Chavez and the FARC ignoble blackmail

Weil strikes again today, with a cartoon describing perfectly the ignoble blackmail tha the FARC and Chavez are doing to Colombia "either you stop calling us terrorists or else"



Meanwhile, reminding us of the grandiloquent reality of Venezuela Tal Cual carries this delighful blurb that gives a new meaning to "Potemkin village"

The Ministry of Education through the Foundation Bolivarian Computing and Telematics (Fundabit) achieved last year the digital linking of a total of 342 schools nationwide as part of a strategic agreement signed with the Ministry of Telecommunications and Information Technology and the company CANTV. The objective of this project is to interconnect 30 thousand Bolivarian schools in six years, using the machinery of the CBIT (Bolivarian Computing Centers and Telematics), which has 21 computers and Internet service at each campus. However, this altruistic initiative faces two problems: first, that until 2006 there were only 4 thousand 746 Boliviarian schools and of the 1,020 that were intended to be opened in the 2007-2008 school year, only around 20% did open. Second, throughout the country, the total number of educational institutions (whether or not Boliviarian) barely exceeds approximately 23 thousand schools, which would require to build almost 7 thousand schools and "bolivarianizarlas" to meet the ambitious goal.

-The end-

Chavez and Marudracula

The genius of Weil strikes again. Translation: I propose to the world... in particular to the people of Transylvania... that we stop calling Count Dracula a vampire.
[Weil includes even the pregnant pauses Chavez uses for effect]

-The end-

Maria Anastasia O'Grady does Oliver Stone and Hugo Chavez

The point here it is not whether Ms. O'Grady might be a right wing nut in campaign against the US left as some would love to dismiss the WSJ. The point here is that she is so unto this whole hostage fiasco of Chavez, so clear in her evaluation and precise as to how the left in the US could not care less about Colombia or Venezuela that she cannot refrain herself to smile more than once during the WSJ video. A well deserved "gotcha!" moment for Ms. O'Grady. Her article "A Hollywood Yarn Unravels" reads more as a morality play than the actual real and informed news she summarizes. She does not need to emit judgment: the facts are for all to see, that is, for those that are willing to open their eyes.

I am reprinting the article below because sometime the WSJ takes article off the web, with my own highlights as she has choice expressions that are not to be missed.

A Hollywood Yarn Unravels
By MARY ANASTASIA O'GRADY
January 14, 2008; Page A12

It was Christmas week in the Colombian city of Villavicencio and the events, as they were set to unfold, had all the makings of a Hollywood blockbuster. If only the "heroes" hadn't been exposed as liars.

A 3-year-old boy, his mother and another woman, all hostages of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), were about to be freed. Credit for their release was to go to Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela. Former Argentine President Néstor Kirchner had flown up from Buenos Aires to take part in the show. Oscar-winning director Oliver Stone was on hand too, eager to document the Christmas spirit of the revolutionary killers and their socialist sympathizers. The child, as luck would have it, was called Emmanuel.

The part of the villain was bestowed on Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, a U.S. ally who as a matter of policy has refused to give in to FARC demands for Colombian territory in exchange for the release of hostages. Mr. Uribe had also recently announced that Mr. Chávez was no longer welcome as a negotiator in the broader effort to free former presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt, three American contractors and 41 other politically valuable FARC hostages. He had jerked away the welcome mat after Mr. Chávez tried to bypass him and talk directly to the Colombian military. According to the script, even Mr. Uribe's stubbornness couldn't stop the big-hearted Mr. Chávez from winning the freedom of these three.

For Mr. Stone, an anti-American Christmas miracle was in the offing. His film would portray Mr. Chávez as a humanitarian hero while demonizing Mr. Uribe. But it wasn't to be an obscure foreign film with no American message. It would also complement the assertions of U.S. unions, other trade protectionists and President Bush's political adversaries, all of whom insist -- against the evidence -- that the Colombian president violates human rights.

Of course, the American left's current obsession with Mr. Uribe is not really about concern for human life. It's about the pending U.S.-Colombian free trade agreement, which they want to kill on "moral" grounds. Depicting Mr. Uribe as an intransigent right-winger is critical to their narrative. In this, the protectionists are allies of the rebels. The truth is that Mr. Uribe's restoration of law and order in Colombia has thrown the guerrillas back on their heels, and they are now frantically pulling the levers of international propaganda.

Over Christmas week the suspense surrounding the promised release was building. Mr. Chávez reminded TV viewers daily that his dramatic rescue plan had nothing to do with him and everything to do with his tender concern for the hostages. Mr. Uribe had agreed to allow Venezuelan aircraft to swoop into Colombia to pick up the two women and the child. The FARC had only to say where. But no word came.

The rebels blamed the delay on bad weather and on Mr. Uribe, who they said had mobilized his armed forces in the area. Mr. Uribe denied the charge, as did his top military commander. Mr. Chávez said Mr. Uribe could not be trusted. Meanwhile the Venezuelan minister for FARC relations, Ramon Rodríguez Chacín, made excuses for the rebels, who, he said, had to be ready for Colombian military actions against them after the handover. The guerrillas, he said, should "prepare their retreat strategy and take all the security measures they need."

