A fully aware Insulza and a totally clueless Sean Penn

Two interesting items to report today.

In an unusual (and probably calculated) show of candor, OAS secretary Insulza said in a New York conference that the situation was difficult in Venezuela, that tensions were high and about to get worse as the 2012 elections come close.  He was promptly criticized by all sorts of chavista going as far as suggesting he retires and make a living with tarot cards.

The thing with that is a clear admission that Insulza has known all along that Chavez was a basket case and that Venezuela was marching straight into major trouble.  And only this year he is finally speaking up. Why?  Is he hearing encouragement to speak up from other OAS countries?   He does not need Chavez anymore?  Interesting......  maybe he has decided that he would not be the OAS secretary that would bury the OAS and he is using his remaining 4 years term to edge it towards a more assertive presence.

But if we get a confirmation that Insulza was never clueless, just a sold out agent when convenient, we are reminded that other people are awfully clueless.  In the middle of the Qaddafi debacle with Chavez and Sean Penn is visiting!  Apparently he is worried about what is going on (no details on the what).  In his own idiotic way Sean Penn is pulling his international version of Charly Sheen, but without the panache or the humor......

PS: El Universal reminds us that Sean Penn asked for jail for whomever called Chavez a dictator.  I think that since the legislative coup of last November December he has his work cut out!  Maybe as the star of "Dead Man Walking" he has ideas on how to build jail for the thousands of people that call Chavez a dictator?

Sean Penn backs Chavez who backs Ameliach: how to lose an election

Woman breaking CNE rules, Sean boy, Chavez and booed Ameliach

UPDATED
The Chavez campaign is not doing very well.  And it keeps adding errors. One does not need to read polls to sense that the ship is adrift, unable to land anywhere.  Even BBC's new man in Caracas (a woman this election, Sarah Grainger) senses it as opposed to the now discredited cheerleaders of, say, Reuters who have bought Chavez putative victory bait, hook and sink; and today once again! Proving that Reuters is the lone species to trip over and over the same fake polls.  A brief analysis of what happened in Carabobo state today will illustrate my point.

We are now in the middle of the campaign and Chavez has all the trouble in the world to make a couple of outings a week when Capriles is hitting the roads daily, for miles and miles.  Not only that, but Chavez is isolated from the scant masses on top of a float of sorts which makes him look sillily distant. Bad enough as it is, his cross current initiatives make things worse, while without any logical explanation Sean Penn is watching as if he were a big star bringing votes in Carabobo....

French Idiot of the month: Gerard Depardieu (á la Sean Penn)

For those who understand Spanish there is a clear and concise explanation of Depardieu latest spat over taxes in France which led him to become Russian. Moises Naim, a leading opinion maker in Latin America and now an anchor for Colombia's international network, tells us how Depardieu went from being one of the most prestigious actors in France to a support of "democracy in Russia", without forgetting "all the joy that Castro has brought to Cuba". I mean, this is worse than Sean Penn who at least admits his "progressive" bent  while cashing in whereas Depardieu is your average right wing who earned with hard work his money and does not think he should pay through the nose. Never mind that the French Constitutional Council struck down the tax rise (provisionally while it is rewritten).

The point is that one must be impressed by the pathological admiration that so many artists have for showmen with power, be it some orchestral directors with Hitler (or Dudamel with Chavez) or Nobel writers and actors with Castro (and Depardieu with Putin). I suppose that in a sick and perverse way Castro, Putin or Chavez are perceived by them as brilliant colleagues......

Sean Penn in Caracas

Dear Sean

I am allowing myself to drop you a little note in reaction to your trip to Venezuela. I am writing to you because I like you very much as an actor and I even shared some of the political causes you espouse, such as your anti Iraq stand from the start. There are two acting moments that I will cherish from your career. The first one is your excellent and touching movie with Susan Sarandon, "Dead Man Walking", one of the very few movies I got the sound track from (I do not like sound tracks in general and I really, really need to like a given movie to get the CD, not that it has much to do with your acting there anyway).

I even had some notice of your sympathy for Hugo Chavez. I did not hold you a grudge for that, after all many US left wing Liberals did commit this slight sin not knowing better. After all you are a rough man and a rough military that claims to work for the people is someone you can relate with. I get it. But from there to go and visit him? To allow yourself to be guided to the Potemkine villages that belong to the well organized tour for foreign celebrities en mal of revolutionary romanticism? I would have thought more of you. Did you not observe in your Chavez meeting that the red is the de rigueur uniform in Venezuelan offices? Did that not bother you a little bit? Did you even notice how Chavez occupies alone his space, half the table?

