The IAEPHC is born. We may finally start understanding something of the twisted mind of Chavez

Hefty, hefty.....

In the "you cannot make up such shit" section, today Maduro signed the decree to open the Instituto de Altos Estudios del Pensamiento de Hugo Chávez, or for you Spanish speaking impaired people, The Institute for Higher Studies of the Thoughts of Hugo Chavez. And no one else but his older brother could be fit enough to direct it.

Let's start by saying that the work is going to be epic. Not because Hugo Chavez left a body of work worth analyzing but because he did not leave anything written except for a few newspaper columns and some letters. What Chavez is leaving are hours and hours and yet more hours of rants. Though "rant" is not a good description of Chavez speeches, the French "déblatérer" would be better, describing abundant and violent speech against something. But I digress.

Do they have toilet paper in Pyongyang?

Away from news a quick check tells me that the bolibanana republic has launched a refurbished missile from the 70ies.... And the refurbished missile was refurbished with Venezuelan technology and Cuban know how or something.  I wonder if those techs and the generals involved had clean asses.

New depths of ridicule are amazingly reached again and again.

Maduro first "power" decision is a show of weakness

I am dumbfounded. Not only because I just barely managed to open the blog dashboard for the first time today and I do not know whether this post will happen, but becasue I caught by mistake Maduro's cadena announcing what a president usually announces first, his new cabinet.

Well, let's start by the obvious: a new cabinet it ain't.

Welcome to the Bolibanana Republic of Venezuela

The proud flag of the Bolibanana Republic of Venezuela

Long time readers of this blog might remember that on occasion I have qualified the Chavez regime as a reactionary regime.  In Venezuelan standards a reactionary regime means looking back at our military past of caudillos who imposed their will at, well, will.  This vision of a past that was never quite what the reactionaries of today think it was, but it includes a mythical Arcadia of coffee, cocoa and banana plantations that kept everyone happy.  Needless to say that even if that vision had a kernel of reality, it was applied to a country which did not reach the 2 million people and such a vision could not satisfy today's country of 30 million people, while being possibly the most urbanized of Latin America.

Well, I was wrong in stressing that the military caudillo was the motor of the reaction: it has now an agrarian component, when our beloved bloated leader wants us to become a banana plantation for Russia, a reactionary tzarist empire in the making if you ask me.

The ex finance minister of Venezuela, now central bank chief, thinks that 7x7 is "around 36"

Another one for the bolibanana records.  The finance minister of Venezuela, Nelson Merentes, a once upon a time mathematician now turned president of Venezuela's central bank, does not know that 1 ton is 1000 kilos and thinks that 7 times seven is around 36.  As La Patilla points out, maybe the Chavez cadena frazzled him, but still...  can you imagine Merentes at question time in the commons?

The video edited by La Patilla replays at the end the 7X7=36. The moment when Merentes does not know the 7 tons=7000 kilos is not as obvious but around sec 22 you can hear someone whispering it to him...
They are going to steal that gold, just watch out!  Those people just want to grab it and split the loot.  They cannot even be bothered in having their facts straight!

Crazed Iris Varela is solving the jail problem of Venezuela by... emptying the jails

Those crazy eyes....

When Iris Varela was appointed minister for "penitentiary services" in care of "liberty-deprived citizens" in the PC lingo du jour, I thought she would really go to bat to "solve" the problems.  That is, if we assume that solving the problem means taking it away from Chavez political image.

There are two ways to do that.  The rational one which means, e.g., building fast at least some sort of provisional interment camps for low risk prisoners, and those accused of crimes not involving murder.  That way overcrowding and delinquency education is partially solved while new jails are built for the medium term solution, as long term solutions of social changes to decrease crime rates are undertaken.  She is crazy but she has the big mouth required to obtain from the regime, in election years, the funds for such endeavors.

And there is the bat-crazy way that, sure enough, she picked.

Does the Bolivarian "revolution" respect Bolivar?

The answer of course is NO. The pseudo revolution might venerate Bolivar, adore him, deify him, but it does not respect him.

¡Pitiyanki! ¡y a mucha honra!

Since it is anti-intellectual Monday I found the perfect way to ease my bewildered readers in the new week. I have been considering for a while writing a post on the latest insult that Chavez keeps throwing at anyone who does not agree with him: pitiyanki or Yankee lover. But procrastination pays as Romero or the New York Times published last Friday the complete account. Personally I could not agree more with Charito Rojas of Notitarde quoted by Romero: "If being pitiyanqui means loving liberty and progress, science and excellence, then I am a very Venezuelan pitiyanqui".

The amusing thing here is that Chavez is running out of bad words. That is, after having accused us of so many perversions he now must dig into more obscure words, and tries to make them sound like awful insults through his delivery. But it does not work well. The sycophants that surround him have long ago opted at repeating any silly or gross utterance from their leader, as is, without any effort at understanding. And us, well, we have learned long ago not to be vexed and instead take it as a badge of honor. That is how "escualido" eventually left the Chavez vocabulary. That is the curse of people who insult without property, and usually out of place: after a while people stop paying attention, or worse, find it quaint. You know, a little bit like the boy who cried "wolf!" story except that we already have the wolves running the streets of Caracas without Chavez doing a thing about it.

