Tareck does the New York Times

Everyday brings a new outrage with the Bolibanana revolution.  Today it was Venezuela’s vice-president the Tareck El Aissami publishing an open letter in the New York Times. Before I get into the outrage let's look briefly at said letter.

Let me short: the letter is ill written, shows no understanding on how the US system works, and thus is read more as an insult to the US than a serious demand for redress. With the title and the mere first two paragraphs you get the point and need not go further.

Already the "public letter" shows that whomever translated the Spanish draft has a mechanical understanding of English. It might be quite proficient but that person is not well read in English. And I am not even speaking of books, just reading real newspapers, of the ones published in major US cities. Not knowing that in the US the term is "Open Letter" is just crass.

The second paragraph nails it. Saying that the US treasury has been deceived by politicians, lobbyists and stakeholders (?) is not even stupid, it is insulting. At that level in the US no one is deceived. At best they may pretend to be deceived. Whoever wrote that letter for our Tareck boy must truly think that, as is the case in Venezuela, a newly appointed hack in the Trump administration just hired someone of the GOP rooster to fuck Tareck. That the dossier might have been researched by an Obama hack and that a Trump hack may respect and want to use it is a thought that does not cross a chavista mind. They have spent the last 18 years reinventing sliced bread, at which they failed, by the way. Surely everyone is new at Treasury.

I am sure that by this paragraph the new Treasury Secretary must have rolled it in the waste basket. If Tareck expected to convince anyone at Treasury I want to reassure him fast: it has been a waste of time.

This being said, let's give the charitable explanation: this "public" letter was for domestic consumption and its publication in the NYT as paid advertisement is just window dressing.

Now for the outrage.

Whether Tareck is innocent is a non sequitur. It has been years already that he has been finger pointed. Surely these sanctions could not have been a total surprise. Thus, if innocent, the option was not a red lettered advertisement in the NYT, but a law suit somewhere against Treasury. To drive the point, since Tareck claims that he is poor as Job, who did pay for that advertisement? Did he, the poor revolutionary guy? Or was it the state of Venezuela footing the bill for what is, well, a private matter since the sanctions are against Tareck, not Venezuela?

According to NYT fees for full page ads, plus the money he paid for lawyers, writers, translators and what not, Venezuela's government forked up to 250,000 USD. This for an ineffective ad, which may not even have significant tracking amongst its followers.

In a country where the government keeps its people without food or medicine, this, my friends,  is an outrage, the real, enormous, outrage.