Miscellanea

A few things.

A ¡NO! for reason

I have read so many idiots in the last three hours that I am forced to write about the Colombien plebiscite of today. Never mind that it will also have consequences for Venezuela.

When you go on vacation to Cartagena and think you
have been whitewashed by your travel agent

I heard "Brexit again! Trump next!"
I read the NYT being shocked
I see people wondering how could Colombians be so stupid, ungrateful, war loving folks!?

So let´s bring some of that hubris down, shall we?

First, the idiots doing amalgam. Today's vote in Colombian is not remotely close to the conditions of Brexit or Trump. Colombia is a, partially, warn torn country where everyone knows first or second hand the consequences of decades of a FARC guerrilla cum narko organization. Most people who voted in Colombia knew full well what they were voting for even if using the same facts led to different choices. With Brexit and Trump we have people that do not have enough problems in their real lives and are thus looking for new ones.

FARC soon at a Venezuelan arepera next to you

ABC journalist and bete noire of chavismo for all of the insider leaks he has been reporting, Emili Blasco, writes a piece in ABC about how the FARC is preparing its retreat to Venezuela once (before?) any peace treaty is signed with the Santos administration.

Since it is in Spanish a short summary follows, plus what I wrote on that already in 2012:

"Worse than a crime, a mistake"

We just learned that Lorent Saleh, a vociferous student activist against the Chavez regime has been expelled from Colombia to Venezuela. I have no doubt that Lorent Saleh crossed the line in Colombia on what political activities a foreigner can undertake there. I am certain that there might be justified reasons for the Colombian government to ask him to leave the country.

But there is ABSOLUTELY NO EXCUSE for the Santos government to expel him to Venezuela where Lorent Saleh is subjected to political persecution.

Gas smuggling to Colombia. Contrabando de gasolina a Colombia

For those who are still not aware of the smuggling business of gasoline to Colombia



Even if one is aware of the traffic, even if one does not understand Spanish, you cannot fail to be impressed by the visuals. Clearly, smuggling to such an extent is only possible because the Venezuelan authorities have allowed it because they benefit from it. And the cancer of corruption spreads evenly everywhere as the local Colombian authorities have found it safer to join in than trying to stop it. In short, the gains from getting gas for free in Venezuela and selling it at international prices in Colombia is so profitable that everyone along the way cashes in, from the natives whose lands are crossed and who demand a toll, to the guerrilla groups that work hand in hand with the Venezuelan guard. (hat tip Charly, video from Caracol TV Colombia, impossible to pass on TV in Venezuela today).

Viva Chavez, carajo!

Maduro 3 Santos 0?

So Santos just won his reelection. I am not too optimistic for a good second term. So many things can go wrong when you have such a false start for a very complicated process with a neighbor that wants nothing better but you to fail.  The more so when the neighbors seems to be scoring several unexpected goals, a little bit like the hefty surprise victory of Colombia over Greece yesterday by 3-0.

Nelson Bocaranda confirms what this blog wrote in November 2012

In his Runrunes of today Nelson Bocaranada, regime prosecuted journalist, writes about an "incident" in Calabozo, Guarico State. Apparently the Colombian guerrilla FARC has set camp there and has started even shooting down security CICPC Venezuelan personnel that are investigating local crime. Meaning of course that the FARC in Guarico is already part of the local crime scene. Bocaranda also hints that when they discovered it was not local crime but guerrilla the agents may have been pulled back....

The building up of a FARC/drug corridor in Venezuela

Miguel's text on Rodriguez Chacin candidacy for Guarico state forces me to finish this post I was pondering for a while. Miguel certainly describes well the character but he seems to have missed the bigger picture that is emerging.  For this I have drawn this very amateur map of what will Venezuela drug routes look like soon, and where the FARC will take temporarily refuge once the Havana talks between the Colombian government and the FARC conclude (1).

How chavismo plans to offer refuge to FARC.
In light mauve the zones in Colombia where FARC and ELN concentrate before crossing over to Venezuela.

Some days I want to cover the elections and most days I do not want to

I wrote a single post on the December regional elections hinting that I may not want to cover further than what I did, silly arithmetic prediction included. But the debacle in the chavistas candidate "nomination" process is so tempting...  then again the ongoing slow motion suicide of the opposition keeps apace so why bother covering what may be the final set up of the totalitarian regime of Chavez whose end can only come through open rebellion? Started by chavistas themselves, mind you!

Let's start with the chavista mess.

Yanomami redux

What to think?

On one side the IACHR demands that investigation about the alleged Yanomami massacre keeps up. On the other side, brazenly, Chavez says that nothing happened, just as a military involved in the investigation acknowledges that maybe today a group may finally reach the alleged crime scene since from helicopter they could not make out conditions. The group also needs set up a place where an helicopter could land. In other words, they do not know but Chavez does.

But the outburst of Chavez comes from the same place as his outburst over Amuay. Just as the mess of PDVSA has ONLY one culprit, Hugo Chavez, the sorry condition of venezuelan native people is the fault of ONLY one person, Hugo Chavez. If all the promises made to natives in 1999 did not come through it is because it would have meant empowering them, protecting them from drug trafficking and garimpeiros. Instead the venezuelan corrupt military made a big buck controlling gas supply in the southern rivers, putting garimpeiros through extortion, and protecting drug and FARC movements at the Zulia border and Orinoco delta. Where natives live in the largest numbers.

