That credibility gap: Jose Vicente Rangel cries "wolf"!

Tonight, in another sign of increasing chavista disarray at their PR fiasco as to the RCTV debacle, Jose Vicente Rangel, former vice president of Chavez, has declared that Colombia is preparing a destabilizing plan in Venezuela. We get some names, a strategy, a modus operandi even.

The only problem is that JVR has not enough credibility left to make us sleep uneasy tonight.

The RCTV closing in Venezuela: fair questions to ask

With all these political tourists visiting Venezuela during these RCTV closing days, including European parliamentarians from the Spanish PP to mercenaries like Ignacio Ramonet, I was tempted to write an open letter. But instead I decided to write a short and simple list of the questions that should be relevant to any one approaching the complex RCTV problem with a somewhat objective spirit. (1 and 2). Without further ado the question and what could be a possible answer, or at least mine.

Is the quality of RCTV programming bad enough that it deserves to be closed? Yes, but! If we were to apply this criteria, then all Venezuelan networks should be closed, starting with the governmental VTV which has arguably the very worst programming of Venezuela.

Is RCTV an independent network? Define “independent”. RCTV has clearly a political line in its newscast reports. It exposes mercilessly the failings of the government and opens its air waves to people complaining about public services insufficiencies. In this regard RCTV is FULLY INDEPENDENT FROM THE GOVERNMETN LINE. But it has an editorial line and it is thus not quite independent from its owners ideas. Thus this is not an argument to justify its closing as the government TV has even less independence than the private networks in Venezuela.

Is it not desirable to remove RCTV from private interests? Define “private” interests. VTV, ViVe, ANTV and Telesur are in fact in the hands of private interests: they all obey to Chavez wishes, they modify their editorial line according to the political changes at the top. That Chavez has been elected with a majority of suffrages is an irrelevant point as those who did not vote for him and yet foot the bill for these networks are not represented in the programming or the news of the state networks. In other words, the private interests of Chavez are even more dominant in his networks than those of the RCTV owners. The Murdoch of the world would be so lucky to have the media power of Chavez. The partiality of the state public funded networks has been underlined by all sorts of international observers at election time, when it is most damaging to the proper functioning of the democratic state.

Should RCTV be closed because it participated illegally in political activities against Chavez? No, because this should have been proven through a court of law and nothing of substance against RCTV is making its way in the tribunals since Chavez is in office. If such a proceeding existed, and if the evidence were good enough to warrant a sentence against RCTV and its owners, that would not warrant its closure, it would warrant a penal decision that could go from forcing the owners of RCTV to sell to other media groups, to jail terms to the owners and the employees who collaborated in illegal political activities. Under no legal and just circumstances can RCTV concession be revoked or not renewed unless a due process is established by the judicial system.

Is RCTV a source of conspiracies against Chavez? Not any more than the other media. In 2002 Chavez defined RCTV, Venevision, Televen and Globovision as the 4 horsemen of the apocalypses. Thus in his mind the 4 networks were equally pernicious and should be equally punished for their participation in political events of 2002 and 2003 where it is difficult to define which of them was the worst one. Yet, only RCTV is punished. It would be good for the government to explain this contradiction. If the amends of Venevision or Televen were enough, why not make a deal with RCTV in order to allow at least one pro Chavez talk show? On the other hand the vulgar political actions of VTV and other state media are equally reprehensible as to whatever happened with private media in 2002-2003.

Hasn’t RCTV been violating the RESORTE law? As pointed in a previous question RCTV is yet to be subjected to a major investigation and all evidence point in fact as RCTV having followed the RESORTE law better than the very own governmental media who allow Chavez to break not only the RESORTE law in his broadcasted speeches but other laws such as the LOPNA or the armed forces laws. Yet, these state networks are under no judicial procedure.

But would it be desirable to have a network that does not run stupid games and silly serials based on sexual innuendoes and violence? Yes, of course, but why has not the government already shown the example with either VTV or ViVe? If chavismo had shown a real desire to promote a more cultural and educational programming it would not have started by limiting the reach of Vale TV, the only Venezuelan network that has no newscast, no advertisement, only documentaries.

But VTV is to defend politically the government attacked by international media conspiracy, so the government needs an extra VHF band range to put a cultural and educational channel. What is wrong in expropriating private interests for the common good? Define “common good”. Have the people been asked about why RCTV has the highest ratings? Are you qualified to decide who watches what? Will the proposed Teves be truly independent? The answer to that last reply question already exists: Teves will be run at the sufferance of Chavez who will name its board at will. No viewers committee or studies are offered as to the constitution of Teves. In other words, Teves will be a privately owned network, whose sole owner is Chavez.

Users's manual

Ask these questions around and compare to the answers I present here. All my answers can be documented fully by simple search engines in the web, or by sting a few hours in front to the different TV channels of Venezuela. Demand that those who disagree on my replies justify their own ones with accurate and searchable information not coming from the Venezuelan government.

