A good friend recently asked for my thoughts on the military buildup in the Caribbean.
This post is my reply to him.
Hello G____:
I believe the relevant information can be summarized in my Bands of Robbers post earlier this year.
I agree with the administration in that Venezuela is indeed a criminal enterprise which has wreaked — and continue to wreak — havoc not only on the Venezuelan people but on the land itself — the Orinoco Mining Arc is truly a disaster zone. And the drug market has enriched and continues to enrich the Communists in charge of the chaos, while the poor and what’s left of the middle class, suffer.
According to several estimates, about 20%, or more, of the country’s population has emigrated since Chavez in the late 1990’s. That’s about 8 Million souls.
So if the current people in charge recognize the 2024 elections, which they lost in a landslide, AND peacefully transfer power to the legitimate victors, that would be a positive development but no panacea.
My concern is that, for generations, since well before my birth, Venezuelans have been taught that Democracy is good and that it is in essence the same as Socialism. They don’t declare it quite so bluntly, but that is what it is. In other words, our deep troubles did not begin with Chavez. Nor would the hope in the Venezuelan military, a hope shared by many, including dear friends, ever be realized, because, historically, the military was and is as left wing as the political leadership. Even more so.
Once again, we can credit Simón Bolívar, whose idolization of the French Revolution did so much harm to South America. His overwhelming influence determined the course of Venezuelan public and private education, which for the entire 20th Century was based on the French model, including centralization and, in essence, rule by “experts” — meaning left wing.
So, again, if the administration’s actions, successfully pressure the current leadership to recognize the true 2024 victors, so much the better. However, if the victors are not recognized and the current despotism simply abdicates and leaves a vacuum, we or the administration, would be truly naive to expect something good to fill it.
As for the 2024 victors, their political platform is encouraging on the economic side, including free-market principles and deregulation. I understand Machado appreciates Ludwig Von Mises and Milton Freedman over Douglas Bravo and Karl Marx. Unfortunately, on the social issues, she is not as conservative. However, on balance, if I had my druthers, I would prefer her over the current mafia in charge. Hence my desire that the current president and his followers truly and cleanly transfer power to them.
But we have no guarantee of that — at least at the moment.
As for military action — as opposed to offshore pressure — I am not in favor. History has shown that wars’ results are unpredictable and this is especially true in the case of Venezuela. She is a very large country and the Castro-Chavez-Maduro triumvirate has hundreds if not thousands of its own ideologically aligned minions ensconced in positions of leadership throughout the country. It has also armed its own to the teeth. This would be a very bloody enterprise which can expect highly unpredictable results for both Venezuela and the United States.
No matter what, we can take comfort in God’s overruling Providence, regardless of the actions taken.
My father was born on November 4, 1917, 108 years ago today.
Although interventionist breezes blew strongly before that pivotal year — witness the Spanish-American War, for example — such did not compare to the hurricane force winds of 1917 which saw American troops shipped to France to engage in war on that continent for the first time in our history.
According to John Barry’s The Great Influenza, the cataclysmic “Spanish Flu” was propelled by troop shipments initiated in that year, although the catastrophic evidence of that pandemic would not be widely seen until the following year. Barry documents how government officials, as mendacious back then as they are today, were quick to call the flu “Spanish” even though all the evidence was that it originated either on the American continent or perhaps in Asia — it is debated to this day.
These officials also strove mightily to obscure the exact nature of the epidemic in order to not bring the war effort into question.
Regardless, that flu cost an estimated 100 Million lives. There are reports of men getting symptoms in the morning and being dead by nightfall. The age group most affected were children 5 and under. The exact opposite of a more recent infectious event. In sum, the flu killed far more people than all the soldiers and civilians killed in the war.
A few days after my father’s birth, the Russian Civil War broke out between the “Whites” and “Reds”, eventuating in the ultimate installation of the Leninist and Stalinist tyranny which ruled most of Eurasia for the next 70-plus years and still rules in China, albeit not as overtly as during Mao’s despotic rule. The Leninist – Stalinist rule is encapsulated well in their treatment of the royal family. If the reader would like to know more about this, Robert K. Massie’s Nicholas and Alexandra is an excellent source.
