Yawn … it’s just another Friday night in the jungle! Let’s get back to sleep!

VHeadline editor & publisher Roy S. Carson writes: I guess one should have some collegiate sympathy for the hacks at Reuters News agency in Caracas, stuck in their air-conditioned offices of a hot tropical Friday evening, when they could otherwise be engaged in more pleasurable activities at the eateries, night clubs and other venues along Las Mercedes, or even propping up one of the local bar with a jug-load of Polar Ice (local beer).

It can be soul destroying, especially in the realization that, just after 7:00 p.m., most of the news services’ morning newspaper subscribers will already have locked up their business pages, flooded as they are with the inevitable fallout from the week’s cataclysmic financial crashes way up north.

Routine reporting of the President’s various antics and those of his collection of ministers and other officials have already been filed and nothing much is happening since anyone that matters will have gone home by mid-afternoon leaving Caracas’ economic and political hinterland behind in spooky silence compared to the mayhem of everyday downtown.

And then, a titillating gem of a Presidential quote surfaces from a stringer in the faraway reaches of the provinces where Chavez has been speaking to a collection of women supporters for his United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) … boring, boring, boring.

Chavez wouldn’t repeat his exhuberant “Yanquis de mierda” harangue of Thursday a week ago … or … would he?

Yes, the same old boring Presidential rhetoric which can usually be cloned news report to news report but, then again, he isn’t simply talking of the nationalizations of the already (1976) nationalized Venezuelan oil sector … he’s going for GOLD!

WOW! Finally something to sink one’s teeth into … especially after some wally from the Central Bank of Venezuela (BCV) let slip in London that Venezuela is thinking of actually buying gold to make special Venezuelan collectable coins to compete with the South African Krugerrand.

• Yes, Chavez had been in Johannesburg within the last couple of weeks and he’d conferred with Mbeke … maybe there’s something in the jumble of words filed by the provincial stringer in southeastern Guayana?

Was it the haze from the earlier consumed Polar Ice or simply an inability or confusion in collating information from previous despatches -- I guess we’ll never know unless someone remarkably fesses up! -- but a simple few lines of quote from the PSUV women’s conference, to the effect that “We are taking back big mines … and one of them is the biggest in the world ... and do you know what it is? It’s gold, it’s gold!”

Hey .. wasn’t there something a few weeks ago about some Canadian transnational sitting on Christinas or whatever her name is? Some baloney about the Vice President’s wife, throwing a hissy-fit and telling the Canucks to take a hike?

Dig out those old files and let’s see … oh yes!

Now, how can we pad out the President’s throwaway to warrant a couple of hundred words … yes, wasn’t it Crystallex International?

It all fits … hey let’s go with that, and then we can take the elevator down to street level and take a half-hour break! Timing’s just about right, might even be able to catch up on some proper sport on satellite TV from back home…

And so it most probably was that, at 7:59 EDT Friday night, Reuters wire service internationally spluttered out a vague report that Chavez was about to NATIONALIZE the world’s largest gold mines.

• Forget the fact that there are a couple of thousand vague “concessions” awarded by previous administrations that are ready for the chop under the New Mining Law.
  
  
• Forget the fact that there’s quite a quandary over USA-headquartered “Canadian” gold miner, Gold Reserve’s persistent claim of OWNERSHIP of Las Brisas del Cuyuni.
  
  
• Forget the fact that the properly Canadian Crystallex International doesn’t OWN Las Cristinas (correct spelling!) but that it is actually 100% OWNED by Venezuela (and hence there isn't a cat in hell's chance that it will be "repossessed" by it’s current owner!).

Hell, it’s Friday night and the morning paper business pages are already plated and waiting for the printing press to roll along with the other pages!

Yawn … it’s just another Friday night in the jungle! Let’s get back to sleep!

Roy S. Carson
vheadline@gmail.com

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Venezuela is facing the most difficult period of its history with honest reporters crippled by sectarianism on top of rampant corruption within the administration and beyond, aided and abetted by criminal forces in the US and Spanish governments which cannot accept the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people to decide over their own future.

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