And digging a little bit more, did you have the curiosity to try to escape your escorts and visit some areas that the revolution has not touched yet? Did you see the homeless people on the highway to Caracas, such as the pictures of them are shown in my blog? Where you even curious to meet people disagreeing with Chavez or did you assume that they were all pro Bush and dismissed them outright? I do sincerely hope that the only reason you came to Venezuela is to con Chavez for a few millions for a movie just as Danny Glover did. At least I could find some way to forgive you: but for a movie, that I can also get.

But I am afraid that you are letting your anti Bush posture cloud your mind. And thus you remind me of my second favorite role part from you, a guest appearance in what is currently my favorite sitcom: Two and a Half Men. There you played a caricature version of yourself, as an aging star in between joints and booze, fuzzy mind. We could see quite well the biceps and tattoo that you showed Chavez today, by the way. Rough guy, aren't you? And you were equally disheveled as in that sitcom. Thus I am left to think that perhaps you actually simply played yourself in that episode, the aging star in quest of a cause, any crusade to give meaning to your life. Maybe you were not any more an actor in that show, you were just yourself. I think I will get the Dead Man Walking DVD now, I prefer to keep you in my memory that way, when you were still meaningful.

Best luck in getting your bucks for your movie, I am sure it will be a forgettable experience once it hits the screens. See, in case you were not told, everything that Chavez touches turns into shit, a reverse Midas touch. And with art and culture it is particularly pathetic.


-The end-

You lost an election? Create a new currency!

OK, now I have the final proof that Chavez knows he lost the election: he pulled out of his ass a new currency for the ALBA countries. A brilliant way to distract political analysts by bringing in economic analysts!

Of course, this will never work. The problem is not the currency of these countries, it that they produce nothing of significant value for the rest of the world, except for Venezuela's oil. In fact I suspect that Correa of Ecuador is trying to use this as a way to escape the dollarization of Ecuador which is a road block in his wishes to seize power the way Chavez did. After all, how can you create a punitive currency exchange system like Chavez did if your money is the US dollar? Of course Chavez loves the idea because Venezuela will be subsidizing it and with that he hopes to control further his client states, a group of miserly country that is not able to contribute to any currency scheme anywhere: Cuba, Honduras, Dominica, Nicaragua and Cuba (Ecuador is just an observer, the only one that could contribute anything if it were not so busy ruining its international credit by not willing to pay its debts). And in this time of crisis as the Moscow stock market gyrates wildly, he invites visiting Medvedev to join in.

I do not know if I should cry or laugh at this latest silliness of Chavez. No one in his entourage is going to tell him that he does not have the money for that toy? Does he know, I mean as in biblically know if necessary, that oil prices are around 50 USD?

Bonus point if you read this far. If Thanksgiving turkey weighs you down on the couch you can read the adventures of Sean Penn in Venezuela and Cuba and see how skilfully he has been manipulated to promote the agenda of Chavez and Cuba. Fascinating reading if you can stomach so much self serving prose that belongs way more to a blog than the pages of any publication. Then again The Nation is kind of a blog, is it not?

-The end-

The Chavez permanent show: 170 hours of cadena

A little note of interest: Chavez this year has already spent 170 hours in cadenas. That is, Chavez has commandeered ALL TV, and ALL Radio stations of Venezuela to transmit simultaneously his speeches for 170 hours this year. Nobody else is allowed to do, and nobody can reply to his message on the state TV network, the largest one by far in the country (1).

Now I do not want to discuss the undemocratic nature of Chavez imposition (forgive the redundancy). What I want to consider is when does Chavez do real work.

The first thing to note is that these 170 hours represent 21,25 8 hour working days. Let's round it down to 20 working days becasue, you know, the president works more than 8 hours day. Besides a very small portion of these cadenas is not really from Chavez directly. Now let's take into account that if Chavez might spend 20 working days in cadena, he spends AT LEAST as much on political events as we can see from any cursory glance at VTV, the state network which is a 24/7 propaganda and government "information".

Before you may argue that it is really not that much, that Chavez works at least 12 hours a day anyway, let me point out that the cadenas are well prepared: Chavez comes all the time with plenty of books, paper clips, prepared statements, etc... That is, for a 2 hour cadena he works at least for one hour before hand to prepare himself, supervise the stage, make sure the crowd is big enough, etc...