But while Chavez tries to be creative with words he also tries to be creative in much darker ways, such as strengthening his alliance with Russia who has been invited for military exercises in Venezuelan waters. Romero also informs us of that development. This Chavez announcement came a few days after Chavez supported Russia's action in the Caucasus establishing once and for all that some empires are more equal than others. Chavismo of course does not say anything about that, such as they say nothing about Nicaragua's Ortega rape of his step daughter. But we have already amply described here the abjection of chavismo, including its easy qualification of "genocide" for any order measure taken by a non chavista entity whereas real genocides as in Chechnya are totally ignored.

This at least gives us the latest best new word with real meaning when Pedro Llorens of El Nacional called Chavez pitiruso.

PS: "pitiyanki, y a mucha honra" honorable US lover (unless someone finds a better translation).

PS2: I might be a pitiyanki but my team is the Red Sox.

-The end-

The abysmal awfulness of Venezuelan state TV anchors

[Updated] There is a video I had heard of, about how bad the coverage of Michael Phelps 8th medal was on Tves, the network Chavez started in June 2007 to replace private RCTV, forcefully kicked out of the air waves. I did report about how bad the covering was but for some reason I missed that particular part. Either I was still rushing from my desk to watch the race or this video comes from a posterior replay of Tves or in the emotion I did not pay attention to the anchor words, having already blocked him from the previous half an hour listening to his absurdities. The video carries the translation though it is not very good. Still, amuse yourself at how incredibly ignorant is that Tves anchor: in short, he confuses Phelps with Spitz, puts them in the Munich Olympics presided by Hitler who refused in the end to give Phelps his medal.



And if you are surprised, new to Venezuela, you need to know that Chavez controls now 5 of the 9 networks that exist with more than local overage. All of his networks are equally badly staffed as any journalist, anchor or commentator with any pride in his or her job refuses to work there, a place where all news and programs must contain a promotion of Chavez or his lackeys. One of the things I heard during my very brief Olympic watch was an anchor slavishly thanking personally the CANTV head for the job she allowed him to get. A little bit as if NBC anchor would thank Bill Gates instead of Microsoft for sponsoring, implying that Bill Gates got him the job.

But not only they have no knowledge of world history but they are incoherent. Observe that he starts by saying no living athlete got ever 8 medals to say right after that Phelps did such a feat in Munich. I am in awe!

Update: This is so bad that today I have not been able to shake the thought that it might all be a set up. After all, I wrote this late at night so my judging functions might have been somewhat impaired. But so far there is no evidence that the sound track is fake.

Now, why do I bother discussing this, casting doubt on my very own post, without having been proven wrong yet? Because I think it is interesting to see how slowly but surely we, in Venezuela, are becoming everyday more Pavlovian. See, we are all so used to such bad TV reporting from the state networks (not that the private are much better, but at least they are better) that the first reaction to this video is to accept it at face value. Man, it rings so, so true if you ever watched Tves Olympic coverage! A half an hour of watching it was enough for me to accept this video at face value (and I still do accept its veracity until proven wrong).

So, even if it turned out to be a parody it would not matter because the parody would be better than reality, something possible only in Venezuela! Or as the Italians say: se non e vero, e ben trovato.

-The end-

Phelps gets his 8th gold

So I had to interrupt briefly my Olympics boycott to watch Phelps get his 8th gold, in what is perhaps my favorite event, the 400 medley (I did race it a couple of times in my years as a Masters swimmer in the US, I think I have somewhere a ribbon for a fifth place finish in some local event, I did the breaststroke).

I was initially upset because I had to watch it on Tves, the Chavez failed upstart and the only open signal allowed the dollars of CADIVI to pay for the retransmission. I was hoping that Meridiano would transmit it but they were on some stupid car racing show, so I had to hope that Tves would play the race. They did. I mean, even they could not pass on that. But when the medal ceremony arrived they switched quickly to some other dumb activity. Fortunately by then Meridiano (our local ESPN like network, mostly on cable) had connected so I could watch the ceremony. Tves would not be caught dead playing the US anthem and show US boys get emotional. Unbelievable, the possible greatest moment of these Olympics and Tves could just not go all the way with it!!!

But you know what was even more offensive? The extraordinarily poor quality of the Tves anchors! The amount of mistakes they made during the few minutes I watched was just astounding. I mean, sometimes I even wondered whether they were watching the same signal I was, or even if they knew how to swim. Their knowledge in geography and world sports was dismal. You should have heard them at the 1500 m award ceremony when the Tunisian athlete won the gold. And for bad luck the Tunisian uniform was like the Canadian third place: red all over. As far as Tves is concerned Canada won gold and bronze, until eventually one noted that the three flags were different. Forget about commenting the transcendence that a Tunisian won a medal on an event that usually belongs to the US and Australia..... If Tves has the exclusive, well, it makes my resuming of the boycott much easier.

[UPDATE] The perfect corny tribute to Phelps on Yahoo. Corny but it works. And it is a little bit voyeuristic too, but so are all sports requiring skimpy tight suits of diverse lengths.

And I forgot to add how thrilled I was by the race last night and how much in awe of Phelps I am. But so are we all, are we not?

-The end-

Do we need more Thomas More?

