Venezuelan opposition plays the nationalist card in territory dispute with Guyana
Venezuela's opposition accused the government on Wednesday of turning a blind eye to neighbouring Guyana's oil exploration in a border region claimed by Venezuela, potentially inflaming a territorial dispute that dates back more than a century.
The conflict was stirred up in recent days by local media reports that Exxon Mobil Corp, in partnership with Royal Dutch Shell, is exploring for crude off the coast of the disputed Essequibo region.
The two South American neighbours squabbled over the area, which is the size of the US State of Georgia, for much of the 20th century. Venezuela calls it a “reclamation zone,” but in practice it functions as Guyanese territory.
”(We) firmly reject the concessions granted by the Guyana government in Venezuela's Atlantic waters,“ the opposition's Democratic Unity coalition said in a statement, slamming the government's stance as ”weak“.
”In the face of the activation of the concessions in the area, the government of President Hugo Chavez should address the issue immediately.“
An Exxon spokesman said in an email it and Shell ”have had an active exploration license offshore Guyana for several years, and we have obtained multiple seismic data sets in the area.”
Oil companies have shown growing interest in the north-eastern shoulder of South America, with industry experts describing a recent discovery off nearby French Guyana as a game-changer for the region's energy prospects. Local media reported that Guyana halted exploration of the offshore block called Stabroek in 2000 following a protest by Venezuela.
The dispute over the region known as the Essequibo resurfaced last year when Guyana asked the United Nations to extend its continental shelf - the area where countries control ocean resources - toward a region where Venezuela has granted natural gas concessions.
The much smaller and poorer Guyana still relies on imports for its energy needs and has invited companies including Spain's Repsol to drill for oil in other offshore areas not affected by the dispute.
The Essequibo, an area of rolling savannah and isolated jungle, shows little sign of Venezuelan presence. Many Guyanese see it as a crucial to their economic future due to its reserves of minerals including gold, diamonds and bauxite.
Chavez has taken a conciliatory stance in the dispute, striking up a friendship with former Guyanese President Bharrat Jagdeo and selling fuel to Guyana on advantageous terms under the Petrocaribe energy initiative.
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It's got to do with the core cultural values of spanophone countries whereby they're just utterly incapable of delivering any kind of social justice, and they're all just pleonexiacs trying to be communists.
It's just retarded.
Argentina claiming the Falklands & other British Antarctic Territories,
Guatemala claiming Belize,
Spain claiming Gibraltar,
Venezuela claiming (only part of!) Guyana
What is it with these Hispanic countries? And ALL of them in shit-state.
Spend your energy in fixing your own broken countries, tossers.
Do they claim the moon as well? Wouldn't surprise me. lol
If you look at it in this context, you see it all makes sense.
You forgot Peru claiming part of Chile & Argentina claiming some Islands in Southern Chile.
P.s Snowing this morning in the Falkland Islands where Union Jacks & Falkland Flags are flying all over the place, great to see......
It is all part of their monarchical jingoism, bordering on baseliolatry, and obsessions with flag planting (notice how all anglos countries seem consumed by claiming a flag on a stick equals everlasting sovereignty). This is how they idle, instead of working and lucubrating on how to improve the lives of their citizens.
Their governments engage in austerity measures at home (which at first glance seem ostensible as indicating responsible and judicious frugality), until we realize do so to they keep their bloated military deployments above financial waterline, and dissipation of resources continues there unabated. In other words, at the pecuniary expense of their own populace they choose to maintain unwelcomed presence in foreign and sovereign territories, mainly the Middle East. Engagements which the vast majority of the denizens these governments represent as well as the occupied have univocally objected to.
As a result you have police and other public servants striking, soon doctors and hospitals themselves for the first time in four decades as well, economies which have floundered back to contraction, and susurrous talk about redefining the inflation gauges which would directly affect investment return of indexed bonds (some calling the proposal a “stealth default”). And this:
sports.yahoo.com/blogs/olympics-fourth-place-medal/great-britain-apologizes-south-africa-playing-apartheid-anthem-162951965.html
Due to cost-cutting outsourcing...
I went to Guyana once to fix some equipment in a gold mine in the jungle, it was called Omai if I remember right. On arrival my passport was taken from me by a private security firm for my safety and I was taken to a smart hotel in Georgetown. That evening a local rep came round to take me out for dinner. As we left the hotel we were followed out by a big Indian carrying an automatic weapon, “don’t worry” said my host, “just our body guard”. Georgetown, one of the most scary places I have been to.
Here in Chile when I used to go and fix stuff in mines, I never needed a body guard. Guyana speaks English, Chile speaks Spanish. It is an over simplification to blame language.
Putting that aside, without knowing the details of the Guyana dispute, I am almost certain reason will be on the side of Guyana.
When the UK always has claimed to keep a military a presence in places like the Falklands and Gibraltar at the locals earnest behest.
The people in the countries above have asked for years for you to absquatulate, yet their pleads fall on deaf ears.
Dishonor confirmed by it. Picaroon behavior also confirmed by it.
All while at home you are exacted penury. Penury would be acceptable if everyone shared in the sacrifice, but in the anglo countries it is the people that sacrifice for the benefit of governments to retain a purse capable of sustaining military relevance, and meddle in other's affairs.
Modern day Sparta.