Finally, on Dec. 31, Mr. Uribe held a press conference to give his "hypothesis" of why the liberation hadn't occurred: The FARC had lied when it said it had the child, and it had been trying to buy time to find him. In fact, the boy was in a foster home in Bogotá. The suggestion was a bombshell, but after DNA tests confirmed the fact, Mr. Uribe was vindicated.

Among the more shocking revelations was the FARC's inhumane treatment of the infant. His mother, Clara Rojas, who had been Ms. Betancourt's vice presidential running mate, was kidnapped in 2002. The child was born in a rebel camp in 2004, and was less than one year old when he was left with a local peasant. After about a month, his humble caretaker realized he could not treat the child's serious illnesses and took him to a local clinic, which transferred him to a hospital.

Press reports say that doctors diagnosed the baby with anemia, malaria, a parasitic skin disease, malnutrition and an arm that had been broken at birth and not treated. "Anyone would have fallen apart before this child, with so many diseases," the hospital director told the Miami Herald. "He didn't raise his eyes. He got toys but did not pick them up. He did not stand but dragged himself on his butt. He cried but no tears came because of the malnutrition."

When the news of the child's whereabouts broke Mr. Stone went away spitting mad, not at his FARC heroes, who had been exposed as child abusers, but at Mr. Uribe and Mr. Bush. Of the FARC he said, "Grabbing hostages is the fashion in which they can finance themselves and try to achieve their goals, which are difficult. I think they are heroic to fight for what they believe in and die for it, as was Castro in the hills of Cuba."

Meanwhile, with Mr. Chávez looking like a fool, the two women were finally freed on Thursday. The FARC had reason to help him try to salvage his image: As this column has frequently noted, it needs Venezuela as its main transit route for cocaine and as a safe haven.

Mr. Chávez tried to paint himself as a neutral, third-party peacemaker but a day later he peeled off his mask. We already knew that a diplomat from Cuba, which has been sowing terror in Colombia for 50 years, accompanied the hostages to Caracas, underscoring the ties between Mr. Chávez, Cuba and the rebels. We also knew that as the helicopter carrying the hostages took off Mr. Rodríguez Chacín called to the rebels, "keep up the fight and count on us!"

On Friday, Mr. Chávez went further, arguing that the FARC has a "true" army that "occupies space" and is therefore a "belligerent" -- a term that would give it standing under international law. He demanded that its terrorist status be revoked. Colombia called his speech "off-the-wall" but it knows better. Following the hostage release, this was a calculated move and is only the latest step in what is now Mr. Chávez's war, waged by the FARC, against Colombia.


-The end-

Chavez: the Colombian FARC is not a terrorist group

In what is the clearest evidence to date that Chavez is losing control of the political situation, or of himself, during his state of the union message he demanded that the Colombian government recognize the FARC as a genuine fighting force (long video here in Spanish). He put it as a condition for the frayed relations between Venezuela and Colombia to improve. He also added that all governments of the Americas and Europe that have the FARC listed as a terrorist organization should un-list it because "it is all just a mere pressure from the US".

Of course the Colombian government was speedy in its reply, and a precise and direct one, explaining in detail why the FARC is a terrorist group, and why it has been a terrorist group for quite a while under many Colombian presidents, and US presidents as the case might be. The Spanish text of the communique can be red here, directly from the web page of the Colombian presidency. (1)

I am not going to insult the intelligence of the readers of this blog who know full well that the FARC is a terrorists group. Besides, I illustrated the horrors of the FARC ransom business in the preceding post. Not only that, as Chavez was making his ignoble speech today, one of the two hostages freed yesterday was telling us that male hostages of the FARC are kept in shackles round the clock, when not in cages. Instead let's try to see what hides behind the whole political disaster.

First, some of the actual words of Chavez

"The FARC and ELN are not terrorist groups; they are armies, real armies that occupy a space in Colombia. We have to acknowledge the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces and the National Liberation Army. They are insurgent forces that have a Bolivarian and political project that is respected here."

You read it right, Chavez has officially thrown his support behind the FARC, he supports their goals and find perfectly fine that an armed group makes war on a democratic government which is making serious efforts to become more democratic and improve the lot of the people. If the FARC had democratic convictions they would have at least a political arm running as a serious electoral contender. It does not, its objective is simply the overthrown of whoever rules at the Casa de Nariño to create a FARC dictatorship. That Chavez considers this a Bolivarian ideal simply blows the mind, goes against all what Bolivar said, wrote, tried.

Is it really worthwhile reading other parts of the speech? Should we even bother commenting the standing ovation that the monochromatic National Assembly, a minority in the country since Decemebr 2, gave to Chavez words?

Probably we are at a very revealing moment. First, chavismo in full acknowledges publicly that it despises democracy. We knew it of course and we all knew that the democratic fake discourse would only last as long as the support of the people lasted. Flush with cash and a revenge discourse that support held until December 2. Now, chavismo realizes that it needs to reevaluate its strategy and for this it is gaining some time by pretending to be a nicer and more concerned government. We also know as of today that this also was a lie, as we expected. The words of the interior minister Rodriguez Chacin yesterday greeting and encouraging the FARC guerilla, or even his words today at a press conference where he compared the hostage and blackmail system of the FARC as a legitimate taxation system tells us volumes about the nature of the man, and those that he serves.