The family and a small entourage was arrested earlier in 1917. After several relocations, they were eventually situated in the outskirts of Siberia and, anticipating a “Whites” victory in 1918, were massacred: The czar and his wife along with their five children, Olga, Tatiana, María, Anastasia, and Alexis. Also their entourage — the doctor, Eugene Botkin, who cared for Alexis, who suffered from hemophilia; lady-in-waiting Anna Demidova; footman Alexei Trupp; and cook Ivan Kharitonov.
Their guards were changed, not only from location to location, but also in the same location up to a day or two prior to the murders. This was done because Lenin, a man completely unacquainted with pity, insisted that no opportunity be given for guards to come to feel compassion for the family.
The bodies were taken to the Koptyaki forest, stripped, mutilated with grenades and acid to prevent identification and buried. The “Whites” did take over the city and investigated the room where the massacre had so obviously occurred. The Soviets only admitted to the atrocity in the mid-1920s.
Demonstrating yet again, that there is nothing new under the sun, despite official denials and stonewalling and obstructions, the burial site was finally discovered, by an amateur detective in 1979, but another 10 years had to slip by before DNA forensics could confirm the identities as being from the royal family. The remains were reinterred in 1998, exactly 80 years after their terrible murders. Incredibly, the remains of Alexis and a sister were discovered in another, smaller grave by — surprise! — amateur archaeologists. These were also reinterred.
My father was one year old when the Armistice was accepted by Germany on November 11, 1918, and not yet two years old when the Versailles Treaty was signed in June, 1919.
As a toddler, he knew about as much as the great minds of Europe on that day as to the eventual failure not only of that treaty but of the godless Socialist theories which eventuated in more blood shed and lives lost in that century than in all other centuries combined.
My father was not yet two. He can be excused. But what is the excuse of grown men ostensibly educated by the greatest colleges and universities, all with Christian heritages, which should have told them that anything built on lies not only cannot endure but must end in catastrophe.
Like most men in 20th Century America, my father voted for Franklin D Roosevelt; but unlike most, he came to regret his vote and felt honored in voting for Ronald R Reagan in 1980, the last general election he would witness. Not because President Reagan was God — he most certainly was not. But rather because he at least tipped his hat to eternal verities and sought to govern thusly, although he was not successful in many respects.
My father did not speak much about his work in the Army special unit. But every once in a while he would express his dismay at the shenanigans of the United States State Department and other departments and their seeming obliviousness to Socialist ideology and their nonchalant attitude towards the intellectual growth of such in our society and culture. He was incredulous at our media and our government as they expressed obliviousness towards Fidel Castro in Cuba — we now know they were not so oblivious after all.
All the men my father worked with or for are now gone. I can share a seemingly insignificant event which illustrates how far my father’s distrust grew over the course of the century. After a decade or so of non-activity, he received a communication summoning him to a meeting somewhere — I’ll voluntarily redact the location except to say it was not on the mainland but accessible.
Years later, my father told me about it. He decided not to attend.
Why? I asked.
I cannot trust them.
My throat tightens as I write this. My father was not a coward. But he was realistic and he did see that not only had times changed, but the people he knew and respected were no longer in the drivers’ seats. It was another team and their fruit was not good.
As serious as all this is, I must insert here that my father had a wonderful sense of humor and laughed with ease, as eager to tell a joke as to hear one. Being a sportsman, he was able to take wins with enthusiasm and losses with a determination to do better next time.
Not being enthusiasts for foreign interventions, we can nevertheless see God’s Providence working in all things — good and bad. As I read about the Spanish-American War, I am not a fan. Nevertheless it was that war that brought my grandfather from Massachusetts to Cuba where he remained after the war and married my grandmother and it was where my father was born.
And many years after that war, I worked for a public accounting firm in Puerto Rico, another fruit of that war, where I eventually met my own wife whom my father also met shortly before his own departure.
So, paradoxically, I am thankful for that war.
My father was murdered in October, 1982 in the Atlanta, Georgia area.
He continues to exert a powerful, beneficial influence on me and on my siblings.
And I am grateful.
Room where the Romanovs were murdered, the night of July 16-17, 1918
My grandfather, Max A Barnes (1874-1950)
My grandmother, Eustaquia R. Barnes (1893-1951)
My father and I, visiting family in Stockbridge, Massachussets, circa 1962
My father, Charles M. Barnes (1917-1982), circa 1948
Growing up in the 50s and 60s, I had friends who pooh-poohed the concerns of many adults, such as my father, with Communist ideology and its seeming attractiveness to American intellectuals.
