Thanks for the info there. That’s one thing about Free Republic. Lots of people here know lots of things.
By the way, care to make a prediction? Will there be any coup attempts in Venezuela’s near future?
“That’s one thing about Free Republic. Lots of people here know lots of things.”
Only thing I’d add would be most of them share my idea that limited government is best. Keeps me coming back.
Hard to say about Vz. It has the single largest proven oil reserves in the world. 297b barrels. This has attracted the Russians interest as well as Chinese. China needs oil, Russia has already has it. Should be a natural fault line between the two which the US State Dept could exploit, but they are too busy with civil war 2. In my opinion, the reason the Chinese have been so aggressive about controlling the Panama Canal is access to VZ oil.
Iran has been in VZ, and South America, for a long time. I spent the summer of 1990 at Fuerte Tiuna outside Caracas, as part of the first MAT team to make contact with the VZ army since WW2. We finished up with R+R at an island off coast from the province of La Guaiara. Billfish capital of the world. https://www.fishinginternational.com/destination/la-guaira/
A couple years later, I took my brother and his friends there for his bachelor party. Place was overrun by muslims, cocaine and hookers, up from the tri-border area. https://financialtransparency.org/the-tri-borderi-area-a-profile-of-the-largest-illicit-economy-in-the-western-hemisphere/
Trump ignores the Latin American capacity to cause problems in US domestic politics at his own peril. There’s a lot of good people down there, but we don’t help them — and by extension ourselves — for whatever reason.
Lithium salt flats in Argentina, copper and gold in Chile and Peru, natural gas in Bolivia. US should be paying more attention.