Category Archives: UN United Nations Fraud Corruption

Congress Moving to Stop BDS, Finally

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BDS and the Methodist Church:

The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the largest coalition in Palestinian civil society leading the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, salutes the United Methodist Church (UMC) for declaring the five largest Israeli banks off limits for investment for the Church’s $20-billion Pension and Health Benefits Fund.

The BNC congratulates the United Methodist Kairos Response (UMKR) group within the Church for its relentless and effective leadership in raising awareness among Methodist communities about Palestinian rights and the need for the church to end all its investments in companies that profit from Israel’s occupation and human rights violations.

Bisan Mitri, a spokesperson for the BNC, warmly welcomed the decision: “This historic step shows, with concrete measures, the ethical commitment of the United Methodist Church to peace and justice. Israeli banks finance the decades-long occupation and oppression of Palestinians and are a key pillar in sustaining the brutality of Israel’s military, the unrelenting expansion of Israel’s settlements, and the plundering of Palestinian resources.”

(It should be noted that the Methodist Church is a large grant recipient for resettling refugees across the homeland)

Congress to Pave Way for Divestment From Anti-Israel Companies

New bill fights back against BDS, encourages pro-Israel business ties

FreeBeacon: A bipartisan coalition in both the House and Senate are pushing legislation that would authorize all state and local governments to divest taxpayer funds from any company that engages in boycotts of Israel, according to interviews with lawmakers and a copy of the bill obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The new bill, which was filed Wednesday afternoon, marks an aggressive push by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to combat the growing Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, otherwise known as BDS, which advocates in favor of economic war against the Jewish state.

The bill would provide legal shelter to states seeking to divest taxpayer funds from any company that has backed the BDS movement. It also would set a legal precedent granting safe harbor for private investment companies to do the same.

The legislation comes amid a new move by the European Union to single out all Jewish goods produced in disputed areas of the West Bank, an effort that the Obama administration has supported.

Lawmakers leading the anti-BDS charge told the Free Beacon that the bill is a shot across the bow to a growing coalition of anti-Israel organizations that have lobbied state-level officials to boycott the Jewish state and products produced there.

Congress hopes to draw a line for the Obama administration, which has long been criticized in pro-Israel circles for straining U.S.-Israeli ties through policies that isolate the Jewish state.

After the political fight over the Obama administration’s nuclear agreement with Iran—which Israel opposes—lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are seeking to reassure Israel that Congress continues to stand by its side, Sen. Mark Kirk (R., Ill.) told the Free Beacon.

“After the big Iran fight, it was the right time to set a pro-Israel marker down there with members [of Congress] against the BDS movement,” said Kirk, who is jointly pushing the Senate version of the bill along with Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.).

Reps. Bob Dold (R., Ill.) and Juan Vargas (D., Calif.) are spearheading the House version of the anti-BDS legislation.

“It’s a powerful step to make sure that those around the country that want to send a very clear signal that we are standing shoulder to shoulder with Israel, that we will not stand idly by and let individuals and entities out there target, boycott, divest or sanction Israel in any way shape or form,” Dold told the Free Beacon. “This is an offensive opportunity.”

The bill employs similar legislative tactics used to encourage states and local governments to divest from companies doing business with Iran.

Both Kirk and Dold expressed concerns that a growing wave of anti-Semitism in Europe could spill over into the United States and add fuel to the BDS movement.

“We see the Muslim community and the Arab community having a political impact in the key allies—Germany, the UK—where something like BDS could catch fire and become official policy,” Kirk said. “There needs to be some pushback from the best friend of Israel.”

Dold agreed, noting that with relations between the United States and Israel at an all-time low, Congress must set down a marker.

“I’ll call it what it is—the absolutely wrong approach,” Dold said, referring to the EU effort to label Israeli goods, a policy that most pro-Israel groups view as anti-Semitic.

“Our greatest ally is Israel and we need to make sure we’re sending a very clear signal,” Dold said. “This is unacceptable: We are going to try to make sure we are going to provide cover for states, for local governments … I think it’s important they know the federal government here stands with them.”

Pro-Israel organizations that work with Congress have long been pushing for this type of legislation, saying that it could help deflate the BDS movement in America.

