Daniel on a break

It is Easter week and this blogger goes off the air for a few days. Closest web connection is about 3 miles on a dirt road so I do not expect to hook up more than once until next Friday when I come back . Who knows, maybe ghost blogger emeritus Jorge Arena might decide to abandon Miguel and come over once.

Meanwhile I will leave the faithful readers with a two points for reflection over Easter. I will advise them to listen to St Matthew Passion of Bach just as I do every year at this time. Handel Messiah is good too, I prefer it at Easter even. And if it does not inspire you it will at least be a thing of beauty to listen to in order to escape the dirt and misery that surrounds our Venezuelan daily lives.

The police

The more I read, the more I realize that the Venezuelan police system is in shambles. In fact it is so bad that I am starting to wonder if it really is not done on purpose, for some perverse political goal that requires a terrorized population. No better explanation can come to mind, not even sheer incompetence. Why do I say that?

Some of the details coming out of the Faddoul brothers are quite sobering. The car in which the kids were taken was found a couple of days later. It took hours for the CICPP (our C.S.I. pseudo forces) to come over. They arrived late, it was about to rain. They did not want to do the routine and instead wanted to just tow the truck in spite of the protest of the Faddoul's lawyer. Well, not only they ended up towing the car anyway but they had the Faddoul family pay for the towing expenses as the police tow was supposedly on the fritz....

Another harrowing detail is that there was a video sent by the kidnapper to prove that they had the kids, and that they were alive. The video seems to have been taken close to an airport (a plane taking off could be heard). There are less than a half a dozen around Caracas. The police did not search (or at least they are not talking about it).

And there is the controversy of Canadian TV saying that the bodies where found naked. Here the pics are of the kids and their driver together, dressed up, sardine like, no blood on ground in spite of the gun shots to kill them. How come? Where the kids killed where found? Carried there? Who tampered with he evidence, the police or the kidnappers?

Too many questions that raise to much distrust on the Venezuelan police. I think that a 5 guys silly commission named in a hurry by the monochromatic National Assembly is not enough to rebuild the police, and even less our trust in it. Not to mention tht now that the kids have been cremated and their driver buried, suddenly the police is becoming efficient as several suspects have been "caught". Me thinks, wrongly me hopes, that it is the "enablers", those that supplied for money the kidnappers that do not want to be implied on the crime and decided to come out before some one got them. The moral consequences of so many people willing to help the kidnappers, if confirmed, is a thought that I find hard to bear.

Media matters

It seems that chavismo, in its stupid arrogance, thought that this notorious murder would be a nice opportunity to stick it to the opposition media. Well, it seems that they seriously underestimated the people's revulsion, all political colors included. The CONATEL letter to Globovision seems to have backfired badly, forcing the director of VTV, Romero Anselmi, to have this long monologue this morning to refute the Globovision reply to CONATEL. I did watch it, mesmerized at how low Romero Anselmi had fallen. His only argument, that he tried to use in any possible guise, is the 2002 48 hours coup against the whole 7 years of chavista administration. Never had I realized as much as this morning how short of ideas chavismo has become. And that is scary because it brings them closer from some irresponsible action. Shoot the messenger might come faster than we would like it to do.

And with these two items, I leave you for intense meditation. You can post comments but they might take a couple of days to show up, unless Jorge does watch over :)