But would a luxury of details on these answers solve anything? No, because the decision to close RCTV is a strictly political decision taken by Chavez under the influence of Castrism which understands the need to control fully the information accessed by the people. If you doubt that examine the media situation in Cuba and observe how the Venezuelan government has been applying an increasingly sytrong policy which in the long run will result in a media and communication similar to what exists in Cuba or China. That is, maybe more than one provider but with internal strong censorship to filter any news particularly damaging to the regime and the ideas it supports at a given moment.

This is the key of the RCTV closing. Without understanding that, you will not be able to understand anything else of the problem and you will be drowned by official propaganda.

--- --- --- --- ---
1) Of course calling Ramonet a mercenary could seem to be less than objective. But when one just saw Ramonet applaud at Chavez peroration the other night where he said unspeakable things, what other adjective would be appropriate for Ramonet?

2) I have already written a post on the real reasons on the RCTV closing. This one is part summary of that post.
-The end-

The pro RCTV march in Caracas

I am not in Caracas so I cannot attend the march. But I can flip the channels on my remote.



RCTV and Globovision. Not surprisingly, one for its survival, and one because it is news, have a lavish coverage which at 12:50 shows a fairly decent concentration in Chacaito, but a concentration quite spirited. Of course since the opposition cannot fly a helicopter and since Chacaito is rather a tortuous area for such a concentration (but rather safe from possible chavista harassment) we cannot quite tell how successful was the appeal. At least we can see that it was not a failure.

Venevision and Televen. They are applying the ostrich thing. Nothing that I could see. So if they ever reported anything it was discrete. Shame on them!

VTV and Vive. The state chains are reporting lavishly on the rather meager meeting at Maturin where only red shirted individuals are acclaiming the vice president come to encourage folks to sign up for the PUS. But they did report on the RCTV march, choosing early hours cameras pretending it was the march when in fact this one had not started yet as people were barely rallyign the starting points.

Now, VTV even reported for the helicopter!!!!! Where of course no Globovision or RCTV journalist was allowed to climb. That is not only a new low in information bias and unfairness in reporting, but it outright shameless and even desperate if you ask me.

However the best part was the words of the journalist in the helicopter. There was a clock indicating 11:59 and she was informing that the people were already going back home, insisting heavily on that, that it was all over. The only problem is that it was in fact 12:59 and the rally at Chacaito was going full steam with speeches and entertainment. I mean, they are so desperate, so clumsy, that they cannot even lie or manipulate information properly. They cannot even erase their own clock. But then again they know that nothing will happen to them since no one will even bother to sue them considering that any verdict is preordained.

PS: the march rally seems to have been a fair success. And if not, it certainly dwarfs anything the government has tried to do to have people support the closing of RCTV, even paying them, even asking them to write awful graffiti.

PS2: And a sure sign the march was a success. The government was scared enough that it blocked Caracas access to people that were coming from the outlying areas of Caracas. There is even a video to show how the Gurarenas access was unaccountably slowed down to a single lane on the highway!!!

PS3: Media review here, here and here. All favorable at the turn out and enthusiasm. And very lame reply of the vice president, Mr. Credibility.

PS4: A reader, Y, sent the above picture of the rally. More than anything we ever saw at any PUS sign up station. And as usual no buses ferrying the people, no free booze or lunch bags distributed. Genuine enthusiasm for the cause and not the long faces that could not be hidden in the PUS signatories in Monagas yesterday.


-The end-

Chavez latest anti semitic remarks

Tonight we had another one of those never ending cadenas, and I was in no mood to put up with it. But after midnight I tried to catch the news of the day (the cadena of course cut the 9PM Globovision nightly news) . Globovision passed the astounding clip from tonight's cadena where Chavez says that the Native American massacres of the XVI century were worse than the Holocaust.

It is simply insulting to compare genocides. None can be worse than another one. There might have been less Tutsi killed in Rwanda than Jews in gas chambers, but that does not make the Tutsi massacre any less horrendous. One can NEVER use relative terms on such events.

I refuse to be even dragged into to what really happened during the America's conquest or during WW2, it would be exactly what Chavez wants me to do. People with some intelligence and ethics do see the infamous trap in front.

However I will say what these words of Chavez say about him.

He is an anti Semite. He could easily speak about the Native American exterminations of past centuries without having to recur to such odious arguments.

He is an apologist of violence. Only people that are ready to kill can do such relativistic murders.

He is an ignoramus which usually explain the previous two judgments I wrote.

He is a fascist, which is usually the consequence of the above three statements. 

PS: The video is out here. It is a long video because it comes from Luigino Bracci who loves Chavez perorations even more so when they attack anything from the Western World, this time the Pope visit in Brazil. You need to go to minute 6 to hear the Chavez words, though he tries to hide them in between demanding that the Church apologizes for the Americas evangelizing methods (again, I am not lowering myself to discuss this with Chavez, the more so with the type of simplistic elements he uses). 

