Chavez, Iraq, Bush and International Women’s day

Yours truly was again on the road but gets the opportunity to come back with a bang, a title with so many incendiary keywords that surely the insults rate should rise dramatically again. But such is the ungrateful job of a blogger.

But before I get to the details, it is useful to remind the gentle reader that all of these words actually belong to the same thread, the only real one that matters, to make the Venezuelan people forget about the real problems through all sorts of ringside circus shows. Why? To allow the reelection one way of the other of El Supremo (preferably with 10 million votes, even printing the ballots if needed). Thus the bolibananarian revolution is always rich in not too memorable but depressing moments in servility.

Today was International Women’s Day and chavismo could not think of anything better but to organize a women’s protest march to the US embassy in Caracas. Apparently the Iraq war is more important for chavista women than the crumbling infrastructure and deficient hospitals and what not. Never mind that proportionately as many people die from crime violence in the Venezuelan barrios than from bombs in Iraq: we do not need an official war to die in Venezuela.

So up went the marchers. Since the embassy is on a Caracas promontory, the elite marchers were duly ferried in buses to the point, collapsing traffic in the Prados del Este area (an opposition area anyway so why care, no?). But of course, to make it look more “popular” the few remaining yards were dutifully walked uphill, or so my sources say (but they are such gossips!). The objective was to give the US embassy a list of the “millions” of people opposed to the US intervention in Iraq.

No big news there, you would be hard pressed to find anyone in Venezuela supporting the Iraq adventure (but you would find plenty of supporters for the Afghanistan intervention). The interesting and funny part is that as usual the sense of ridicule always eludes chavismo. They claim almost as many, if not more, "signatures" as people who voted in last December elections... All of them collected in very few days we are told, less than what it took the opposition to ask for the Recall Election. Who do they think they are fooling? Not me. Not the ambassador. Probably not themselves I dare say.

However there was news, believe it or not. One can be found in the delightful montage from Aporrea which, and I wonder if the author realizes it, showed the rather not very “spontaneous” aspect of the march: too many cleanly printed slogans, too many coordinated t-shirts, too Cuban like…

The other piece of news is that this petition was circulated among all of public employees who were made to understand that they had better sing it. I even saw when one minister was interviewed in the morning VTV program “en confianza” and “casually” gave reams of petition sheets so that the workers of VTV “around the set” could sign. Of course, of their free will one supposes, even if it is the official Chavez propaganda channel. We are more than a few who think that this is one way the government found to keep updating the Maisanta list, in order to refine further which are the real “patriots”. I am not aware of any effort to collect signatures in opposition areas and I am sure that if the petition is well written Petkoff, for one, would have no problem singing it. But there is no interest in finding out as Manichaean chavismo prefers to assume that all opponents support the Iraq war.

There was a rather pathetic moment during all this “bon enfant” scene. Silly Flowers (at the mic) and Bilis Varela, erh, I mean, assemblywomen Cilia Flores and Iris Varela were of the party, screaming as loud as possible. Desiree Santos Amaral was also there and working very hard at compensating for her very poor performance at the National Assembly hearings against Granier and Ravell the other day. Rudely she did not allow the cultural attaché of the embassy to talk when she tried to engage her. Apparently Desiree is learning fast that her ignorance and partisanship can be easily revealed if she lets the other side speak. Fascists learn this lesson one day or the other, she is just late. There was another marquee guest, our very own ineffable Eva Golinger who used to haunt these blogs but who knows works directly in Caracas for Chavez. That as an American citizen she was bitching against Iraq is fair. But in another country openly opposed to her government? Did she not say things of the sort about Sumate? Ah, the double standards and hypocrisy of dear Eva will never cease to surprise us… But it does pay off for her, it seems as she looked quite glamorous on the picture (the one with the single red ribbon). After all I am still waiting for a check from the CIA which surely got lost in the mail. Or maybe Bush found out what Chavez did not figure out yet: that me and Teodoro agree on Iraq.

Meanwhile how did the US replied to this ridiculous display? After all, since American Embassies have faced much worse than Desiree it was enough that the Department of State wrote in its 2005 country report:

"Politicization of the judiciary, restrictions on the media, and harassment of the political opposition continued to characterize the human rights situation during the year"

Back to the real world Eva, Desiree, Silly and Bilis, erh, Cilia and Iris. There are still too many babies suffering of malnutrition in Venezuela, whose mothers are desperate, to waste money on such a useless show. How many pounds of scarce powder milk could have been bought with the pamphlets, the leather cover book of Cilia, the made to order T-shirts? I bet you the NED funds would not be enough to cover this Evita.

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PS: speaking of the Ravell–Granier hearings. There is a follow up. Judging from the intensity of the attacks on Granier, he definitely scored big time. Heck, infamous and utterly vile La Hojilla did an additional show on Granier with the participation of Tascon who got awarded an “oscar” for best performance by Tal Cual. After all, it does take some chutzpah to even try to pass as a democrat when one has done what Tascon has done. No wonder that he and Desiree today are foaming at the mouth: on TV for all to see, including chavismo, their mediocrity was clearly exposed. Fascists hate that.