In my teenage years, this attitude of disrespect was evident, especially among the more affluent. I recall, in my twenties, spending a Saturday on a sailboat in St. Thomas with a couple who had sailed around the world twice. The husband was an outstanding, hilarious raconteur who made me wonder if he had not missed his calling as a Hollywood storyteller.
Inevitably, his stories devolved into mockery of American “scaredy cats”. Of course, the false fears he referred to were about Communism. As a young man, I must admit he had me somewhat persuaded. If this man, very streetwise, not only in America but in the Greek islands and the extremely dangerous, pirate-infested waters of the vast seas of Asia, saw no threat in the Communists ideology, maybe, just maybe, my father’s concerns may have been overwrought?
That man’s spell over me was strong enough to persuade me to expand my reading a bit. The Road to Serfdom was something of an eye-opener. And so was Witness, and The Ghosts on the Roof, both by Whittaker Chambers.
I began to realize that the issue was not so much a nuclear attack or military invasion, but rather the complete undermining and overthrow of the historic faith of our fathers, which faith built the foundations of our country.
At bottom, the issue is as old as the Garden of Eden: God or man?
This explains much.
In previous posts, I’ve alluded to Project Venona, the US Army Signal Corps’ successful attempt to decode the innumerable daily messages between the Soviet Union and its missions in the United States. This project was declassified in 1995.
However, it is important to remember that the decoding was successfully done in the 30s. And proceeded throughout the Second World War and beyond.
Most significantly, this success was kept secret from the US State Department, the rest of the Armed Forces, including the Army itself, and the White House — both Roosevelt and Truman.
It is outrageous but true that the few men who were involved also knew that if they reported on their success, such would have been made known to the Soviet Communists within hours. Men such as Harry Dexter White, the number two man of the US Treasury and Lauchlin Currie, the president’s personal assistant, were actively spying for the Communists and against the interests of our friends and neighbors.
This was going on before, during, and after the cataclysmic Second World War. Including during the catastrophic fall of China to Mao’s Communists.
The Venona files tell us that there was no area of American life that those committed to the atheistic Communist ideology did not penetrate. In other words, not just the military.
How was this possible? Regrettably, it was possible because thousands of prominent American citizens believed in the possibility of man becoming god. A metaphysical impossibility.
That belief impelled them to betray their friends and neighbors without a second thought.
Their success was evident not only in government and academia, but in all spheres of life, including religion and entertainment.
This success eventually led us to the absurdities of New York City high society entertaining and sitting at the feet of radicals and murderers and to government policies that rewarded the destruction of the family while penalizing thrift and enterprise.
By the time I was in my twenties, to speak of the dangers of atheistic theories was to invite ridicule and contempt. To question the received, mainstream opinion that Senator McCarthy knew nothing about which he spoke was to be expelled from polite company.
And now, we have people wearing T Shirts mocking the assassination of Mr. Charlie Kirk and actually “acting out” the dastardly event in mockery and laughter. Their anger is not so much against a person — although it certainly is that — as it is against God Himself. Therefore anyone who might point us to a return to the Lord is worthy of death.
I believe that, once you scratch a bit below the surface, our country is still a conservative, traditional land. When speaking to others, I am encouraged by the common faith that undergirds us still — though much emaciated, for sure.
But the divide is also there. It may not be 50-50, but it is significant.
This ought to drive us to:
First, prayer. Prayer for our homes and for our neighbors and communities. Principally, that the Lord would be gracious to us and give us a Spirit of reformation and a return to the historic faith.
And, second, a determination to be unafraid to defend our faith and our love for our heritage. And to do so in a kind, compassionate manner, knowing when we are being listened to and when it’s time to stop casting our pearls before swine and move on.
Cold War surveillance post
Allusion to The Ghosts on The Roof by Whittaker Chambers
On 12 October 1492, when the little fleet of Christopher Columbus raised a Bahamian island that he named San Salvador, neither he nor anyone else guessed that this would be an historic date. Even Columbus, who regarded himself as a child of destiny, thought he had merely found an outlying island to “the Indies.”
Had his entire fleet been wrecked, nobody would have been the wiser, and in all probability America would not have been discovered until 1500 when Pedro Alvares Cabral, on his way to the real India, sighted a mountain near the coast of Brazil.
Thus the entire history of Europeans in America stems from Columbus’s First Voyage. The Northmen’s discovery of Newfoundland almost five centuries earlier proved to be dead-end. Pre-Columbian Portuguese, Welsh, Irish, English, and Venetian voyages to America are modern-made myths, phantoms which left not one footprint on the sands of time.