“Congress isn’t messing around,” said Omri Ceren, managing director at The Israel Project, a D.C.-based organization that has been at the center of fights against anti-Israel boycotts at the state and federal levels. “Polls show that their constituents want lawmakers at every level of government to stand with Israel, and senators and representatives are going to do everything in their power to make sure that happens.”

However, there is disagreement within the pro-Israel umbrella about the value of such legislation. Some maintain that anti-BDS legislation violates the First Amendment and violates existing U.S. policy.

J Street, an organization that bills itself as pro-Israel but that has been criticized by some in the mainstream Jewish community, has lobbied lawmakers to oppose similar anti-BDS efforts, according to a copy of an email that group has been sending to lawmakers since last year.

J Street quietly came out against a House resolution last year that expressed disapproval of the EU’s boycott effort.

J Street and other who share its position accuse Congress of trying to legitimize “Israeli settlement activities.”

“There are many other ways for your boss to express concern over BDS against Israel without defending settlement activity or undermining a two-state solution,” J Street argued in its letter to lawmakers.

When asked about the potential opposition to the new bill, both Kirk and Dold were dismissive of J Street and its supporters.

“We know there is opposition,” Dold said. “Which is more reason why this had to be done. This isn’t partisan and I think it’s absolutely critical we make sure it’s not. This is about doing the right thing. It’s not left versus right. It’s right versus wrong.”

***

TheTower: The Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the largest coalition in Palestinian civil society that is leading the global Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement for Palestinian rights, called today for a boycott of the Soros Fund Management and the Open Society Foundations due to the recently announced – first-quarter 2014 — investment by Soros in SodaStream stock and increased investment in Teva Pharmaceuticals, both Israeli companies that are deeply involved in violations of international law.
Ironically, Soros, through his Open Society Foundation, is known for funding many similarly oriented non-governmental organizations (NGOs). According to a special report (.pdf) compiled by the  watchdog group NGO-Monitor (emphasis added):
The first category comprises large and extensive Open Society Foundation grants to Palestinian organizations such as Al-Haq, Al-Mezan, and Palestinian Center for Human Rights, as well as Israeli political NGOs, including Yesh Din, Breaking the Silence, and Adalah. These groups are active in promoting the Durban strategy by attempting to portray Israel as a “racist” and “apartheid state” that commits “war crimes.” A primary goal of such demonizing language is to isolate Israel internationally, leading to the implementation of sanctions. Many of these NGO recipients are also leaders in the international boycott, sanctions, and divestment (BDS) and “lawfare” campaigns, including the filing of international lawsuits aimed at harassing Israeli officials.

Keeping Islamic State from Money Exchanges

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Denying The Islamic State Access To Money-Exchange Houses

Energy: Regional regulators must take steps, as the Iraqi Central Bank has done, to wall off their financial systems from unlicensed or loosely regulated money remitters vulnerable to exploitation by the Islamic State.

This week, the entity known as the Foreign Ministers of the Small Group of the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL/Da’esh met in Rome to assess the coalition’s work and accelerate its efforts to degrade and ultimately defeat the Islamic State. In a statement, the ministers stressed that they “are determined to keep ISIL/Da’esh cut off from the international financial system [and] to disrupt its economic and financial infrastructure.” Making good on this pledge requires tackling the group’s access not only to banks but also to remittance providers such as exchange houses, which play an important role in the local economies and are more difficult to regulate. In December, the Central Bank of Iraq took action against nearly 150 Iraqi money-exchange companies — most, but not all, in Islamic State-controlled areas — showing how U.S. and regional regulators, along with other coalition partners, can join forces to isolate the group from the international financial system.

BACKGROUND

Given the Islamic State’s 2014 budget of roughly $2 billion, U.S. Department of Treasury officials have called the group’s ability to draw revenues from its own territory “unprecedented.” The sources of funds include between $500 million and $1 billion seized from bank vaults as the Islamic State gained territory (a onetime take), hundreds of millions a year from taxation and extortion, and tens of millions a month from oil sales, among other sources. While the Islamic State derives most of its income from the territory it controls, denying the Islamic State the ability to use bank branches and exchange houses in its territory to make and receive international transfers — to access foreign currency, procure goods, and finance foreign fighters and potentially foreign affiliates — is a critical part of isolating the group.

