Fiascoes

Following Venezuela from afar is a painful exercise. All that I see are missed opportunities and grand thuggery in action. Not surprising of course when you know the actors. What is most offensive though is the reaction of these actors; as if they expected the outcome to be different than what was predictable.

I am speaking for all, not only the opposition post April 30 debacle, but also the regime failure to come up with a solution to its power holding problems, only insuring that everything will happen again. And let's not forget the international community either desperately clueless or desperately weak (or both).

The widows of the left crying over Bolsonaro

I was weighing whether I would leave Venezuela for a post. But that election in Brazil had so much of Venezuela in it that I shall not diverge.

Most of the "democratic" left, and of course the whole undemocratic one are in tears tonight. The awful Bolsonaro has been elected.  He did not get the 60% he was threatening to get but with 55% he has, well, a mandate. However, I do not read much self criticism within the left in the rise of Bolsonaro.  I will take for button its lack of condemnation to the Maduro regime. The  losing Haddad never got to condemn as far as I know, costing him a couple of points at least. Bolsonaro did not lose those points.

Genocidal

It is very hard to avoid those major labels that sear History.  When I started using the word "dictatorship" I was criticized; yet, proven right in the end. Fascism came in slowly, almost behind totalitarian even though it should precede it in the processes. But Fascism is a tainted label whereas totalitarianism is a generic drug.  Nazi I refuse to use it to qualify the Venezuelan  regime because, well, that horror goes beyond all horrors and thus it is to be expected today that no one could try to pull such a stint again. Though I indulged into the term Nazional Guard because that guard has clear thuggish attitudes and actions that are deserving of the brown shirts.

Communism is also a word that is used freely although now that the crimes of Stalin and Mao are well established Communism should be as taboo as Nazism.  But the intellectual appeal of Communism has been too strong and the petering of the USSR too long to effect this wished for change. Thus we have plenty of intellectuals still defending the Castro murderous regime under the flimsiest of excuses.

Genocide I drew a line, until today.

Speeding up to the grand finale

I was working on a text about how hard it has become to live in Caracas in the last month but today's news make me realize that it is going to get much worse fast.

Highlighting Gladys because
it makes me so happy

The Miami Herald gives you all. And it would be very difficult to exaggerate what they write or overstate the importance of it. Let's start with a sound bite from General Torrealba, the one who three weeks ago (I think) had his HQ filmed as a horde of paramilitary colectivo motorbikers were leaving it, breaking any law that used to exist in Venezuela. That video was frightening by itself and promptly the buildings from were it was taken were searched (I think, memory fails me, and if not those buildings Barquisimeto has had several nights of building searches and looting and abuse and violence anyway).

Deliberate chaos: the first post modern cashless society. Not!

There are so many things that need to be discussed but my lifestyle, so to speak, forbids me to find the time for the blog. Yet tonight I must write to describe what is probably the most unjust, craziest, measure the regime has taken to date. And they did take a lot of those in the past.  But this one will hurt so many poor people that the mind reels at the idea on how a regime intentionally for the people has become now a regime against the people.

Today's bomb shell is the demonetization of the 100 tender in Venezuela.  Why, oh why?

48 hours of dialogue and it ain´t looking good. Unless...

I am not opposed to political dialogue. It has proven its worth through history. It could, on paper, be a good thing for Venezuela. I do not think it is because in historical dialogues either side had something to lose and did not want to lose it all. Here chavismo is of the scorched earth orthodoxy and they prefer to bring everything down before surrendering any piece of power. Reasons are multiple, from the knowledge of many of them ending up in jail were the regime to collapse to simply the castroite brain washing of a particularly virulent totalitarian nature, of tyrants long used to living out of thin air in a island cum concentration camp system.

In short, I believe in dialogue when there is the knowledge that both sides have something to lose or win, and when there is a dutiful respect on the symbols attached to such difficult endeavor. Visibly the first criteria is not met here, and the second criteria, on symbolism, was f....d up from the start as I reported Sunday night. Thus let's see what the first 48 hours have brought.

So? Can we all agree on the D word?

This is kind of a melancholy post. For years now I have been calling this a dictatorship. It took sometime to start seeing it expressed in the foreign press. And even as I type there are some in Venezuela or overseas (I am looking at you, Zapatero just for today's denialist) that still refuse to use the D word, expecting who knows what leniency from who knows where.

Tienes derecho a tu opinion pero tengo derecho a no respetarla

El régimen chavista ha trabajado mucho en alterar nuestro idioma para poder imponer sus ideas, debilitar nuestro pensamiento y afectar nuestra ética. Ya George Orwell nos explicaba ese fenómeno totalitario en "1984" o "Rebelión en la Granja".

Ways out of the mess, doubtful all, military for sure, recall it ain't

Last I wrote on ways to get out of this mess was June 11 (and April). Things have changed somewhat since these entries. Time to include recent developments.

Father's day

It has been a rough week for your truly. On Monday I was mugged with all the problems that this entails for the rest of the week. And the week ends on Father's day, with a melancholy.

Genocidal class warfare in Venezuela

Last week I took the S.O. to his monthly chemotherapy. We were late by almost two weeks while he was dealing with side effects of the preceding cycle. Thus it had been nearly two months. The place is an ample room with about 15 comfy chaises for patients and an extra chair for accompanying people. Usually it is full and often we had to wait up to an hour for our turn.