But Columbus’s First Voyage proved to be the avant-garde for thousands of hidalgos who, weary of sustaining their haughty pride in poverty, were ready to hurl themselves on the New World in search of gold and glory.
Columbus’s discovery led within a year to the first permanent European colony in America, in Hispaniola; and he himself made three more voyages of discovery, as well as sparking off those of Ojeda, Juan de La Cosa, the younger Pinzón, Vespucci, both Cabots, Magellan, and countless others.
Not only the northern voyages, starting with John Cabot’s of 1497, but the southern voyages of discovery and Spain’s vast empire stretching from Florida to Patagonia and out to the Philippines stem from the First Voyage of that intrepid mariner and practical dreamer Christopher Columbus, Admiral of the Ocean Sea….”
Samuel Eliot Morrison (1887-1976), distinguished naval historian, Harvard
So the surname of Colon [Italian form of Columbus] which he revived was a fitting one, because in Greek it means “member”, and by his proper name Christopher, men might know that he was a member of Christ, by Whom he was sent for the salvation of those people …. [Christopher Columbus] carried [the Name of] Christ over deep waters with great danger to himself …. [Christopher Columbus asking Christ’s aid and protection in that perilous pass, crossed over with his company that the Indian nations might become dwellers in the triumphant Church of Heaven. There is reason to believe that many souls that Satan expected to catch because they had not passed through the waters of baptism were by the Admiral made dwellers in the eternal glory of Paradise….”
Ferdinand Columbus (son of Christopher Columbus; 1488-1539)
In the Name of Our Lord Jesus Christ
Because, most Christian and very Exalted, Excellent, and mighty Princes, King and Queen of the Spains and of the Islands of the Sea, our Lord and Lady, in this present year, 1492, after Your Highnesses had made an end to the war with the Moors who ruled in Europe, and had concluded the war in the very great city of Granada, where in the present year, on the second day of the month of January, I saw the Royal Standards of Your Highnesses placed by force of arms on the towers of the Alhambra ….
[He goes on to recap the insistent petitions of a prince of India for instructors from Rome to teach them the holy faith but such had not been provided] thus so many people were lost through lapsing into idolatries and receiving doctrines of perdition….
[And therefore] Your Highnesses … devoted to the Christian Faith … resolved to send me….
[Throughout, Christopher Columbus repeatedly emphasized the goal of converting people to Christ]
Christopher Columbus, extracted from Journal of the First Voyage, 1492
Today, October 12, is what used to be universally and uncontroversially known as Columbus Day.
In 1892 planning for the great Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair, began in Chicago and culminated the following year. It was a phenomenal and confident celebration of Columbus’s discovery and the progress of American, Christian civilization. A mere century later, in 1992, the 500th anniversary was, to put it mildly, a major downer, with high school and college students instructing us that it would have been better had Columbus just stayed home.
Presumably these young scholars would prefer to have been appetizers gracing the tables of the cannibalistic Aztecs, Incas, Caribes, and others.
The Russian, Zurab Tsereteli, dedicated a gargantuan bronze statue, The Birth of The New World to Columbus, Ohio, to celebrate; however, that city turned it down as did others. Puerto Rico distinguished herself by eventually accepting it.
To our cynical age, men such as Columbus who took their faith with all seriousness; who genuinely feared God and sought to do their best to please Him are seen anachronistically as hypocrites and materialistic frauds.
But nothing could be further from the truth.
By remaining silent over much of the 20th Century and well into the 21st, we have allowed the Zinnistic charlatans and their ahistorical narratives to dominate our schools and universities which in turn have bequeathed us with countless generations of robotic, atheistic know-nothing, violently angry clones.
Although I would rather we as a country placed more emphasis on the church calendar — sans the countless saints days — it is notable that the three Christian themed holidays on the civic calendar — Christmas, Columbus Day, and Thanksgiving — have been under virulent attack for generations. Is it too much to ask for us to know how to defend the history behind these?
Once again, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s warning is apropos: to destroy a country you must first cut off its roots.
May you enjoy your Columbus Day with gratitude to the Lord for having raised up such a man.