So, we are up to 40 days of direct political activity, on cadena or not. Let's add to it the Alo Presidente shows, which admittedly are more work related since most ministers must be in audience and are publicly berated for any failings (see the Frontline fabulous documentary on that). Let's say for the sake of argument that the time spend in Alo Presidente in only chit chat and political anecdote represents 25 Sundays at an average of 3 hours. That represents 75 hours or 9 more days. Thus we are up to 49 days of show.

We can also add a large portion of what Chavez spends traveling for unnecessary matters. For example when Chavez hires a stadium in Argentina to make an anti Bush speech, how does that relate tot he real needs in Venezuela that Chavez is supposed to address? Crime, inflation, how are those helped through a speech in Santa Cruz, La Plata or Moscow? Chavez spends about a month a year outside of Venezuela. Let's be conservative and assume that 10 of these days can be added to our 49 days total.

We can also add a few days of show. Or does anyone think that receiving Sean Penn or Naomi Campbell is nothing else but a show promoting Chavez? There are also those "intellectual" gatherings taking place in Venezuela which Chavez attends and who do little if nothing to help crime and inflation and public work deficiencies and run down hospitals in Venezuela. How many hours spent in those events? Let's be conservative and put that at only 5 extra days of show.

Thus we are at 64 days spent on show for self promotion. 64 days. 13 weeks of 5 working days, a full 25% of the year work spent in hot air emissions. Not to mention the time wasted by ministers and other public servants away from their work stations as their presence is required to create the "cheering" public.

And of course the time spent at thinking about all of these events and planning them cannot be counted.....

The question of course is when does Chavez has time planning the projects that are really necessary to Venezuela; and more importantly, when does he have time to do the follow up that is required to make sure these projects do indeed take off and yield the expected results? Since it is a resident that is unable to trust and even less delegate, you can imagine the consequences that you read in the red pages of the papers of the inflation index.

The question that you do not need to ask yourself anymore is why the Venezuelan public administration is slowly becoming more and more anarchic: nobody higher up has time to care about things working.

--- --- --- --- --- --- --- ---

1) according to RCTV who is not subjected to cadenas anymore now that it can only be seen on cable.

-The end-

Has anyone heard of the Carter Center lately?

I thought of the Carter Center as I read this AP story about the CIA exposing its findings on electronic electoral fraud. I am not interested in revisiting again that story, nor in wondering why if the CIA knew such information they are/were not doing more about it (other countries are mentioned by the way). No, I am wondering what the Carter Center is up these days, whether it recovered some of its former prestige (in Venezuela it has stopped coming up in conversations completely except for the occasional curse) and whether on occasion they feel at least a little bit bad about having helped considerably the establishment of a particularly scruple free military regime.

But I do not think I should worry much about the Carter Center having afterthoughts or regrets. They would be the last one on that matter since even Cesar Gaviria has acknowledged publicly that democracy is problematicin Venezuela, nowhere else than at the latest IAP assembly. Interestingly in that assembly Venevision, property of Jimmy Carter good friend Cisneros, was duly questioned from having benefited from the misfortunes of its commercial competition and having caved fully to the Chavez line. The amazing thing at that assembly is that Venevision had the nerve to defend its untenable position, which of course made its case even worse and lost them any little bit of respect they might have left in that group. But the sad truth is that Venevision is the network watched only by chavistas who cannot stomach anymore VTV or ViVe, and those poor souls that cannot afford cable, or do not dispose of it in their area. Amusingly that branch of the Cisneros family is now a social pariah in Venezuela, who today prefers wisely to seek (buy?) friends in the US or elsewhere. Though I suppose Carter might still come here to fish for pavon in Apure courtesy of Cisneros who he helped talk to Chavez directly. Now that I think of it I do not recall Carter having tried to have Chavez talk to anyone else opposing him in Venezuela. He has no more friends worth his efforts I suppose.

Oh! and let's not forget about those who the Carter Center encouraged to seek an agreement with the government to hold the now officially fraudulent referendum of 2004. One is dead, one is in exile, one has lost a large chunk of its properties in Venezuela, and the other ones are faring hardly better. There again I do not recall the Carter Center having protested abuses committed against them.

But it would be unfair to only blame the Carter Center (though it has a commanding share in the business of destroying Venezuela's democracy). A few days ago in Salvador the ruling ARENA lost to the Farabundo guerrilla front.