Military strikes have played an increasingly important role in degrading the Islamic State’s ability to derive income from resources in the territory it controls. Furthermore, given that the Islamic State derives most of its income from natural resource extraction and extortion directed at commercial activity, territorial losses will have a direct impact on the organization’s bottom line. Recently, airstrikes have also targeted Islamic State cash collection and distribution points, depriving the group of millions of dollars stored at these “cash depots,” according to military estimates.

Previously, the Iraqi government and other regional regulators have taken steps to cut off bank branches in Islamic State territory from participating in the broader financial system. The United States and other countries, together with Iraqi authorities, headquarters of international banks, and others within the international financial community, have partnered to counter the Islamic State’s backdoor banking through these bank branches, as well as those in Syria. International banks now look closely for indications of Islamic State financing and file suspicious activity reports that, U.S. authorities say, have provided “valuable insight into financial activity in areas where ISIL operates.” The Central Bank of Iraq instructed financial institutions incorporated in Iraq to prevent wire transfers to and from banks located in areas under Islamic State control, and international banks with regional branches in Islamic State-controlled territories have relocated staff away from areas around the group’s territories.

Another area of effort is limiting new funds entering Islamic State territory through countersmuggling initiatives and by ceasing to pay Iraqi government salaries, which had been taxed directly and indirectly by the Islamic State, in areas under the group’s control. As pressure mounts on the Islamic State’s backdoor banking, the group has become more reliant on money-exchange houses to send and receive funds. More explanation and details here.

Meanwhile, there is finally those who are declaring Russia is aiding Islamic State:

US says Russian campaign in Syria helping the Islamic State

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. says Russia’s counterterrorism campaign in Syria is actually helping the Islamic State.

Brett McGurk, the Obama administration’s point-man for defeating the group, says a Russian-backed offensive in northern Syria is targeting rebel fighters who were battling the Islamic State and who now have to face the Syrian military.

McGurk tells the House Foreign Affairs Committee, “What Russia’s doing is directly enabling ISIL.”

He says Russia is strengthening the Syria’s government, worsening a humanitarian crisis and fueling extremism. McGurk, who will meet Russian and other diplomats at a conference on Syria later this week, called the developments “totally unacceptable.”

Hillary Asks, ‘Will the Libya War Interrupt my Vacay’?

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It must be noted that daily, when Hillary was at home at White Haven, her private residence that she DOES not share with Bill, a State Department driver would show up daily to deliver a package. Inside contents were usually her copy of the Presidential Daily Briefing, call sheets and other diplomatic operational actions, all in printed form. Note…PRINTED FORM. That is NOT protected material, just ask General Petraeus.

There are clear violations in the law in these emails with regard to her shadow intelligence point person, Sidney Blumenthal, known as the Logan Act, however, no one ever seems to be prosecuted under this law. The email exchanges also demonstrate that Syria was actually aiding Libya, an agreement Qaddafi made decades ago with Bashir al Assad’s father. Hummm.

Is there a shredder somewhere in this mess? Heh…read on. Did files and records get buried with Tyler Drumheller? Oh, has anyone interviewed Samantha Power, the current UN Ambassador? Well she was part of the Libya mess too.

Hillary’s team was particularly interested in a documentary:

 “The Oath of Tobruk,” Bernard-Henri Levy details how a self-promoting leftist intellectual persuaded a conservative French president to back the Libyan revolt.

Hillary Clinton Forwarded Huma Abedin Classified Info. for Printing

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch today released nearly 70 pages of State Department records that show that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her top aides, Deputy Chiefs of Staff Huma Abedin and Jake Sullivan, received and sent classified information on their non-state.gov email accounts.  The documents, also available on the State Department website, were obtained in response to a court order from a May 5, 2015, lawsuit filed against the State Department (Judicial Watch, Inc. v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:15-cv-00684)) after it failed to respond to a March 18 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking:

  • All emails of official State Department business received or sent by former Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin from January 1, 2009 through February 1, 2013 using a non-“state.gov” email address.

The new documents show that Hillary Clinton used the clintonemail.com system to ask Huma Abedin (also on a non-state.gov email account) to print two March 2011 emails, which were sent from former British Prime Minister Tony Blair (using the moniker “aclb”) to Jake Sullivan on Sullivan’s non-state.gov email account.  The Obama State Department redacted the Blair emails under Exemption (b)(1) which allows the withholding of classified material.  The material is marked as being classified as “Foreign government information” and “foreign relations or foreign activities of the US, including confidential sources.”