Since I am not watching the Olympics I got to watch the second season of the very fantasist series the Tudors. Tonight they beheaded Thomas More.

I have had some qualms about the reconstruction of Tudor England: much too clean; a king Henry the VIII well too thin (but sexy) and a Spanish queen whose Spanish is just terrible. Did they have to make her speak Spanish to the fake Spanish ambassador? But still, it is quite dramatic, quite entertaining, quite visual, and best, it is an excuse to revisit an exciting historical period, which I was musing resembles curiously many aspects of our contemporary problems, from justification of light totalitarianism, to free will in an age of political correctness.

And today we beheaded Thomas More. As the movie glosses lightly over the large moral questions that Thomas Moore faced and that led him to the scaffold, one could not help but wonder why was he made a saint. After all, he had no problem sending Lutherans to the pyre, he was not alien to censorship and his most famous work, Utopia, is considered as a commie book by some. No wonder his historical berth made him the patron saint of all politicians, who are certainly in need of role models.

Is thus Thomas More relevant today when he himself was far from blameless? I think he is because of all his qualities constancy and duty to the greater good ranked higher, and led him to the scaffold, a scaffold he could have easily avoided had he wanted to. True, under Henry VIII, a sexually obsessed totalitarian who had no problem destroying the shrine of yet another saint Thomas that run into trouble with a King, maybe More knew he was doomed and he might have decided to get it over with and become a martyr. The Zeitgeist then was about martyrdom and deep public shows of faith. Today Thomas More might accept an easier exit.

As I was watching Thomas More on TV I thought briefly of Leopoldo Lopez. I mean, there is nothing in the imagery of the movie nor in the discourse of the people and even less in the looks of the actors that could possibly remind me of Leopoldo. Why I thought about him is that even though he might be one of the most principled politicians of Venezuela today, he falls way short of the standards of a Thomas More. Never mind the rest of our local pols....

In Venezuela we do have today our own Henry VIII version. He might not be marrying around but he is equally single minded in pursuing his own self interest and pleasures. In an age of mass media we have invented new pleasures and who is to know what good king Henry would have done. After all, with in vitro techniques and antibiotics the succession problem would have been solved with less chopped heads.

Our King Hugo in a way effects the same mood on Venezuela as Henry did on England. You think I am kidding? Venezuela, a country that was deeply attached to the US and its way of life is breaking away in as painful a process, and lasting as long, as the break up of England with Rome. King Hugo suffers as much from his rejection by the US presidents than King Henry suffered from Rome's refusal to oblige him. And the people under them suffer equally form having to take sides. It took two centuries for England to finally settle its religious problems. In this respect it did not do them any good to have Thomas More and watch him beheaded. Henry VIII moved along and the Tudors lasted for over half a century more. Poor Thomas had to wait 4 centuries to become a saint. Justice arrives, but it has no timetable.

Do we have at least the hope of a Thomas More in Venezuela? I am afraid that the days are not favorable to Thomas Mores anywhere, at the Beijing Olympics, in Georgia, flying over Khartoum, negotiating in Harare or visiting Arab country summits. Upright attitudes are actually frown upon today: on TV such people look arrogant, insensitive to "different" cultures and people whose "peculiarities" are too often allowed to rank above basic ethical principles (only the Taliban seem to have missed such defense in the West, not because of what they killed but because of the burkha, a tad too much even for the most P.C. airheads of the world).

In Venezuela in front of our most psychotic president in recent history we have had the bad luck to be totally devoid of a principled great leader, if not political at least moral or cultural. I mean, we do have a whole bunch of luminaries that we should not be ashamed of, such as Padre Ugalde or journalists like Milagros Soccorro who daily stick their necks for us. Even among politicians there are some principled ones such as Teodoro Petkoff. They are all good but I am not sure what it would take for them to walk steadily to the scaffold when the time comes. Not that King Hugo can do a literal scaffold, at least not yet: he contents himself with executions from Alo Presidente.

Should we blame them? Certainly not. After all we saw what we did to the failed leaders of 2002 and 2004. Who talks or cares today about Juan Fernandez, one of the most palatable of the lot? Who is risking his or her career to defend Venezuelan political prisoners? Most are too worried about getting elected mayor of Tucusiapon. True, we should also get elected there, I am all in for that, we need every nook and cranny to build strength against Chavez, but there is something missing somewhere and that is someone who is willing to compromise it all for a political cause that we all know is right, even if many will not agree with it. On this respect the Venezuela people do resemble a lot the English of the XVI century. They all knew in London that it was wrong to behead Thomas More but they all watched and moved on.

Perhaps the most pathetic example today of what I am saying is Leopoldo Lopez. He refused to prepare a Plan B for when he would be barred form running for Caracas mayor. Once he was barred then he decided that he would not support anyone (a me or else moment?). Now he comes up with a second run, an opposition primary to replace him, which we assume that he will manage, and which will also ensure an exit for his protegé in Chacao town hall. I cannot tell you how underwhelmed by Leopoldo Lopez I am now. I cannot think of a faster switch from wanna-be martyr to cheap survivor! One week!