Besides the fact that this opens the distinct possibility of a renewal of bloody conflict if Funes is unable to control his reconverted guerrilla (or in waiting?) I have not a single tear for ARENA. The outgoing president, Saca, pledged that its country would watch closely that Vivas and Forero would get a fair trial in Venezuela when they refused to grant them political asylum. It has been now three years of one of the worst travesty of justice that we were given to witness in Venezuela, with Salvador remaining awfully discrete as to their human rights commitment. When you think of it, very ARENA, is it not? No wonder people voted them out at long last. The only thing ahead for these two political prisoners might be a final arranged verdict around April 11 where Chavez rewriting Venezuelan history will make sure that they bear the guilt of all the crimes that he provoked himself that day in 2002.

I do not think that the Carter Center is going to lose any sleep over that. They might actually hope to be included in the great epic that Chavez is imagining for our official story. But guess what? That ingrate also seems to have forgotten Jennifer McCoy and her combo, preferring to hang out with Sean Penn and Oliver Stone.

I think the time is right to write the history of these enablers that allowed the madness of Chavez to take over Venezuela and destroy it, you know, before the blood that seems to be promised to us starts running. Thus we will know before hand who to put the blame on when we will need to leave Venezuela for our lives, if that fateful day ever comes.

-The end-

Nonplussed by US election

I have to admit that I am watching with little interest the US election this time around, even though it would be more momentous in its consequences than any in the last couple of decades.  The thing is that watching it from Venezuela we must conclude that the US really does not care about what happens here.  True, they should, they lost what should have been their main ally South of the Border.  But no one ever accused the US policy makers of actually caring about what happens south of the border as long as the help is cheap and docile.  there were some heartfelt attempts, by Democratic presidents mostly.  But where are the traces today as Brazil and China have no problems growing their influence in the area?  Let's look at the recent record with Venezuela, with pre-apologies on gross simplifications.

Qaddafi is not in Caracas, or where is James Bond when you need him?

We can either contemplate the horror of Libyan repression with a hint of genocide, or we can look to the ridiculous.

The Return of the Sandalistas: Naomi Campbell, Chavez and Musharraf

Blogging everyday is sometimes a drudgery, no matter how motivated one gets by living in a crumbling society. So it is with great pleasure that tonight I was greeted in my mail box by an article of Anne Applebaum published in the Washington Post or the Slate, as you wish. The title right there brought a smile on my face: The New Fellow Travellers. A smile that got wider when I saw the article commented first in Reason Mag under the title "The Return of the Sandalista", a term I learn first from a long time reader, AM&L.

It seems that this article has raised quite a little debate in Internet, ranging from Liberal to Conservative, each one with interesting takes.

What does the article says? Well, it looks at all the leftist celebrities that are visiting Chavez these days, something that has been commented by this blogger extensively for the visit of Sean Penn (1). Then, well, for Kevin Spacey and Naomi Campbell, I have other things to cover such as street rioting in Venezuela whose news I wonder if they will ever reach these celebrities.

The gist of the article is that these US celebrities are looking elsewhere for help toward what they cannot do at home, willing to trample the natives rights as long as they can get exposure for their fighting cause, currently George Bush of Washington, DC. Ms. Applebaum reminds us that Lenin already called these people "useful idiots", a term still used freely in Venezuela popular jargon "tonto util". she also reminds us that their interest is always fleeting as soon they look for new revolutionary sensations. Correa of Ecuador is probably salivating as he chooses carefully his embroidered shirts to welcome these folks as they are bound to do. curiously they are not visiting much Evo Morales who is much more of the real thing, the oppressed native that made it good, than Chavez or Correa. But Hollywood and Ms. Campbell political acumen and social touch have never been quite on target...

The reactions through the web were quite interesting. One thing we can find is also the parallelism between Pakistan and Venezuela as people sense that Chavez might be pulling a Musharraf anytime. I disagree because I for one remember that the last far election in Venezuela, 1998, was won by Chavez with a 55%. Musharraf has yet to be on the ballot himself. Still, there is something that both of them share, a certain popular support but the inability to make the country reach a basic consensus to allow for government to be more effective. Such consensus are required even when allegedly you have 60% like Chavez claims he does (he conveniently forget to factor abstention).

However the tack of Matthew Yglesias was rather disappointing, limiting himself to question on what did Ms. Applebaum write about other tyrants on the right side of the political spectrum. As such he is hardly any better than the PSF that haunt on occasion these comment pages or those of Harry's Place to cite a Liberal Left site more creative than Matthew Yglesias, even with their use of Pakistan. I suggest Yglesias to visit this blog, for a starter, so he can get a better idea where Chavez is taking the country.

