are so prone to blame everything on the middle class, people who had a bit of economic comfort, yet they had to work like ants to keep that standard and give some life quality to their families; and then a bunch of bastards came from nowhere and started treating them like baby rapists that deserved to be killed on the spot and have all their patrimony stolen.
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You’re good at analogies.
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Ralph: Marc is a disaffected Brazilian, on the verge of resentimiento, who has vowed to move to Italy if Dilma wins the next round. Meaning, he’ll be trying to wash his hands of any responsibility for her re-election. But he can’t, really, after expressing his anti-Vz-opposition sentiments. Funny about people who moralize; it’s usually to hide some guilt, or pretend it doesn’t exist.
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Obviously, there are degrees of guilt and responsibility. However, I am not arguing purely from analogy. The very premise of democracy in which the citizens take responsibility for their own government (“of the people, by the people, and for the people”) dictates that the people are collectively responsible for the acts their governments commit. There is no authority without corresponding responsibility.
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Forchrissakes, Roy. Stop the slippin’ and slidin’ with the latent talk of degrees of responsibility, where earlier none existed in your little rant. So now, what percentage of responsibility, did UK voters have for allowing Chamberlain to open the gates to Hitler, so that 6.5 years later, their action would result in the bombing of their own city? Was it 80%? Likewise, what percentage of responsibility do you award the opposition for having ushered a conman like Chávez? Is it 75.2%? Do tell.
Better yet, live at least 20 years in Latam before you speak like a child, incapable of understanding geopolitical realities IN THEIR CONTEXT. You come across like a moralizing prig.
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Syd, I don’t need an entire lifetime here to understand what happened and why. I know perfectly well how the current situation came to be. It may even have been inevitable in some sense. When some trust-fund kid starts behaving badly, we all know there is blame to be shared, but we don’t completely excuse the brat himself either. Venezuela, because of oil wealth, had more means than its cultural maturity level could handle. However it got there, it has now arrived at point of crisis, and it is time for it to grow up and start being a responsible adult. And showing a little humility would be a good place to start.
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Syd, I won’t answer your other remarks above, because I don’t think it’s worthwhile. But just to let you know, I have absolutely nothing against Venezuela. On the contrary, I have a profound empathy with the suffering Venezuelans endure every day, which in reality is not very different from mine. Actually, I think I care so much about Venezuela because I see myself in those students being killed by the colectivos. Maybe that’s why Europeans and Americans will never care: it’s such a distant world to them, but so close to mine.
“he’ll be trying to wash his hands of any responsibility for her re-election. But he can’t, really, after expressing his anti-Vz-opposition sentiments. Funny about people who moralize; it’s usually to hide some guilt, or pretend it doesn’t exist.”
Sorry, but I say EXACTLY the same thing about my compatriots, and I tell them directly! Often ending in a quarrel. I think we all in the Brazilian opposition should be blamed UNTIL THE END OF TIMES (including MYSELF) if Dilma gets reelected. Because we would have failed our people and ourselves miserably if that happens, and in an unfixable way. If that woman wins again, it will be the ultimate evidence I needed to know that we are an impossible country not at all different from Venezula ou Cuba. And I know hundreds of people here in Brazil who will repeat this same bullcrap I read above, that “the parish I live in has always voted against chavismo with truly overwhelming margins, but it’s not our fault the rest of the country decided to vote chavista.”, as if we could dissociate ourselves from the rest of society, living in bubbles divorced from the outside world and at the same time expecting that the masses will miraculously care about what we think is correct or wrong when the elections time arrive.
But yes, I’m not a masochist, so I don’t have to stay and live under a dictatorship until my last days. Sorry if I don’t have the inclination to being a slave under a tyranny. If that’s make me a “disaffected” person, then I’m pretty sure that the readers here (99.9% living overseas) are not the ideal ones to point their fingers at me. Also: Matthew 7:5
PS: I’m not “on the verge of resentimiento”. I’m full resentimiento! The difference is that you guys like to blame Capriles, MCM and Lopez for everything that goes wrong, while I prefer to blame you all!
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Look Roy, this will be my last response to you as an eager-beaver for simplistic answers that shift the blame, where it’s convenient, while avoiding answers to questions arising from your logic applied elsewhere. Case in point, you keep avoiding my question on the (percentage/degrees of) responsibility that the UK had in the bombings of its capital city, due to an earlier political blunder. I suspect you’d also avoid answers to your logic that would ascribe blame to all US voters that ushered in GW Bush, and by extension, the anger from the Twin Tower bombers on 9/11.