Curiously in the same week we got a new candidate for the Thomas More award. Oh, he is certainly not close to win it but at least he is the one politician that is taking steps towards a productive martyrdom: Ismael Garcia. Yes, that is right. He might have accompanied King Hugo to depths that are unjustifiable, but so did Thomas with Henry for a while. And just like Thomas, when all fell to the King's feet something made him pull back. Ismael showed that in the deepest of him there was still something worth fighting for. Now, alone and still shunned by most folks he does his work, not recoiling in front of anything, going as far as marching in the streets next to Leopoldo Lopez just before this one blew his chance. And guess what? Ismael did not sign up to become Caracas mayor even though many thought he should do it. Maybe that "omission" is part of the strategy, but it was also a dignified gamble.


-The end-

Venezuela seen from Uruguay

Youtube carries the darnedest things. I was looking for some videos for a post I am writing and I stumbled on this, a comic Uruguayan program that made a spoof about opening a franchise on Venezuelan TV. It comes with all, government take over, censorship, sulfur and mockery of Venezuelan anchors describing Copa America soccer with baseball terms. But the worst part of it is tha the accent the comics picked up to imitate Venezuelan accent is the accent from... Cuba. Enjoy this moment of fluff, not the greatest video ever but still quite telling. And to think this was done in 2007.....



-The end-

Where is the outrage?

Today we got evidence that Chavez is just your average imperialist.

A Venezuelan helicopter falls in Bolivia and 4 Venezuelan military died

OK, so shit happens.

It can be a bomb in Iraq or a soldier passing with a heat induced heart attack at a military parade anywhere in the world, including Venezuela. But what happened in Bolivia Monday cannot be justified. A Venezuelan helicopter crashed killing its 5 occupants, 4 of them military personnel from Venezuela. Apparently that helicopter was on permanent service to Evo Morales, to jump all around the country for his political activities.

There is so much wrong with all of that.....

How come a Venezuelan helicopter is at the permanent disposal of Evo Morales? How come there was only one Bolivian in it? Who allowed for that? What was the justification? Could we not have made a "loan" for Morales to buy his own flying machine with his own people? Is Morales so short of personnel he can trust? How many more questions like that do I have to ask before a PSF finally mutters something?

Does the Venezuelan military realize how poor an image they have already with all the graft and corruption they allow, to add now that 4 of our boys died for a cause we do not know, do not share, do not relate with? Truly, when we get out of this nightmare we will have to consider the future role of the Venezuelan army and think about a Costa Rican solution. Personally my militant anti militarism has long made me dislike deeply the Venezuelan army but now I hope that this feeling is going to percolate more in the population as they are dragged into the reality of what the Venezuelan Army has become.

Because let's face it: the Venezuelan army is allowing the president to use its material, its boys, to help a political campaign in a foreign country. These boys were killed NOT on a humanitarian mission, NOT defending the country, NOT rescuing people from a natural disaster, they were killed to satisfy Chavez international megalomania.

The Venezuelan army is accountable for that, NOT really Chavez. He is just using the pusillanimity of military officers that are getting rich and fat. The real murderers are at the defense ministry, not at Miraflores. I beg to disagree with a retired generals that today tried to put the blame only on Chavez. NO, the blame is on the current army chiefs of staff, they are the one allowing their boys being manipulated. They could have said NO to Chavez, asked him to send the helicopter after a fake sale if necessary. But no, they wanted to be seen in the glory of political activism, with excuses for junket trips to drink and whore around in Bolivia, when they cannot even carry troops to the Colombian border.

140 cars for the Venezuelan embassy in La Paz

To add insult to injury we also got another piece of news. The Venezuelan government received an authorization by the Bolivian government to import duty free 140 cars for the use of the Venezuelan embassy in La Paz. 140 f*****g cars!

How can the Bolivian government deprive itself from the revenue of this imported cars? Is Bolivia that rich suddenly? And what the f***k the Venezuelan embassy needs 140 cars for? Does ANY embassy in Caracas has 140 cars at its disposition? Even in Washington DC? And guess what? After a while Venezuela will give these cars to Bolivians NGO!!!!!! What criteria will be chosen to select the benefited NGO? And will Venezuelan petty tyrants in La Paz get new cars every year?

But you know what? Last time a country did such type of things it was the US in Latin America, although they did it with more tact and discretion than the loud Venezuelans who we are told are increasingly hated for their arrogance in Bolivia. The US did learn its lesson eventually, Chavez never will.

At least there was a good piece of news today: justice eventually comes. War criminal Radovan Karadzic has finally been arrested.

-The end-

File under "truth is stranger than fiction" : Miss Venezuela gets the Miss Universe crown

This is about the little bit of trivia that is totally useless but that somehow will manage to stay with us for a long time.

Dayana Mendoza won for Venezuela its fifth Miss Universe crown. The fifth one for Osmel Sousa by the way, the guy that single handedly did more for plastic surgery world wide than any other person I can think of.

I suppose that for some people this bit of trivia is important, in particular for chavismo who know feels that the score is Uribe 1 : Chavez 1. Because get that, Miss Colombia was the runner up!!!!! Personally I could not care less about the result, having become quite PC about meat market activities and since a former Miss Venezuela, Irene Saez, allowed indirectly for the rise of Hugo Chavez in the late 90ies....