Another email shows that Clinton wanted to know how meetings in Washington, including a four-hour meeting concerning America’s war on Libya, would impact her Hampton vacation.  Responding to an email that details the sensitive meetings in DC, Clinton emails Abedin on August 26, 2011, “Ok. What time would I get back to Hamptons?”  Again, this email discussion takes place on non-state.gov email accounts.

The documents also include advice to Clinton on Libya from Sidney Blumenthal, a Clinton Foundation employee who, according to a Judicial Watch investigative report, also had business interests in Libya.  Clinton wanted Blumenthal’s March 9, 2011, Libya memo to be printed “without any identifiers.”

The newly released Abedin emails include a lengthy exchange giving precise details of Clinton’s schedule using unsecured government emails. The email from Lona J. Valmoro, former Special Assistant to Secretary of State Clinton, to Abedin and Clinton reveals exact times (including driving times) and locations of all appointments throughout the day. Another itinerary email provides details about a meeting at the United Nations in New York at 3:00 on Tuesday, January 31, 2012, with the precise disclosure, “that would mean wheels up from Andrews at approximately 12:00pm/12:15pm.”

“These emails show that Hillary Clinton isn’t the only Obama official who should be worried about being prosecuted for mishandling classified information.  Her former top State aides (and current campaign advisers) Huma Abedin and Jake Sullivan should be in the dock, as well,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.  “The Obama State Department has now confirmed that Clinton, Abedin, and Sullivan used unsecured, non-government email accounts to communicate information that should now be withheld from the American people ‘in the interest of national defense or foreign policy, and properly classified.’ When can we expect the indictments?”

N. Korea Launch Flew Over the Super Bowl

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TOKYO—Here’s a bit of Super Bowl trivia: North Korea’s newest satellite passed almost right over the stadium just an hour after it ended.

Whatever motives Pyongyang may have about using its rocket launches to develop nuclear-tipped long-range missiles, it now has two satellites circling the Earth, according to Norad, the North American Aerospace Command, which monitors all satellites in orbit.

Both of the Kwangmyongsong, or “Shining Star,” satellites complete their orbits in about 94 minutes and based on data released by international organizations tracking them, the new one passed almost right over Levi’s Stadium about an hour after the Super Bowl ended.

“It passed almost directly overhead Silicon Valley, which is where I am and where the stadium is,” tech watcher Martyn Williams said in an e-mail to the Associated Press. “The pass happened at 8:26 p.m., after the game. I would put it down to nothing more than a coincidence, but an interesting one.”

***

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Pentagon confirmed on Monday that it will start formal talks with South Korea on deploying an advanced missile defense system to South Korea to counter the growing threat of North Korea’s weapons capabilities after its rocket launch this weekend.

U.S. military officials have said the sophisticated system called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) was needed in South Korea. South Korea said on Sunday it and the United States would begin talks on the THAAD, after North Korea launched a long-range rocket earlier carrying what it has called a satellite.

Chang/DailyBeast: On Sunday, North Korea completed its second-in-a-row successful test of a three-stage launcher, showing the regime’s mastery of an especially complex technology.  

Pyongyang claims it put an earth observation satellite — the Kwangmyongsong-4 — in a polar orbit. More likely, the object now circling the earth is a decoy. In 2012, after the North’s last long-range test, it announced it had put a communications satellite in space. No signal, however, has ever been detected from the device.  

That “satellite,” and the one launched this week, are about the same weight as a nuclear warhead, and that was the point of these elaborate exercises.

North Korea has been putting dead objects in orbit so that it can test, in violation of four sets of UN Security Council resolutions, its ballistic missile technology under the guise of a civilian rocket program.  

The rocket the North Koreans call the Unha-3 was probably the most advanced version of their Taepodong missile. It appears, from the location of Sunday’s splashdown zones, that the launcher has a range of 10,000 kilometers, the same as that of the 2012 version.  

Some have taken comfort that the North Koreans have not improved the reach of their missile, but that would be a mistake. “This test launch took less time to set up and was conducted more covertly than any other launch in North Korean history,” notes North Korea analyst Bruce Bechtol, in comments circulated to The Daily Beast and others on Sunday.  