You are overdoing it. You've gone beyond your limit, my old and valued. You've gone so far as to use outdated mid-western invented slang and missused the word “pleads”, there ain't no such animal as “pleads” as a plural (or singular) noun.
Stop trying to show off, you're no good at it. Just keep telling us how lovely Mendoza is, you're damn good at that.
And hope they play the right anthems at the Olympics, imagine if they played the Apartheid anthem again on live worldwide tv next time.
Look on the bright-side though: you can still vaunt your occupying armies in Iraq and Afghanistan and how you ignore the locals sovereign rights and pretend they do not beseech for a withdrawal, and how all that is another proud chapter in UK history.
Please take your medication for your verbal diarrhoea/diarrhea.
Your posts are now becoming a total bore and thus hiding any valid points you may offer on the topic under discussion.
To your chagrin (if you remain crass of intellect), or dismay (if venturesome enough to consider my points for just a moment), you may arrive at the judgment that indeed, my analysis has some sound and cogent elements to consider.
Are you all going to tell me that the first time you learned the word “hypocrisy” (likely at some point in 3rd or 4th grade), that you have always used it correctly from the 1st time? I really doubt it. Just because you don't remember does not mean it didn't happen. And of course we see babies misusing far simpler words... but it is called LEARNING.
Something most of us adults seem to frown upon with a corrugated forehead and a look askance at any adult trying to do the same as babies and children.
I checked the usage of plead, and in fact you are correct. So now, I will have learned something I would have never learned if I had not made the mistake.
Tell me how that mistake therefore is a bad reflection on me, instead of a reflection of my growth which has ocurred in front of your eyes (I won't make that mistake again, that is growth).
So I may have misused “esurient” and “edacious” and “voracious” and “gluttonous”, all four have slightly different connotations, but now I can used then off the top of my head in the correct circumstances, because I made mistakes. The rest of you won't make this mistake, but not because you know better, but because you never even tried.
I won't ever shy away from learning, growth, and yes, tumbling down. It is a common adage in most cultures around the world that you learn more from a gaffe than from success itself.
I can have a better conversation with my 2 year old grand daughter !
Jun 07th, 2012 - 03:40 pm
Please don't get me wrong, Tobias, I don't say you go to far because of your use of long and complicated wording, rather that you go to far using a word like “absquatulate” which is definetly archaic slang and thus lowers your rating from near perfect to rather dodgy.
As far as learning from mistakes is concerned you are absolutely right and I congratulate you on your desire to learn.
I repeat that I really prefer your lyrical songs of praise for your beautiful province than hear you showing off to the commentators on Mercopress, but that is down to self determination, your choice.
Now, Guyana and Venezuela can duke it out over their own territorial squabble and since Guyana is both anglophone and not a charter member of the radical left ALBA group, it can expect a rough ride.
However, the dispute as gone on for long enough that Guayanese musical group Tradewinds to bring out a tune about the dispute, ”Not a Blade of Grass“. Maybe Falkland Islanders might create a similar tune, ”Not a single Rockhopper..”
Reference:
Guyana rep speaks 28:50 on video clip: www.oas.org/es/centro_noticias/videos.asp?sCodigo=12-0100&videotype=&sCollectionDetVideo=14
Not a Blade of Grass: www.youtube.com/watch?v=65ubddfago0
South America will we presume, will tear its self apart,
And all in the good name of greed,
And as long as its mine, and not yours, we will always claim it,
So tear your selves apart, if that is your wish,
but just leave the British Falklands out of it,
All ex British colonies. and there are some African colonies as well..
Where are most of our helplines now based ?
lndia is very rich.
lt just hasn't trickled down to the people at the bottom yet.
lf it ever does.
lndia funded our empire, without lndia we could never have afforded the naval arms race with Germany.
btw- have you remembered the name of that hot summer wind that sweeps through Melbourne?
lf you come from Melbourne, as you say you do, then you will know its name.
All Melbournites know its name. lts dreadful, you can't miss it.
So what's its name, ozzyboy.
That you don't know, shows me that you don't come from Melbourne.
ln fact l believe that you are not from Australia at all.
Prove me wrong, amigo.
I'm not your Sunshine but I'm Argentine.......
Never been in Melbourne but I have a computer....
That “Wind” of yours wouldn't be a Brickfielder, would it?
Yes Think, you are correct.
lt is indeed the Brickfielder.
l encouraged argentine sunshine to google it, but he couldn't even do that.
lt wasn't hard to find was it?
lt is an extremely hot, gritty & irritating wind that everyone hates.
Bravo sr Think.
I'm positive that Aussie Sunshine knows all about Brickfielders....
Even that it originally was a COLD, gritty & irritating Southerly Sydney wind………….....
Those Melbournite convicts just squatted the word and used to name their own HOT, gritty & irritating Northerly (1996 to 2011, R.I.P) wind.
Melbourne was settled from Tasmania by British pastrolists who had run out of land on the island. Not convicts.
There had been a brief convict settlement but it was abandoned.
And l am CERTAIN that argentine sunshine knew nothing about the wind as he knows very little about Australia.
He even asked me to tell him its name.
The wind originates in the hot desert country of Aust.
Tell me why you think he even knew anything?
All this is, however, academic.
For all your new found knowledge of Australia, you still will not get the Falklands.
Ever♥
We should have colonised Patagonia before the useless Argentines drifted that far south.
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