As if already the results in the Vietnam event was not weird enough, in these times of Colombia/Venezuela troubles, get that: Dayana Mendoza has been, in Venezuela, the victim of a kidnapping action!!!! The longer AP note, including pictures of the happy winner for those interested, also tells us that to crown it all Miss USA fell on her face on the catwalk. I mean, what better Sunday for Chavez can we possibly come up with!? I cannot wait for conspiracy theorists to say that Chavez paid for the whole thing. They are wrong, such happy coincidences money cannot buy...

I bet you we get a cadena with mention somewhere of the happy news as yet another success of the bolivarian farce..... Only in Venezuela revolutionary women have to be of course better looking than capitalistic countries.... You might be laughing at that last one but you just wait!

And let's not forget that Ingrid is the daughter of a former Colombian beauty queen. Will the news of the Colombia defeat affect her incessant TV appearances?

-The end-

The art of transforming oil in human waste: Venezuelan diplomacy

Ah! One good thing about chavismo is that there is never a dull moment and even 10 years into office we can still be astounded by the latest "barbaridad".

It all started this week end through a few articles form El Nacional (subscription only). In one article we learned that out of 97 Venezuelan embassies only 15 are served by professional diplomats, that is, trained staff with a career record which justifies them to become ambassador at some point. In other words 84% of Venezuelan embassies are directed by a political appointee of some chargé d'affaires that might or might not be a political employee. Now, let's not be more Catholic than the Pope here: an embassy is always a nice reward for a big political benefactor and the US is certainly a country used to such type of rewards. However no matter what political appointee is sent to the Court of St. James's, the second in command is always a career diplomat.

So, what is a career diplomat? A legal spy, something invented long ago to allow countries to do reasonable spying on each other. Overtime embassies and diplomacy became also an extension of the local chamber of commerce wanting to buy or place goods. Thus the training is easy to guess: languages, table manners, ability to mimic native customs, a certain ability to do market surveys, demonstrated capacity to write complete reports, and many more, but one above all: professional discretion. This last one is not learned quickly and that is why there is such a thing as career diplomats: they are the ones that can pass out drunk if needed for the sake of their country without spilling a single bean.

OK, I did exaggerate some for effect but I trust the point is clear: someone fresh out from some ministry post or some army barrack IS NOT a born diplomat. Which is exactly what is happening in Venezuela today. You are a Chavez minister and your failure was particularly galling? no problem, you are dismissed during an Alo Presidente and a few weeks after your name is proposed for the embassy at Podunkonia. There your only real obligation will be to promote the glories of the Bolivarian revolution, create a groupie association to welcome Chavez were he ever to visit Podunkonia, identify possible recipients of payments to ensure votes at the UN that favor Chavez and such activities. Not for you of course to hold boring meetings where trade is promoted: this is done directly in Caracas with the local embassies, once juicy commissions are decided though discrete intermediaries.

In short, since you are not put there to defend Venezuela interests but to defend Chavez interests alone, you need no stinking diploma to justify your entry into the diplomatic career. Chavismo through the voice of Ali Rodriguez was not embarrassed to confirm this (1). From that interview published in EL Nacional last Monday we can read the following pearls:

- The wanna-be diplomats are sent to Cuba to study what they need for their career. [since when is Castro's Cuba a reference to make diplomats?]

- "Diplomacy has to be politics" "To diplomacy to project internal politics". [Quite clear, no? Venezuelan diplomats role is to promote the image of Chaevz since all that is done inside Venezuela is to promote the image of Chavez]

- "A college degree does not make a diplomat" [we know, we know, devotion to Chavez is the ONLY credential required if you want to get a state job in Venezuela]

- "The need for academics and of career diplomats is a silly prejudice" [Well, I suppose that we should thank him for his frankness]

- "[Cuba] has more embassies in Africa than Europe" [a new meaning for 'mine is bigger than yours']

Of course the results of such a diplomatic corps eventually become a disaster for the country who holds such values. We have two examples kindly provided as soon as these El Nacional articles were published.

Angela Merkel, German chancellor, a victim of the Stasi, had the misfortune to state an elemental truth: Chavez was not the voice, the spokesperson of South America. Of course, Yo, El Supremo was deeply offended in his silly pride and could not resist himself to insult Merkel publicly in the most outrageous terms we can think of. If Chavez had someone like me working for him he would have received the following memo:

Dear Comandante Presidente

The words of the Merkel woman must be countered. We suggest that you stress her links with the devil president of the US. You should suggest that she is too close from Bush to have any valid opinion as to whom is a leader anywhere in the world.

Under no circumstances mention her name in the same sentence as the words Nazi, Hitler, or fascism: this would only result in Germans rallying behind her and a possible reaction of support from the European Union.

Patria, Socialismo O Muerte.

Obviously either no one was able to write such a memorandum or worse, was unwilling to mail it to Chavez. Thus sure enough Merkel benefited from a supportive opinion at home and the president of the EU went one further deploring all forms of populism in particular the leftist brand now seen in Latin America. (2)

That the president of the EU is right now held by a Portuguese, Jose Barroso, is a delicious coincidence as I present the second evidence as to why such organization of foreign policy can only result in trouble and public humiliation for Venezuela. With great fanfare the government has announced a deal to buy lots of food from tiny Portugal in exchange for oil. For this, the prime minister of Portugal, Socrates, made an official visit to sign for the juicy contracts. In all of this charade nobody in the diplomatic corps of Venezuela seems to have noticed how humiliating was the show.