But it also betrays an exhausted revolution, short of ideas, short of worthwhile individuals. A Chavez suddenly forced to govern the country, forced to look to Venezuela instead of his foreign agenda is suddenly in more disarray than what we suspected. Thus this fuite en avant, this escape forward by creating an open conflict with Colombia if necessary. It is when rogues and rabid dogs are cornered that they become really dangerous. We might thus be witnessing the first spasms of the end of the bolivarian revolution and suspect that it might be bloodier than what we were afraid it would be. However perhaps it might bring the end closer as some of the folks publicly applauding today Chavez might be getting really worried about a president that went out of his established text to improvise an ultimatum to Colombia.

PS: added later. I just heard the Clara Rojas first press conference. Certain journalist (VTV; Noticias de lo Ultimo) tried to bring the talk closer to political topics, in particular trying to make her support Chavez or condemn Uribe for allegedly delaying the liberation. She did not fall for it. Then someone asked her about Chavez words today as described above, that the FARC were not terrorist. She refused to reply directly but she still said that as the FARC kept hostages they were committing crimes against humanity. In other words, it was a very elegant way to say that yes, the FARC was shit, but not directly to Chavez face as he is the one freeing her right now and still paying her hotel bill at the Melia. Chavez should not count on her much in the future.

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

1) The French ambassador in Bogota declared that the terrorist FARC status in Europe was taken unanimously and could only be removed unanimously, which shows how ignorant Chavez is on democratic mechanisms elsewhere. The terrorist status is not something just handed because a US bureaucrat says so. Chavez seems unable to understand that the rest of the world does not operate how he operates himself at Miraflores.

-The end-

Least we forget: The FARC is a criminal organization

Tonight coming back from work I could finally get the news about the release of Clara Rojas and Consuelo Gonzalez. We can take a few minutes to celebrate this happy news, that these two women, held for no just cause for years in the Colombian jungles can finally live free again, with one of them even getting back the son she might have thought she would never see again. A son that required DNA technology to be identified, just after learning about the child abuse he had been subjected from the mere fact of being born to a FARC hostage.

If some media are willing to call this a Chavez triumph, following the steps of sick fucks like Oliver Stone, most keep a cool head, a healthy wait and see attitude, even as they are willing to give some credit to Chavez. This one has played too much with the feelings of the people, has made too much of a media show of his crazy love for notoriety that serious folks are weary.

Thus a short list of reminders of the truth about the Colombian hostage situation least some might start seeing the FARC as good revolutionaries, flower-child left overs, "excellent guerillas".

There are still more than 700 hostage being kept in some quarters of the Colombian jungle by the FARC and ELN.

No matter how hard pro FARC folks like Piedad Cordoba try to convince us, the hostages are kidnapped victims, "secuestrados", and not just temporarily held folks, "retenidos".

Neither are these hostages "prisoner of war". If indeed there are some army and cops in their lot, most of them were innocent civilians going on their own business and taken away from their loved owes, their friends, their associates. And they were taken away for financial reasons, for extortion, not to score political points.

And if it is possible that Chavez has humanitarian intentions, it is even more true that he is managing this whole show, at Venezuelan tax payer expenses, for his own glory. Today, among the crowd that flew to Colombia, even Piedad Cordoba was dressed in bright red clothes ALL THROUGH THE DAY, from the Colombian lift off point to her impromptu press conference on the Melia Hotel side walk.

Let's not forget that Clara Rojas love child out of a possible Stockholm syndrome situation was taken away from her and put into hiding in an orphanage. The FARC had the cruelty to prefer to place the sick and abused kid in an orphanage rather than sending it directly to Clara Rojas relatives. Or even to the father relatives as surely he must have had some left somewhere.

Let's not forget that the arrogance of Chavez forced a second DNA evaluation in Spain, which confirmed that Emmanuel did indeed exist and had been placed for a couple of years in an orphanage.

Let us not forget that in Venezuela there are officially nearly 100 hostages, possibly much more than that as relatives rarely call for the inefficient a corrupt security system and prefer to deal on their own with the captors. Let's not forget that the Chavez administration is infinitely more interested in the FARC hostages than the ones he has at home and for which he could do a lot if he really wanted to.

So, let's be happy tonight that at least two hostages have escaped the hell of the FARC camps, but let's not forget that the FARC is a mob organization, a mafia style drug cartel, a cruel and inhumane system who should have its butts on the benches of The Hague international court and whose best hope to avoid such fate is to negotiate fast the release of the other hostages.

Let's also hope that the Copenhagen syndrome does not extend more than what it already has (yes, I got the right capital, read the Moises Naim article).

And let's hope that the sympathies of the Venezuelan current power holders for the FARC fade some as they realize that the FARC lied to them, were not in control of the situation and messed the scheduled previous release because at the last minute they failed to recover Emmanuel. Then again, the egotistic and narcissistic Chavez does deserve the selfish FARC...

-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-