President Biden may have pardoned Alex Saab, a Venezuelan businessman and Maduro supporter who conspired with others to inflate the price of food and medicine during a hunger crises in Venezuela. But some of his co-conspirators were left behind. Judge Ruiz recently granted one of those co-conspirators a hefty sentence reduction, noting his cooperation and contrasting his situation with others like Saab who had "skipped town." The Associated Press covers it here.
Apparently the pardon of Saab was part of a goal "to improve relations with the OPEC nation and pave the way for freer elections."
6 comments:
Pardoning the supporter of the communist dictator who conspired to starve the Venezuelan people is going to "pave the way for freer elections"? Real genius diplomacy there.
A simple explanation for 10:32: diplomacy involves doing and allowing certain distasteful things. As Winston Churchill said, "meeting jaw to jaw is better than war, war." Maybe that guy and his followers are jerks, but Venezuela cannot solve a big immediate problem without his release.
Byrne's quote is from the author of the article and not the Biden administration.
Also, Saab was swapped for 10 Americans.
And the Biden administration has gotten a commitment from Maduro and some in the opposition party to work together to reach a series of basic conditions for the next presidential election. They also slightly eased sanctions.
Of course, this all will probably come to nothing, but as 10:26 wrote, this is the process of diplomacy.
10:32 Maduro is not a communist. He is not a leftist, a revolutionary, or a socialist either. He has no ideology other than maintaining power and enjoying the fruits of a corrupt regime. These authoritarian regimes are not communists or socialists. They use the language and imagery of communism, socialism, people power, etc. as a tool because if they said what they really stand for - corruption, oppression and power - it would be more difficult to gain and keep power and its benefits.
Spot on 6:07
Ah the Real Communism Has Never Been Tried crowd has arrived.
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