See, first we should explain how come that after 10 years of glorious bolibanana revolution we need to knock Portugal's door to buy its agricultural surplus. And I am not talking olive oil or canned fish here, we are talking pasta! soy oil! powdered milk! Things that we would never associate a priori as great Portuguese exports!!!!!

Second we would like to know how come Venezuela is spending its oil money in food that, after a brief transit, will end up in the sewers instead of buying development high technology items such as trains from Germany. With those imports Portugal will get more money to finance its agro-industrial complex (since it has one and apparently Venezuela as a lesser one than Portugal) while Venezuela will get food which will last, well, you know, a few hours. With these exports, bought to private capitalistic companies in Portugal, that country might be able to produce even more food while in Venezuela private food producers will face yet a new unfair, subsidized competitor and thus lose money, and thus invest even less in Venezuelan agricultural production and thus eventually force the government to import yet more food.

Hard working, business savvy Portuguese will be laughing all the way to the bank... But in Venezuela the government is clueless about its admission of failed agricultural policies when a small country, half the people of Venezuela, a fraction of Venezuela area, is able to rescue it form some of its food shortages! I suppose that among the chavista hardcore some will find the news wonderful, but I am pretty sure that among the very few remaining chavista with some sort of a brain there must be a realization that we used to depend on the local Portuguese grocer for our food and now we must ALSO depend on the country itself....... that has got to be sobering for a few folks.

But I suppose that I should not be so hard on the present Venezuelan diplomacy: after all they did manage the deal with Portugal. Just as they are scouring all around the globe for the food not produced at home. Why Socrates allowed himself to be convinced to go to Caracas to sign is puzzling as many other countries sell food to Chavez without accepting to have their picture taken next to Chavez. So score one for the cheap political acts turned diplomats through a Cuban crash course.

And score all sorts of minuses for them in helping Chavez turning oil into human waste.


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

1) Ali Rodriguez is a former guerilla who never lost his extreme leftist views, even though he projected moderation through his speech ways. He got them fulfilled under Chavez. After serving in many critical positions (read: those where money circulated) he ended up as ambassador to Cuba where he was also treated for diverse ills. Considering that the Havana job is today the main foreign post for Venezuela, where Chaevz dispatched his own brother for years, you know that Ali Rodriguez knows of all subventions, legal or illegal, all stolen monies, all secret accounts, etc... Ali Rodriguez is someone who will end up in jail if Chavez eventually leaves office, even if he never stole a coin for himself.

2) Mirjam Gehrke at DW of Germany even writes "To compare Angela Merkel to Adolf Hitler was disrespectful and ignorant. The reference was so stupid in fact, that the chancellor herself wouldn't respond to it." Yeah well, they are all finding out eventually how ignorant Chavez is. They could have saved lots of time had they be reading this blog :)


-The end-

The tacky chavista Carnaval: Rio it ain't...

Last Tuesday in Caracas I crossed in Plaza Venezuela this Carnaval parade. Needless to say that my eyes popped out and that I am still looking for my fallen jaw. See, it is not that I am opposed to bring some politics into a Carnaval float, many of the samba schools of Rio constantly do veiled social commentary at the Sambodromo; but what is really bad here, is that politics kills any intention of escapism or folk art that is implicit in any Carnaval festivity. For two days you are supposed to drink, dance and be merry. This is not the time to proclaim all the alleged glories of a pseudo revolution.

But chavismo cannot help itself: all must be for the glory of Chavez, or a reminder of his good deeds. Tackiness, truly bad taste, imposition are all fine when Chavez is glorified. I suppose we cannot help it: there is dearth of intellectuals and well known artists supporting chavismo, and thus the cultural level of chavismo is so low that I should not be surprised. Yet, I am still surprised at the new lows regularly reached, and at tax payer expense by the way since all the cars used for that parade seem to have been official vehicles.

This first picture is of the Che Guevara Mision, the Mision that supposedly trains people to get a real job (it used to be called Mision Vuelvan Caras). In reality, it trains them to be good revolutionaries, and to depend on government stipends. The float is so bad, so ill conceived, so inaccurate (red beret? military Cuban uniform on an easy rider bike??) that we wonder if the people who designed this float had any idea who was Che before they were put in charge of lauding him. This is not Carnaval anymore, this is voodoo reconstruction of a mythic figure. (click all pictures to enlarge for details)

The next picture is something I suppose from Venezuelan history. No more costumes of fairy queens, drag queens or Dairy Queens attendants here: Bolivarian drag only. And observe of course on the left lower corner the clear link to the "bolivarian government". No ambiguity here, on your face propaganda and historical manipulation, with as much red from the flag as possible.



An even more direct intervention, though perhaps justified up to a point, was the float of the Tourism Ministry. But it also fails. The theme was the "Diablos de Yare". This could for the naive visitor seem Carnavalesque enough. But it is not. The Diablos de Yare is a very specific religious activity that takes place on Corpus Cristi, the now forgotten Christian holiday that usually takes place mid June. The masks and costumes have really deep meanings for the practitioners and deserve a little bit of respect. Showing it in such a circumstance is cheapening a very traditional Venezuelan celebration, one that attracts tourists from all around the world. But I suspect that chavistas do not have the cultural level to understand that, and since the Yare Costume is dominated by RED from immemorial times, well, then Yare must have been chavista before Chavez existed.