What was my surprise to see that only two other chairs were taken and that the S.O. went straight to a chair of his choice!

Onward the final constitutional crash: amnesty law and high court reform

The Easter lull came and went without making much of a difference.  The "calima" suffocated us in Caracas while the country went on a standstill to try to spare a few meters from the water gauge of the Guri dam, before El Niño, and regime's utter incompetence, forces a shut down of 50% of the country's electricity.

This is not Beijing, it is today over Caracas. You cannot even guess that there is a 2000 meter mountain range in the background. I have NEVER seen it that bad. The air stings slightly when you breathe.

Una foto publicada por daniel duquenal (@duquenal_at_vnv) el 21 de Mar de 2016 a la(s) 2:14 PDT

But the country is back at work, as much as it is possible, and the National Assembly has started the road to open confrontation not only with the executive, but on the true meaning of the Venezuelan constitution, as this one may be.

Karadzic para luminarias chavistas

Hoy nos enteramos que el serbiobosnio Radovan Karadzic ha sido sentenciado en la corte internacional de La Haya por crímenes de lesa humanidad y genocidio en las matanzas de Srebenica. La justicia tardo 20 años en llegar para los musulmanes de Bosnia, pero llegó. Amen que la sentencia coincide con una era de injustificada ira contra los musulmanes decentes por parte de gente como Trump y Cruz, o los políticos populistas de extrema derecha en Europa. Es justicia para los musulmanes de Bosnia que eran en esa época, posiblemente, los mas civilizados, los mas a tono con los valores de democracia hasta que un nacionalismo de corte fascista se empecino en destruirlos. Los crimines de Karadzic contribuyeron en algo al extremismo actual del islam radicalizado.

Tumeremo

The story that has been unfolding in the mining region of Bolivar state is yet a new low for the bolivarian regime. all corruptions, all abuses, all cruelty seem to have somehow managed to meet there.

I am not going to go into details. the executive summary is as follow.

Musings on the pharmaceutical genocidal debacle

Thinking about what I wrote last night, giving Maduro a D-. I realized that I was too generous, that my Scientific objectivity took above my best judgement. These measures mean nothing, at best it is a way for him to gain a few more weeks until he finds a way to save his ass. Nothing basic will change in the system. That is all.

A brutal slap drove that point a couple of hours ago. In yet another cadena Maduro sat in front of him representatives of the pharmaceutical sector to "restart" production which apparently to  him has unaccountably stopped. Basically he rediscovered the wheel and medicines will churned soon for the great contentment of the people. Unfortunately I wok in the sector and things are not as rosy as he would like el pueblo to believe.

La mendacidad de Elias Jaua

Es con usted, diputado Jaua

Leo su respuesta a lo que usted llama "infame el editorial de El Nacional".

Yo no voy a entrar en el debate de si la diputada Tamara Adrian oyó lo que ella oyó. Ella sabrá defenderse; y muy bien lo hará porque ella no tuvo nunca los apoyos que usted tuvo y que le permitieron tirar piedras toda su vida quedando impune.

Tampoco voy a especular si la diputada Adriana D'Elia es una lesbiana. Eso es irrelevante, y ni me importa como a usted no debería importarle lo que la gente hace con su vida privada mientras no afecte a otros. Le recuerdo que su vida privada si afecta a otros cuando, por ejemplo, usted hace que la República cubra los costos de viaje de su niñera bien armada.

Is the sentence on Leopoldo Lopez relevant?

No, this is no bait title. Whether Leopoldo Lopez is freed or condemned today has become almost irrelevant for the coming history. As I type this a small crowd of opposition leaders (small on purpose, by the way) is barred from the court building where the final sentence on Leopoldo Lopez is supposedly to be pronounced at any minute. And whatever the result is, even if I learn it as I type, it does not change much the coming text.

Note to Obama and Santos: appeasing thugs NEVER works

The Venezuela-Colombian border crisis should have been a fantastic opportunity to put the Venezuelan narco-regime on notice. Instead it serves as show case on how the appeasement policies of Obama and Santos are sinking fast.

And it all came to that

Almost as a rule the end of revolutions and their ersatz is equally appalling. True revolutions like the French one (9 Thermidor) or the Russian one (Kulak starvation) have a moment that mark the end of ideal and the bloody start of a very long path to stability. Ersatz are lucky if they have a semi grand moment but as a rule end up in ridicule if they are lucky (Peron). But some end up in infamy, betraying any possible justification they had at their start. This is the case of this fakest of all revolutions, the bolivarian of Chavez which is slowly petering its way to infamy.

Closed border, people in check. Why?

I suppose some would make a case for April 2002 as "the grand moment". But it was not, a mere failed coup and a failed Restoration which yielded a shit faced Chavez that decided to surrender to the Castros in Cuba to get what he really wanted: life presidency. It worked, he died in office.

Gay marriage, at long last (but not here)

Yes dear readers, I did cry a little when I saw that picture. I do not know why, but it had that quality.

Today finally the United States Supreme Court bowed to what was unavoidable, to what civilized countries in the world had been granting one by one over the last two decades. Any two not directly related adults in a stable union should all have the same rights.

PERIOD.

It is THAT simple.