But there the associated fun posts such as Babalu giving us the pic of the fabulous designer gown that Naomi Campbell wore at Miraflores with Chavez. Did they talk about the problems on hired help that they both seem to have? Probably Instapundit would have loved to be the fly on the wall.

But Reason Magazine, in addition to give me a link, also linked to the New York times article of Romero on yesterday announcement of Baduel. Now that the NYT is squarely questioning Chavez I wonder if these paragons of liberalism catwalk/stage, "tontos utiles" are also going to ditch the NYT... Probably, they seem to be short on substance. I wonder what they would think of the latest article on Venezuela by Moises Naim who paints a grim picture of corruption and traffic abuses and mafia take over. Then Hollywood and catwalks do like coke, don't they?


1) that visit was also covered by the NYT quite well, probably contributing to the Venezuelan secret service busting Romero's home and stealing his PCU. Pajamas Media also did its take on the adventure.

-The end-

And now toward the end of free Internet in Venezuela

Today Chavez officially launched his crusade against freedom of Internet.  In another heated speech at the PSUV congress where he goes to make sure they toe the line he said:

"Eso no puede ser así, que transmitan lo que les da le gana, envenenando la mente de mucha gente"
This cannot be, that they transmit whatever they feel like it, poisoning the minds of many people.

Let's start with Chavez "new" cabinet

To start the first newsy post of the year let's start by discussing the new comedy offered prime time by Chavez, a new cabinet with orders to discuss with the private sector ways to improve the economy.

First, there is nothing "new" in this cabinet.

Second, whatever "conciliatory" words Chavez might have uttered they were already killed when he ordered the state oil monopoly PDVSA to grow cabbages. Well, in all fairness he did not ask directly PDVSA to grow anything but he did decide that PDVSA through a new business line, PDVAL should double MERCAL. In other words, if PDVSA oil production keeps going down, it should compensate it in some not so distant future by distributing subsidized cabbage. For some reason these words failed completely to reassure me as far as finding regular supplies of some food staples in the near future. As usual Chavez fails to see what the real solution is: let the market play its role and limit MERCAL to a network of stores in the less favored areas where a limited but critical list of items is provided cheaply to those willing to go to these stores. Trying to have MERCAL compete directly with all the food delivery system only brings havoc to the whole system. Not to mention the worst element of the lot, the price control system that has so brilliantly failed last year with an official 22.5% inflation rate. PDVAL will be sen as yet another threat, and thus will delay any putative private investment that Chavez might be wishing for.

But it seems that kicking and screaming Chavez has finally started getting the fact that the December 2 fiasco is due to the Hallaca Effect. Hence the cabinet change where Chavez tries whimsically to find better management for the country. The list of new appointees fails to impress us, and fails even more to reassure us. In short, the "new" cabinet was more of a punishment for those who failed to win the referendum than any real care to improve the Venezuelan productive system.

Punishment

The first one to lose his spot was former chavista star of electoral shenanigans Jorge Rodriguez who loses the vice presidential chair. For me it is a little unfair: he followed orders and the quality of the campaign and the dismal constitutional proposal were not his fault alone. But such is the fate of prime-ministers/appointed-vice-presidents in presidential regimes: they are a safety valve.

The other one, and a way more deserved boot, is William Lara, the ineffective and bitterly partisan propaganda minister. Ooops! I meant Information and Communications minister. Though even there I do feel some pity for him: he did all the dirty job of Chavez, from RCTV closing to all sorts of calumny spreading and yet he pays for them. But truly, he was not the man for the job, a job that requires not only blind devotion to the leader but enough guile to understand complex social phenomenon such as the student dissident movement.

The "new" ministers

Well, most of them are reshuffled pawns. Right there we see no hope from serious improvement in any sector that at least those ones will direct. And the novelties are even scarier than the reshuffled guys.

The return from the grave award must go to Rodriguez Chacin. He was the Interior/Police minister in 2002 and left the government that fateful April. Since then he became a "businessman" in Apure/Barinas where he reputedly and unaccountably acquired large tracts of lands where gossip says that FARC hides and even hides some of its hostages. Whether this is true might not be that questionable considering that he was the surprising point man to negotiate the failed release of hostages attempt twp weeks ago. Yet the failure does not seem to affect his carer as he returns to his old post. Why? Is Chavez planning to grow even closer to the FARC? At any rate Carreño was so awful that in retrospective Rodriguez Chacin seems a most unlikely improvement.

