The Venezuelan Pot calling black the US Kettle

"Cachicamo diciéndole a morrocoy conchudo" is a Venezuelan saying equivalent to "the pot calling the kettle black" or something like that. And it serves as a title for the mini editorial of Tal Cual today by Simon Boccanegra (Miguel is out of town, someone got to translate a little bit of Tal Cual this week :) [I have already mentioned some of the remarks on New Orleans by Chavez here]

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Speaking of New Orleans, our ineffable president allowed himself a series of criticisms on the US government actions. Criticisms, by the way, more than deserved from the mouth of others and who if someone has not shown restraint it is the very media of that country, who has beaten Bush to a pulp, whose popularity dropped during the last two weeks to 38%. But the pot of Miraflores lacks absolutely of any moral authority to call the kettle of the White House black. More inept than the Venezuelan government in addressing the Vargas mudslides not even Bush's administration would have been (1). There is Vargas State, as a monument to the laziness, the incapacity and the insensitiveness of the national government. Now, to top it all, six years after, according to a press note, the Seniat (2) has just found out in La Guaira docks two containers full fo food and water __ all decomposed these goodies __ that were sent by the international solidarity to help the refugees of the Vargas shore (3). How about that? The truth is that one can be inefficient, but in matters of inefficiency the government "saviour of the world" is abusing. (4)

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Foot notes for our non Venezuelan readers:

1. The Vargas disaster was the catastrophe that happened in December 1999 in Venezuela and which proportionally to our country size was as bad as Katrina.


2. Seniat is our tax agency which lately makes the IRS look as the good guys.


3. La Guaira is the main harbour of Caracas. Together with Puerto Cabello they account for more than half of Venezuela imports. Since 2000 almost yearly containers destined to the Vargas refugees are uncovered. Apparently they cannot even have a good inventory system.


4. The latest crusade of Chavez is that he is offering his economic model (?) to counter act the US model. That is fine if it were not for the evangelical tone used by Chavez who seems to start to believe that he is indeed the saviour of the world. At least he has worded the Bolivarian revolution as saving Latin America.