Christopher Columbus (1451-1506)
Columbian Exposition, Chicago (1892-1893)
The Birth of The New World, Zurab Tsereteli, Arecibo, Puerto Rico
This post is mostly fact — the description of the Chigüire and the Tragavenado — and some imagination — the scene of the snake trapping the rodent. With a true bit of Alexander von Humboldt thrown in for good measure.
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Chigüires (known as Capybaras in the US) are rarely seen alone. Their two principal enemies are the crocodile and the jaguar, followed closely by a third: the tragavenado (“deer swallower”), Venezuela’s version of a python or a boa constrictor. Despite these enemies, they reproduce with amazing rapidity.
The Chigüire thrives abundantly in Venezuela, living fifty or sixty together in troops on the banks of rivers, of which the principal is the grand Orinoco. They also congregate along the Apure and Caroní, other major rivers which happen to be tributaries of the Orinoco. These animals grow to about the size of pigs in Midwestern farms and even look a bit like them, but with yellowish-brown bristly fur.
They swim better than they run, often gracelessly diving precipitately when feeling the least alarm, squealing sharply and loudly. Their eyes are large and protruding, a characteristic of nocturnal animals. They defend themselves only at the last extremity, by then usually too late, although, according to some naturalists, their grinding teeth, especially the rear ones, can tear the paw of a jaguar or even the leg of a horse.
In the colonial era, inland, Chigüires were considered appropriate food, including hams in time of lent. In this, the monks and the Indians were agreed. It is not clear what the monks’ reaction was when Chigüires were determined to be not swine, but the world’s largest rodents — serious, persistent biological study of these mammals did not occur until the twentieth century.
Humboldt, the great 19th and early 19th Century explorer and naturalist, tells of having captured two by simply outrunning them. When Chigüires run, their gait seems like a slight gallop (their hind legs being longer than their fore legs) and not very swift. When he brought them to his host out in the great llanos of Venezuela, expecting to have them slaughtered and roasted that night, the proprietor assured him that such “Indian game” was not food fit for “us white gentlemen”. He, accordingly, offered his guests venison instead.
Their natural habitat is near the river. In fact, they can remain under the water for eight or ten minutes. However, during the rainy season, they might be seen up to 20 miles from the banks of the nearest major river, but that is rare.
And this was a rare occasion.
Five Chigüires had wandered off, rooting for herbs and wild weeds, deep into the jungles south of the Orinoco and east of the Caroní, rivers whose banks during the rainy season expand for many miles. And beyond those banks, the rains create expansive swamps, rivulets, creeks, lakes, and ponds … far, far beyond.
The Tragavenado may be found on the ground. However, it is primarily arboreal, spending most of its time wrapped around low hanging branches waiting for quarry to pass below. For good reason, she is known as an ambush predator. She can capture and eat animals exceeding three times the size of her head, making the young chiguire an ideal prey.
The Tragavenado does not consider herself to be in the company of white gentlemen. For her dinner, the Chigüire’s greasy meat is satisfactory.
This Tragavenado was a large snake. Her body was coiled atop a thick, low hanging bough below which ran a small creek which appeared only during the rainy season. It was an hour before midnight; but that wasn’t an impediment since she recognized her prey by smell, not sight. She flicked her tongue in and out, picking up the Chiguire scent particles in the air, noting their approach. Chiguire flesh is possessed of a strong, musky smell, easily discernible to a predator such as the Tragavenado. Soon the nerve endings lodged in the scales around her mouth sensed the heat of the Chiguires, indicating her prey was near.
The Chigüires grazed under the large tropical oak tree overhanging the small creek. One of them was in the creek, directly beneath a large bough from which shot, at lightning speed, the head of the Tragavenado. She bit the top of the Chiguire’s neck with her sharp teeth and held on with her powerful jaws as she quickly dropped from the bough and wrapped her body entirely around the hapless Chiguire, whose companions had scattered off in different directions into the forest.
The Tragavenado has specialized scales, called scoots, on the belly to feel when the prey releases a breath, and then she squeezes tighter and tighter until her prey either suffocates or dies by cardiac arrest. The Chiguire soon stopped breathing and died and her conqueror began swallowing it whole, beginning with the head. Soon the dead Chiguire’s legs folded up and the carcass began going down smoothly into the body of the snake, whose muscles have wave-like contractions, sucking it even further and surging it downward with each bite.
She wouldn’t need to eat again for a very long time.
Chigüire, the world’s larges rodent.
Tragavenado
Alexander von Humboldt and Aimé Bonpland, circa 1799