Izarrita returns. Once Propaganda minister, he did not fare too good and manage a dignified exit by becoming the director of TeleSur, the chavista CNN for Latin America. He did managed a very relative success there in that he managed to avoid this TeleSur to become yet another clone of VTV, 24/24 Chavez news. It is still an indigestible old line lefty hodgepodge, but at least it has more variety than other Venezuelan Networks. On the other hand Izarra did use TeleSur to bring all sorts of celebrities to visit Chavez from Sean Penn to Naomi Campbell. That was enough, I suppose to bring him back to his old job in a period where Chavez requires a softer image to rebuild his battered international credibility. He actually started well by admitting publicly on his first day in office that the state media had been badly managed. An understatement if ever, but I am too demanding I suppose.

The reshuffled

As usual there is a lot of reshuffled useless revolutionaries, though there is a surprise: Ramon Carrizales jumps from Housing to the vice presidency. This totally uncharismatic character is a rather odd choice for such a political position. However Carrizales has proven he could deal with the private sector to rebuild the La Guaira bridge. If he is an ineffective manager himself he at least seems to know how to hire people to do the job. Well, DO might be a tad generous. Let's say that in an ocean of nullities Carrizales at least has shown that he can achieve occasionally some minor feats, which is more than can be said from 90% of the public servants around Chavez. In fact perversely that he managed to build a little bit over a third of the promised public housing can even be see as a great success under chavismo where standards are regularly revised downwards.

Among the other recycled ones we should just mention Erika Farias, semi hysterical militant that nobody quite knew what she was doing to another position where no one knows exactly what she is supposed to be doing.

The cheap novelties

The cake is taken this time by Haiman Al Troudi that readers of this blog have already extensively met. Needless to go back on him as someone totally ignorant of modern economical principles and trends except to point out that he is incredibly ill equipped, mentally and educationally, to chair one of the crucial positions, the one in Planning that is vacated by Giordani the unmovable minister there except for a brief period in 2002-2003. In fact even more surprising is the departure of Giordani, the longest serving of Chavez minister and his very own guru. But there is quite a simple explanation. Giordani presided the first phase of Chavez regime from 1999 to 2002 when he was forced to let the bolivar float from 600 to soon 1000, an event that contributed greatly to the vents of 2002. Now, as he AGAIN applied similar policies to those he applied then he would have had to preside to yet another currency devaluation from 2150 to at least 3000.

Even though man is the only creature that stumbles twice on the same stone, Giordani knows better and he is letting poor naive Troudi to bear the blame, probably as early as this spring.

There is a newcomer who is also worth mentioning: Socorro Hernandez. Named to preside the newly nationalized CANTV a few months ago she ash presided over a decrease in service quality of the concern, while watching earnings drop fast. Of course, as the old unreconstructed ideological lefty she is, she cannot see a profit that should not be distributed away instead of investing it in the technological improvements that a sophisticated company like CANTV needs. Now, as Communications minister she will rule over the competition of CANTV while being able to try to speed along ways to shut down Globovision. As the ideological apparatchik she is I do not expect her to have even 10% of the angst that Jesse Chacon might have experienced had Chavez ordered him to close down Globovision.

Does this mean anything anyway?

No, not really. Chavez being what he is, any soft words he might have said last Sunday will be promptly forgotten, as the PDVAL announcement already hints. As a matter of fact Chavez himself announced the color: his people must get ready for the October election. That is right, we are already on the campaign trail as that is the only activity that Chavez knows. Though he is not as good as he used to be as sen from last November campaign.


-The end-

Comedy Capers in Madrid

Those of us who are old enough (1) to remember the old silent, black and white Comedy Capers must be remembering them as they look at the fight between Spain and Venezuela over the alleged ETA support by the folks of  Chavez's regime.  Silent because nobody dares to mention the real issue behind the Spanish vacillation about a case which is rather crystal clear: big Spanish bucks.

The fact of the matter is that the Socialist Government of Spain, who should have known better, thought that it could calm down Chavez, step in and pick up all sorts of juicy contracts left behind by people that had enough of chavista extortion.   As a result some Spanish interests flourished, from Telefonica through Movistar which is the main wireless system in Venezuela, to BBVA which controls Banco Provincial one of the largest Venezuelan banks.  Amen of REPSOL digging for oil and other little contracts including a very suspicious major repair for the Caracas Subway taken away from the French original builders, where apparently the Spanish alleged contractor would not have the skills to do the job (I know that from a perfectly reliable source).