Evening update: now we are up to 88 paramilitary arrested and even pictures are shown!
Still, we do not know much that is "real fact"

Sunday 9, 2004


Well, at least the government is trying to make more plausible the story from this morning, just as many people now openly say it is a bluff!

Of course a lot of things still do not match or make sense but the dust is settling some.

Let's start with the official version. Venezuelanalysis will offer you the official version in English with pictures. They take this all very seriously of course. We'll see.

Let's look now at other information. There is a lot of it. I will pick some.
The mayor of El Hatillo showed a video of some road blockage and a report of a few stolen buses, just when the Nation's security police started its move to "arrest" the paramilitary. Thus this late night verification check might debunk the first claim from officials that were implying that El Hatillo and Baruta police were covering up something.

As pictures are revealed we learn stuff. For example the paramilitary arrived 46 days ago. We also see that the cabins where they were residing seem quite clean for cabins having seen people living in for 46 days. But that is my own critical eye at work. In one video I noticed that they were getting food from "Danubio" a rather fancy pastry shop. When you look at the pictures of the paramilitary sitting up and tied up (at last!) they do not look like people that had a hard time hiding up. And one wonders who was in charge of the "discretion" plans, because they did look like difficult to hide. Not to mention that it is hard to imagine the paramilitary shown in that picture attack the National Guard headquarters in Caracas next Wednesday... I mean people that surrender without a shot...

Of course, all sorts of declarations have come forward. Some in the opposition are crying foul play, a circus. The pro Chavez side is basking in the glory and happily linking the opposition to Colombian right wing groups, the Miami Cuban exile and what not. They are asking for a whole bunch of people to be investigated and arrested. Chavez himself is the great director from his Alo Presidente, accusing even the media of trying to hide the news when Globovision has talked of little else today. Lies and more lies again.

But this is the crux of the matter. Whether this is a show is irrelevant, what the government is doing is 1) distracting people from the burnt soldiers and the Recall Election process and 2) trying to create all sorts of excuse so as to be able to arrest a few people, people that likely they will have to release as the hard proof never appears. Nothing new really, just show biz on a bigger scale.

Or if you prefer you could consider what Leopoldo Castillo suggested closing his Alo Ciudadano. He suspects that Chavez is escalating the conflict with Colombia, trying to create a war climate that will finally allow him to move to the forefront the "reserves" that he has been preparing for that last few years. Indeed, after Iraq, rogue countries know that conventional armies will not defend them (or support them as Chavez doubts of the Venezuelan Army). However after Iraq it is also clear that an informal army is much more difficult to defeat. Chavez in his paranoia and desire to perpetuate himself might be thinking along these lines and what we are seeing might be only the tip of the iceberg.

Since I went out tonight to watch "The Barbarian Invasions", the Oscar foreign film winner, and an appropriate choice considering the day, I prefer to wait until tomorrow to write what I really think of the whole thing. In particular wait if someone is arrested or a TV punished or closed. What I can say, and readers already guessed, is that this is all a set up. Now why is another story...