Failing answers to questions that apply your same logic beyond Venezuela, tells me you’re a young pup, full of yourself, thinking you have all the answers to life’s complexities, but only in your current adopted land. Go spin your black-and-white rant on Vz somewhere else.
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“young pup”? LOL… It has been several decades since anyone has called me that.
We agree on one thing, though… I am done with you too.
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. . . And just to confuse it all even more, I just would like to remind those who claim we all bear responsibility in the issue for voting for Chavez,who the other “alternatives we’re back in December of ’98. Alfaro Ucero, Irene, Salas Römer? Really? I actually did abstain,which on my own account makes as responsible as anyone, but only in retrospective since I do not remember any of those who now claim we “all” in the opposition are be guilty of the “desmadre” that came to happen how this “desmadre” would be.
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We can expect this little victory to be overly embellished in every way from the Hegemony…Already Maduro is claiming Venezuela broke records with those 181 votes, while Malaysia received 187 and Angola 190.
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A former writer of CC (because I haven’t seen any other article from him) wrote on twitter today”The early year events that happened in Venezuela helped to unmasked chavismo in front of the world, they say…”
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If the Venezuelan government was in any way identified with the far-right, this sick regime would be seen with disgust, shock , fear and awe by all Latin American countries. What prompts me to confirm that Bolivarianism is just fascism with a better public relations’s team.
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With all that was written about VZLA’s Human Rights abuses this decision makes the UN look hypocritical…Issuing their “decrees” and demands to countries accused of abuses and at the same time says very little to nothing about an aggressor nation of abuser coming to a privileged position. This seat is not a right of passage..I don’t care what Latin America agreed to months or years ago about rotations.Since, the govt has been engaged in state sponsored hatred and Human Rights abuses.. This decade is stained for LA democracies or lack thereof….To the average person it smacks of a lack of caring for the VZLAn people and their suffering as well as turning a blind eye to the Dignity of the Human Being…So much for Human Rights….
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The UN, which does a lot of good, has always been hypocritical and enraging, specifically on what goes on in the chambers. A few years ago Libya (under Qaddafi) was heading the Human Rights council, for christs sake!
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Don’t worry. The will backfire on the Chavista government.
Maduro and Maria Chavez will be put on stage so the whole world can see their ignorance. This includes everyone in Venezuela. He will blame all of Venezuela’s human rights violations on the United States.
Moreover, the press is free in the United States and reporters here can be relentless.
The Castros will write every word any Venezuelan says in front of the UNSC. I hope reporters will ask questions of Maduro and Maria Chavez after they speak. Ignorant responses will certainly make people wonder what Vzla is doing at the UNSC.
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As long as there is any money left to be stolen I would imagine even $ 77.65 per barrel won’t wipe the smile off the mugs of these a..holes.
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Regime that openly disobeys mandatory sentences from the U.N regarding the political harrasment gets a seat at the security council…
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Big deal !!, country falling to pieces and the regime gets a bit part in an International show , doesnt make the least difference in our lives , maybe the chance for the regime toplay act its farces in a bigger stage , but the big guys keep on running the show . The interesting news is whats happening to prices in the oil market and the slow motion wrecking of Venezuelas oil production of light medium crudes and its consequences for the countries oil revenues,!!
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And the day after winning this highly responsible position, the government shows its ass again by arresting the Alcaldesa del municipio San Diego, Rosa de Scarano. She is now in the cooler in Ramo Verde, along with her husband, Enzo Escarano and Leopoldo López:
http://www.eluniversal.com/nacional-y-politica/141017/voluntad-popular-denuncia-que-rosa-de-scarano-fue-detenida-en-ramo-ver
Don’t you just love how they pull these stunts on a Friday afternoon, so that public outrage gets blunted over the weekend? I guess that U.N. demand that they release political prisoners really impressed them.
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She was released, thank God.
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Rumors that Tibisay Lucena is already in Brazil to help fraud our elections:
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do you really believe this bullshit?
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She is in Brazil, it’s a fact. What is uncertain is what she is doing here.
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I think considering Tibisay to be some sort of election-robbing mastermind, that PT had to hire last minute to guarantee the fourpeat, is giving her WAAAAYYYYYY too much credit…
she’s suffering from cancer and lives in a broken country with no decent health services, it does not seem far fetched that she’s getting treatment in Brazil; sadly she is not the firt and certainly won’t be the last Venezuelan forced to travel abroad to have access to the most basic human right of healthcare.
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I hope you are right, thanks for the message, These elections are making me too nervy.
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