My first video report from Venezuela:
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Great stuff, Craig. I am not carping given the logistics but you might get your team to check what happened to the sound, it is audible, but very low quality for whatever reason.
This really is not a good piece of journalistm Craig – albeit clearly well intentioned. It is windy, repetitive and not very informative. You do not explain that there were US oil companies operating in Venezuela until Trump more or less ordered them out in 2017; nor that the country’s oil industry was nationalised in….1976 under President Carlos Andrés Pérez who also established the state-owned company Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA). It would have been useful, also, to talk about the use Chavez made of oil income – when prices were high – to improve the welfare of the poor (education, health care etc) but dependency on oil was also the country’s achilles heel. Until very recently, there was very little manufacturing in Venezuela and minimal agricultural production. An estimated 95% of the population lived in urban centres (still largely the case) which has meant that the countryside lacked both people and farmers. Oil paid for cheap imports of food but left the country vulnerable not only to oil-price fluctuations but to US strangulation.
I thought it informative with regard to the current situation, but I do not see that the video purely of Craig talking adds anything of value to what could have just been a written column. I expected illustrations of what life is like in Venezuela today. We have been told that the shelves are full and life goes on normally, but are not shown any evidence.
Glad to hear that many misconceptions surrounding the Maduro / Flores kidnapping and its immediate aftermath have been cleared up.
I would like to know, though, of the 100 individuals who died in connection with the abduction, how many of those people were security guards, esp Maduro’s own bodyguards. There have been rumours that the head of Maduro’s personal security had been bribed. He is now apparently dead as are supposedly all of Maduro’s personal security detail.
There are stories also that Russian security personnel running to the aid of President Maduro had to defend themselves against his bodyguards. A number of Cuban security guards were also apparently killed on the same night.
Going off topic, I am concerned that recent photos of the Maduro couple in New York show Cilia Flores with facial bruises. She is said also to have two (?) fractured ribs. Knowing how she was injured would go some way to resolving the mystery of how she and her husband were so quickly taken and whisked away to the US.