And to crown all in chavista style, two more floats on medical matters. The first one is a reproduction of one of the modules of Barrio Adentro (the first time by the way I see one with the door open). Grotesquely it comes with its doctor in white lab coat. Human suffering brought to Carnaval parade. Pricelessly tacky.


The second one is an insult to one's intelligence. As the Dengue epidemic keeps growing in Venezuela and more deaths reported, the government of Caracas has nothing better to offer than a silly truck, loaded with bureaucrats in uniform and a billboard that says that Dengue prevention is everybody's work. Maybe, but since the governmental fumigations against the specific mosquito carrier have been woefully deficient, since the public hospitals are unable to face the emergency, since Chavez went as far as to say that the epidemic is from a modified form of the virus (genetically designed by you know who), it is simply pathetic to see the government waste resources on something were a message on how prevention is achieved is not even displayed. By the way, any float on the returning malaria and yellow fever?


This is it, the cultural reach of chavismo, its mediocrity exposed in the most pathetic fashion. But then again Chavez is an uncouth soldier. What can you expect from a lout and the sycophants who he appoints? Where are the artistic masterpieces of Cuba's Castro or Nazi Germany? If you cannot even let the people manage Carnaval as they please, any creativity will be fast squelched.


-The end-

The fairness and receptivity of the Venezuelan Judicial system

Yesterday we got yet another proof that the Venezuelan judicial system has become simply another repressive arm of the regime. In fact, as we have often discussed in this page the closest branch of the Venezuelan government to a dictatorial situation is the judicial system. The evidence we discussed on and off is as follows, in no particular order:

- justices chanting "Uh! Ah! Chavez no se va!" during the installation of the judicial year.
- extraordinary delays when judging opposition figures, the longer the delays of course, the weaker the evidence. Look for example at the Caracas Police directors sitting in jail for three years already while their trial goes at a snail pace, the judges inventing all sorts of delays.
- the speed in judgment of chavista figures, in case these ones actually find themselves investigated.
- the failure to reach conclusion which in some cases is equal to a negative sentence against an opposition figure. The Danilo Anderson case for which management the general prosecutor should have been fired long ago resulted in his quiet departure at the end of the term while some of the folks he has indicted on account of a false witness remain investigated or in exile.
- and of course all the astounding fast political decisions taken by he high court when the government needs them in his favor. Take for illustration one of the most famous ones, the illegal seizure without compensation of all the transmission equipment of RCTV, a robbery in facts, whereas all the filed suits as to the closing of RCTV remain gathering dust in some TSJ shelf.

That is why Chavez can get away with a de facto dictatorship while still tolerating unfair elections and an increasingly less free press. After all it does not matter what you uncover, what abuse you expose, when you hit a tribunal your complaint sometimes is not even registered. That is the root of the power of Chavez, the most extraordinarily submitted judicial system in our history, morally corrupt to the extreme, and possibly financially corrupt too. After all, what judge in Venezuela would dare rule against a chavista judge?

Today we can add something new to this repetition, a necessary one though since foreign readers might be inclined to think that there is justice in Venezuela since we are technically in a democracy. Yesterday a few students tried to protest in the Zulia tribunals of Maracaibo. Their justified protest was against the unjustified and unjustifiable delays in some political trials going on. They also tried to chain themselves to some door which might have been justifiable but probably not at that given time. Still, nothing can justify the reaction of the security guards of the Zulia tribunals. In the video below you can watch the vicious way into which these guards beat up some of the students, a violence out of all proportion with the moment, when simply closing the doors and accuse the students of obstructing access to justice would have been enough, and probably even reflect favorably on the court.



I do not know about you, but when the tribunal security seems even more vicious than the Nazional Guard of Venezuela, you know that there is no justice possible. You can see for yourself, no need for translation, for example how unconscious folks on the floor are still being beaten up and how of course the security guards know they are doing the wrong thing and trying to also shut down the cameras filming. Cowardly chavista storm troopers in all their splendor! Because of course, all of these "security workers" are chavista political appointees, I will bet anything on that.

By the way, for the record, there is nothing to expect from the president of the TSJ, Luisa Estela Morales. She has been fired twice from courts for "malpractice", a mediocre lawyer at best, who became the absolutely unfit president of the TSJ because Chavez wanted an unconditional there is not going to even offer an apology or an investigation on these excesses. Let's not forget that she is also an agricultural expert in that she thinks like Chavez that the "conuco" is the best possible form of agricultural production, never minding that it has denuded most mountains of their natural vegetation leaving behind a waste land of poor grass and rocks where once stood a deciduous forest. In other words, she is just a bitchy hack, the Elena Ceausescu of the Venezuelan judicial system. Expect more scenes like that video in the future.


-The end-

Oops! That would be "guilty" your honor!

2007 was an "annus horribilis" for Chavez. So far 2008 is not bringing any improvement.