Up to now, the North’s longest-range missile was never much of a weapon. It required weeks to transport, assemble, fuel, and test before launch. The calculus was that the U.S., in a wartime setting, would have plenty of time to destroy the launcher on the ground.  

The North Koreans since 2012 have obviously been able to compress the cycle.  This time, Pyongyang moved up the launch window and sent the Unha-3 into space on the window’s first day, surprising just about every observer.  

That means, of course, the North Koreans are perfecting their launch skills, thereby decreasing on-the-ground vulnerability.  

The Taepodong is still an easy target before launch, but once it reaches the edge of space it becomes fearsome. It has the range to make a dent in more than half of the continental United States. If its warhead is nuclear and explodes high above the American homeland, an electromagnetic pulse could disable electronics across vast swatches of the country.  

The American intelligence community does not think the North Koreans have built a miniaturized nuclear warhead to go along with the Taepodong yet, but it’s clear they are on their way to developing such a device. The launch this week was one month and one day after their fourth nuclear detonation.

Pyongyang, for all the snickering and derision it attracts, is capable of sneaking up on us and becoming an existential threat.  

Why has the United States, the most powerful nation in history, not been able to stop destitute North Korea’s missile and nuclear programs? As Stapleton Roy, the former American diplomat told me in 2004, “No one has found a way to persuade North Korea to move in sensible directions.”  

Certainly not the Obama administration. A multi-faceted bargain in 2012, the so-called Leap Day deal, fell apart weeks after it was put in place, when Kim Jong-un, the ruler of the despotic state, launched what his regime called a rocket.  

Then a new approach, backed by existing sanctions, also failed to produce results. The White House during this phase essentially left North Korea alone, ignoring Kim with a policy now known as “strategic patience.” It has been more like “strategic paralysis,” as David Maxwell of Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies aptly termed it after the Sunday launch.  

The evident failure of the current administration follows failures of different kinds by its two immediate predecessors. These days, like in past ones, American officials tell us how the North’s actions are “unacceptable,”

the words of Secretary of State John Kerry, or “flagrant,” the term used by National Security Advisor Susan Rice, but the U.S. never seems to do anything effective.  

Similarly, an emergency session of the Security Council on Sunday “strongly condemned” the launch but did nothing else. The UN still has not imposed any sanctions for the Jan. 6 detonation of what North Korea claims is a “hydrogen” device. Veto-wielding Beijing has made it clear it will not support a fifth set of UN sanctions.  

Ultimately, the problem, as Maxwell notes, is that no country wants to pressure Kim so much that either he decides he has nothing to lose and go to war or his decrepit state falls apart, causing tragedy of a different sort. Yet as long as the Kim family regime stays in power, it will continue to build horrific weapons.  

“What North Korea wants most,” said Ashton Carter before he became secretary of defense “is oddly to be left alone, to run this rather odd country, a throwback to Stalinism.” If that were indeed true, President Obama’s strategic patience would have worked by now. Yet the North’s leaders are not content to misrule their 25 million subjects. They have institutionalized crisis.  

When we examine evidence of the most recent crisis — scraps of the missile that fell into the sea Sunday and flight data — we will probably learn the North Koreans in fact tested their new 80-ton booster, which they have been developing for at least two years. It is almost certain Iran has paid for its development.  

That’s why Bechtol, author of North Korea and Regional Security in the Kim Jong-un Era, thinks America in the months ahead should be looking for evidence of sales of the new missile to Iran. Larry Niksch of the Center for Strategic and International Studies told the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in July that North Korea earns “upwards of two to three billion dollars annually from Iran for the various forms of collaboration between them.”  

Even if one thinks Washington should not sanction North Korea to the brink of war or collapse, the U.S. at a minimum needs to stop sales of the launcher North Korea fired off this week. The Bush administration’s Proliferation Security Initiative, a comprehensive program to stop such transfers, has languished in Washington in recent years.  

At this point, American policymakers are not trying very hard to stop North Korea’s trade in dangerous weapons. That, to borrow a phrase, is unacceptable.

