Do you see something with this timing?
On 16 September 2010 the Obama administration presents a report identifying what countries are cooperating what the US government calls the "war on drugs", something that has been a complete failure for decades now, as North consumers keep funding drug dealers. Venezuela is listed as one of the countries not cooperating, together with Colombia and Mexico, but the news agencies stress the Venezuela case.
On 16 September 2010 Venezuelan minister for Justice and Internal Affairs, El Aissami, announces the capture of INTERPOL-fugitive and drug dealer Beto Marín. There have been quite some captures of drug dealers in Venezuela this year and several of them have been deported to Mexico, the USA, the EU and Colombia. There had been some talk, specially supported by certain groups I mentioned in my previous post about an alleged Al-Qaeda-Venezuela connection through the cocaine trade. The cocaine comes from Colombia and it does not just go through Venezuela but through Mexico and not just through Africa to Europe but through many other channels.
On 16 September 2010 an article by Republican politician John R. Bolton appears about a possible Venezuelan involvement in weapons of mass destruction. You can read interesting stuff about Bolton's position(s) on WMD throughout the years. He was to a big extent responsible for derailing the biological conference in Geneva that wanted to enforce the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention. He did not want international inspectors to inspect suspected US weapons site. Bolton is a prominent figure of the Project for the New American Century. Mr Bolton is a commentator for Fox News and he is active for some think tanks like JINSA.
On 16 September 2010 Fox reports Venezuelan airline Conviasa declared it had just suspended flights between Iran-Syria and Venezuela. Fox says normal users could not buy tickets for that trip.
On 17 September 2010 the couple and former Alamo scientists Mascheroni is detained and indicted on charges that they passed weapons secrets to somone they believed to be helping the Venezuelan government but who turned out to be an FBI agent.
Now, the indictment does not come as a surprise. Very strangely this is not mentioned in the normal press. I had read about this Mascheroni case many months ago. The couple gave an interview at the end of 2009 after the FBI had raided their houses. Even the Mascheroni themselves said they had sold some nuclear-related information to someone they thought belonged to the Venezuelan government. The Argentine says he did not provide anything that was not available on the Internet and the prosecution says the couple provided secrets to an FBI agent thinking the agent was someone representing the Chávez government.
And on the same 17 September Conviasa declares it is suspending all national and international flights.
I have no idea. Do you see some patterns? Am I mixing up two different "issues" or not?