Today the "800 000 bucks bag of money" case came bag to the front scene with a vengeance. One of the Miami 4, Maionica, decided to switch his plea to "Guilty" and become a prosecution witness. He acknowledges that all the secretly recorded tapes are legitimate and that he was an agent of the Venezuelan government in order to cover up the money sent by Chavez to finance Cristina Kirchner electoral campaign.

Now a boatload of folks must be running for cover in Caracas and Buenos Aires. Watching the face of Nicolas Maduro, our failed metrobus driver turned foreign minister, accusing the US judicial system to be a farce and of submitting Maionica to unbearable pressure was a tragic poem. Not only Maduro has been watching too many bad movies, but he is unable to comprehend that Maionica as a lawyer probably understood that making a deal with the Miami prosecutor was his best way out. He will get off with a slight sentence and get a US resident visa to cooperate with the US justice. From Miami, perhaps working at some MacDonald, he will be able to wait the end of Chavez and come back to Venezuela to resume business, perhaps sooner than expected. (1)

Let's not extend on something that we have all discussed extensively in this blog and its comments. The only difference today is that the Maionica confession makes it official that Chavez is financing all sorts of illegal political activities everywhere, in amounts that make any NED donation to SUMATE a child's game. In fact, chavista paid agents like Eva Golinger must be worrying about their eventual return to the US as surely the IRS must have noticed their recent prosperity on account of dishing the US. It is Al Capone again, the bolibana version. Of course, the ridicule and bad karma/conscience that awaits these people might even be much worse than any IRS citation.

Instead let's talk about he possible consequences.

In Buenos Aires this time the Casa Rosada was keeping, at this typing, a sinister silence. Gone where the early December days when newly sworn Lady K. was calling the US judicial system garbage. Now, her government might be in jeopardy as it is gravely wounded within its first month in office. It is to be noted that for much less than the Antonini money bag affair many a post war Italian government fell.

In Venezuela Chavez has little to fear. After all the judicial system is now inexistent and certainly not about to investigate Chavez on anything. No matter what the trials of Miami in the coming months might reveal, we can be assured that the most that will happen will be a delightfully botched operation such as the one on the Danilo Anderson assassination. That one lead to nowhere, though ensuring that at least a few political opponents were put in trouble for nothing, one still in exile. No, even if there were to be a judge willing to take on Chavez, or at least his corrupt camarilla, even if the other 3 in Miami were to plead guilty now and start talking, Chavez has much worse problems than Antonini to face anyway.

Because the HMS-Chavez seems to make water from all sides these days.

First, at least for Chavez, his foreign policy front, the only aspect of his rule that he really cares about, is collapsing right and left. Certainly the Antonini affair is not going to help him at all since now many governments will have perfect excuses to monitor Venezuela agents in their country and even deny them entry. But the FARC fiasco keeps bringing more grief. After his triumphant tour of Europe, with soaring polls at home, this week Uribe received nothing less than admiral Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and today the Secretary of State. The implication is extremely clear, and grave for Venezuela: if Chavez does not start behaving better, he is going to run into major trouble. We can hope that at least the Venezuelan armed forces will have gotten the message that any move against Colombia will find the US firmly behind them. We can hope that they will make sure that no matter how many insults Chavez keeps sending to Bogota, the situation will not go past insults. By the way, Bogota refuses to reply to Chavez which only seems to send him into further paroxysms.

But if grave matters like Colombia are besotting Chavez, other players area taking advantage to plant in his back further "banderillas". Alan Gracia in Peru is not missing a chance, timing his granting exile residency to my ex-governor Lapi. Not been on the run anymore, from Peru Lapi will be able to play a role in the coming November elections. Under a very amused Garcia watch.

But it gets worse for Chavez. His polls are now reaching levels not seen since 2002. The psychological effect of the December 2 rout (by the way, the CNE STILL HAS NOT RELEASED THE FINAL VOTING RESULTS!!!) seems to have been hit harder than expected. Coupled with an increasingly graver food shortage situation, it is not surprising that the Teflon effect of Chavez is finally over and that after 9 years in office people are finally starting to wonder if the current bad situation might not have something to do with Chavez incompetence. His or his people, same difference.

But to crown this already awful week, we were shown the latest shopping spree of Chavez to stack up the shelves in Venezuela. In a hurry, where do you get rice, black beans and cooking oil? In the Evil Empire, of course! That very same empire that Chavez constantly criticizes and accuses of preparing itself to invade us at any second. The bag handed out by PDVSA to frustrated shoppers had even an large US flag on its bag of rice! Will wonders ever cease?

The opposition needs not to do anything: these days sitting back and watching chavismo melt down is a fantastic experience.

1) Maduro also took it upon himself to criticize the Globovision journalists from being anti bolivarian, a traitor and what not, urging her to join the noble cause of bolivarianism, to unify in the defense of the fatherland. Or some such garbage. When a foreign minister lowers himself so much it becomes embarrassing even for people opposing him.

-The end-

The power couple goes unscathed

This is just a little addendum to the previous post. There is one question which answer would be most interesting. We did see some "punishment" meted out with the new cabinet, in particular the exit of Rodriguez and Lara which are appointed to bear the official brunt of losing the December 2 referendum.

Yet, two of the characters that have failed Chavez the most through 2007 kept their jobs. I am talking about the Maduro-Flores couple.

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-