*** Why did North Korea launch this now? Rand Corporation explains.

 

 

Watch Out America, Venezuela a Failed State

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Venezuela Is About to Go Bust

Nagel/ForeignPolicy: Venezuela’s economy is facing a tsunami of bad news. The country is suffering from the world’s deepest recession, highest inflation rate, and highest credit risk — all problems aggravated by plunging oil prices. Despite all its troubles, though, until now Venezuela has kept making payments on its $100-billion-plus foreign debt.

That is about to end. In recent days a consensus has emerged among market analysts:

Venezuela will have to default. The only question is when.

Venezuela will have to default. The only question is when.

A Venezuela meltdown could rock financial markets, and people around the world will lose a lot of money. But we should all save our collective sympathy — both the government in Caracas and the investors who enabled it had it coming.

In the last few years, the Venezuelan government has been steadfast about staying in good graces with its lenders. It has paid arrears on its debt religiously, and has constantly asserted that it will continue paying.

But it has neglected to implement the reforms Venezuela would need to improve the fundamentals of its economy. Its commitment to socialist “populism” and the complicated internal dynamics within the governing coalition have paralyzed the government. It has repeatedly postponed important reforms like eliminating its absurd exchange rate controls (the country has at least four exchange rates) or raising the domestic price of gasoline (the cheapest in the world by far). Instead, the government has “adjusted” by shutting off imports, leaving store shelves all over the country barren.

This strategy now seems unsustainable. According to various estimates, in 2015 Venezuela imported about $32 billion worth of goods. This was a marked drop from the previous year. This year, given current oil prices and dwindling foreign reserves, if Venezuela were to pay off its obligations — at least $10 billion — and maintain government spending, it would have to import close to nothing. In a country that imports most of what it consumes, this would ensure mayhem. That is why all analysts predict default in the coming months.

The Economist has joined the chorus, saying that “the government has run out of dollars.” In the words of Harvard professor Ricardo Hausmann, this will be “the largest and messiest emerging market sovereign default since the Argentine crisis of 2001.”

One of the reasons the coming default will be so messy is the many instruments involved, all issued under widely varying conditions. Part of the stock of debt was issued by PDVSA, Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, which owns significant assets overseas (For example, Citgo is 100 percent owned by the Venezuelan government). Another part of the debt was issued by the national government directly, while another big chunk is owed to China, under secretive terms.

The Chinese issue looms large. China’s loans to Venezuela — close to about $18 billion, according to Barclay’s – consist of short-term financing payable via oil shipments. As the price of oil collapses, Venezuela needs to ship more oil to China in order to pay them back. Barclay’s estimates that right now this is close to 800,000 barrels per day, leaving little more than a million barrels per day Venezuela can sell for cash.

A default will send ripples beyond Wall Street. Many people have been buying high-risk, high-return Venezuelan debt for years — from pension funds in far-off countries to small banks in developing ones. Most stand to lose their shirts. Yet the signs that this was unsustainable were there for all to see.

For years, Venezuela has had a massive budget deficit, sustained only by exorbitant oil prices. For years, analysts have been warning that the Venezuelan government would rather chew nails that allow the private sector to grow. And yes, a lot of that borrowed money was used to help establish a narco-military kleptocracy.

It is impossible to untangle the ethical implications of all of this. Lending Venezuela money is what business ethics professors talk about when they question “winning at someone else’s expense.” Losing money from investing in Venezuela is akin to losing it from, say, funding a company that engages in morally reprehensible acts. (Insert the name of your favorite evil corporate villain here).

Investors in companies with “tainted profits” from, say, engaging in child labor or violating human rights should not get the world’s sympathy, nor should they be bailed out. Similarly, investors in Venezuelan debt have only their hubris to blame.

In a few months, once the rubble of the Bolivarian revolution is cleared, the discussion will turn to how Venezuela can be helped. It would be smart to remember that aid should come to the Venezuelan people first. As the scarcity of food and medicine grows,

Venezuela may become the first petro-state to face a humanitarian disaster.

Venezuela may become the first petro-state to face a humanitarian disaster.

If and when a responsible government in Caracas asks for foreign assistance, solving this urgent issue should be at the top of the agenda. Conditions on financial assistance should privilege the interests of Venezuelans caught in the debacle above the interests of angry hedge fun managers or international bankers.

In other words, the Venezuelan people should come first. The folks who enabled this catastrophe? They can wait.