Recognizing that there are "maintenance" problems at PDVSA and that natives can be mistreated without consequences is tantamount to recognize that his whole revolution was a lie. And certainly Hugo Chavez will die first before he recognizes that his two main planks have been an infamous sham, an excuse he had to promote what he really meant to promote: Fidel Castro and the FARC take over of Colombia.

http://m.eluniversal.com/nacional-y-politica/120906/cidh-exige-investigar-a-fondo-denuncia-sobre-masacre
http://www.talcualdigital.com/Nota/visor.aspx?id=75837&tipo=AVA
http://talcualdigital.com/Nota/visor.aspx?id=75841&tipo=AVA

No Samba for Chavez this time around

I do not want to be mean, but the sudden "old knee injury" of Chavez has a perfect timing.  That is, he can bail out of any summit, any press meeting, any cadena even if he wishes so.  Then again after having been exposed as to give 300 million USD to a terrorist association, you may want to keep a low profile for a while.  And if that means postponing once again your first official meeting with Dilma Roussef, who has seen everyone but you already, well, so be it.  She might as well start her second round of Samba dancing with the other guys.

I have the suspicion that the FARC linkage of Venezuela and Ecuador is just starting its aftershocks, no matter how much the ladies protest.

Venezuela Asked Colombian Rebels to Kill Opposition Figures, Analysis Shows

PLOP!
It is not me saying this, it is the New York Times under the pen of Simon Romero.  Remember the famous computers of Raul Reyes (and others taken since)?

The documents are part of a 240-page book on the rebel group, “The FARC Files: Venezuela, Ecuador and the Secret Archive of Raúl Reyes,” to be published Tuesday by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. While some of the documents have been quoted and cited previously, the release of a CD accompanying the book will be the first time such a large number of the documents have been made public since they were first seized.

And this one for the annals of Paranoia:

The Sur del Lago region is resisting the potential narco-guerrilla take over

Dangerous escualidos defending their job

It seems that censorship is working inside Venezuela because I learned late that the 47 farms that were expropriated last week in what we call "Sur del Lago"are resisting the unjust chavista take over.  Not only I learned about this recent development late but I learned it through Colombian TV while Globovision was continuing its "normal " programming.....  Although there are already pictures available on the web the information is meager, just official TV relating that all is going well in the "rescue" of abandoned land and El Universal who is more explicit and which writes that three, 3, battalions of the army have been dispatched to take over these, I assume considering the extensive army deployment.

San Pedro Alejandrino, as much a place of reckoning as ever

Post meeting update

Santos and Chavez are supposed to meet tomorrow at San Pedro Alejandrino, this most hallowed ground in Latin America, where Bolivar spent the last ten days of his life, near Santa Marta, hoping to recover somehow before he could board ship to Jamaica and Europe in his semi imposed self exile.

Why would this two enemies until a few hours ago anyway, meet there?  What should they meet to begin with?

Let's start with the reasons for the meeting .

Pudreval and the FARC

If we did not have Weil we would need to invent him....

Chavez: Were these pictures taken in Venezuela we would have seen backgrounds like this one

In a particularly ironic and cynic turn Weil has Chavez dismiss the documents shown by Colombia at the OAS a few days ago by acknowledging that there is so many containers rotting food in Venezuela that surely it should appear in the FARC camp pictures.

................

¿Unas razones para la "intromisión" de Colombia en los asuntos de Venezuela?

Sobre la ruptura de las relaciones con Colombia despues de la sesión de la OEA este jueves me han fascinado los distintos comentarios,  sean los insensatos y violentos por parte de Cilia Flores, presidenta de la Asamblea Nazional de Venezuela, o de algún otro insensato comeflor, que se pierde en tecnicismos de que si los procedimientos de la OEA no fueron seguidos, de que si era la misma vieja historia repetida. Y se me ocurrió que casi todo el mundo no ve el bosque detrás del árbol. Lo que ocurrió ayer en Washington fue Colombia notificándole al mundo que una tragedia se está gestando en Venezuela y que no están dispuestos a asumir el costo solos.

Empecemos por tres puntos básicos.

Chavez breaks with Colombia for reasons of "dignity"

Now, the not surprising announcement might have carried some seriousness had it been pronounced without the presence of noted narco Maradona. I mean, please... if you are talking about "dignity" be dignified!!!!



So, receiving Argentina failed technician at the World Cup, famous football player and famous ex (?) drug addict Maradona, Chavez replied to the accusations by Colombia that there are at least 87 camps inside Venezuela that are or were safe haven fr FARC and ELN guerrilla.  The video is from Globovision, as a rebroadcast of whatever VTV signal is since they are the only ones allowed near Chavez.  Observe, for fun, even if you do not understand Spanish, the Chavez show.

An Uribe Santos spat behind the latest citation of Venezuela to the OAS?

UPDATED.  Do not count me in those who think the latest initiative of Uribe in bringing Venezuela to account for its harboring of FARC terrorists inside its borders is the sure sign of a rift between Uribe and his protege president elect Santos.  The OAS session to deal with the accusations will be held next Thursday and one would think that sparks will fly.  But thinking that this is the main show would also be a mistake.

Chavez, ETA, FARC and other assorted terrorism

Juan Forero at the WaPo is late but thorough about all the evidence floating around Chavez and his minions helping terrorist groups around the world.

Chavez Venezuela: a repressive country, a haven for terrorists and drug smugglers

Today was a terrible day for Chavez. [UPDATED 1 & 2]

First it started with a judge in Spain emitting an indictment that states among other things that ETA terrorists get cover and help just as the FARC ones do, in Venezuela.  While there, they plotted killing two Colombian presidents as well as other Colombian figures. There goes the constant Chavez complaints that all want to kill him.