Then, unless you have nothing better to do with your life, you can stop as Chavez starts discussing the limbo and woman's creation form Adam's rib. Though it is fascinating as you can observe how Chavez does not understand things enough to be able to detect what can be comparable or relevant to a point: he justs grabs the elements that can be of use for his propaganda with the masses. I bet you that it is highly effective in some sectors.

A visual image of the future of Venezuelan information

As the closing date of RCTV approaches, I was trying to figure out a way to convey what it would mean as to the quality of information that will reach us as of May 28. In the best of circumstances, with the poor rating numbers available, and considering the forced cadenas which force Chavez message on all (tonight we are getting yet another one of those hours long mandatory simultaneous broadcast on all TV channels), I finally came up with a reasonable graphic way: the pie chart.

For this I considered the following: 1) the potential public range, that is, national or local, 2) the amount of time dedicated to information, 3) the availability on open air signal or cable only. Thus to the open air signal nation wide (RCTV, VTV, Venevision and Televen) I gave 50 points. The other ones would be getting less. For example Globovision is on cable but does not cover the whole country with open air signal so it gets 40. But local stations. I only considered large markets which added up to only 10 to 20 points. And so on. I did not include the ratings as the pro opposition case woudl be even more striking as RCTV holds between 35 and 50% of ratings according to the "novela" on the air, I tried to consider potential market

Thus we get this first graph where the different colors mean the following: red, networks that only show pro Chavez info, yellow, networks that tend to show the crude reality of the country and thus would be called by chavistas as yellow journalism, in pink the networks that have been effectively neutered by chavismo and thus show mild pro Chavez news with an occasional criticism. And in light green the networks that have no news anyway.


Clearly the balance is in favor of Chavez. Even though I consider that I tried to favor as much as possible the share of opposition air time the most the end result is pretty much what the perception of a casual observer in some Caracas hotel room would be.

If Chavez effectively seizes RCTV then the least we can expect is a less obvious pro Chavez message than the other pro Chavez networks, and thus the change to a in between orange to red color (we are told that the new network to come, TeVes, might not even have a newscast, but the choice of programing will be telling). However, the pressure of the small local TV that still sort of air some anti Chavez complains from "el pueblo" would become intolerable and some of them would shift to an either no news format or prepare to be taken over at some point, thus the green yellow that I put them.

Form this graphic you get clearly two things: the sources of non governmental news will be restricted to Globovision and the reach of that one will not be enough to maintain the country adequately informed. In fact, if you are known as someone watching Globovision that would brand you in the barrios and people wanting to watch Globvision might have to watch it at low volume, behind closed doors, a little bit as Western occupied Europe listened to the BBC hiding from Nazi ears.

No matter what, Chavez will get an overwhelming communicational advantage and through cadenas and forced advertisement (10 minutes daily already) he woudl minimize somewhat any effect of Globovision. It will be clearly the end of freedom of information in Venezuela.

The question of course would become, as of May 28, how long until Globovision succumbs?

(hat tip: someone on Alo Ciudadano who held a lousily made graphic of a pie chart on the topic so I could not resit but make a better one, more complete).

-The end-

Forced TV propaganda from Chavez

Apparently tonight, at 9 PM, all private channels WILL BE FORCED TO PASS AN OFFICIAL ADVERTISEMENT (PROPAGANDA FROM THE CHAVEZ GOVERNMENT) AGAINST RCTV. In other words, the state will abuse its power to force EVEN RCTV to pass a 10 minutes advertisement where the government insults RCTV so as to justify its closing.

I am not too sure of the exact details but I decided to go ahead and post this as a warning in case some folks might want to watch TV tonight. In fact it is possible that the government will balk down. For example it was wanting to use a famous tune "Todo tiene su final" (everything has an ending) but the authors apparently have not authorized the use of that song (and even less for such a despicable fascist action). Globovision explains some of it here.

To be continued, and hoping that this post is a false alert.

Update: it is 9:20- Globovison has not shown the add though it started its 9 PM newscast with the reading of three long letters exchanged between parties. I have not seen the other networks so I do not know whether they played the add or not, but Globo did nto do it and apparently there is some big legal problem. Is Globovision defying the state openly? Might as well. After all, once RCTV is out, the government will turn its guns toward Globovision, the only non governmental controlled network in Venezuela after that day.


PS: the government has dispatched around the word a lot of the national assembly representatives, including Desiree Santos Amaral who did a rather pathetic presentation to CNN tonight with arguments that ineffable Viotto could have torn down if he were a quarter as smart as he thinks he is. thus, when one puts these things together, one starts perceiving the amplitude of the public image disaster that the closing of RCTV is looking for the government. An administration, sure of its rights, does not need to force despicable advertisement or dispatch in a rush its personnel to European capitals and the US. Did they not want to break up with the North, by the way? Who gets these chavistas?

-The end-

The Wall Street Journal does Yaracuy

I am not too sure what kind of cosmic conjunction has brought these two papers together but on the same day both the new York Times and the Wall Street Journal publish an extensive article on the land problems of Yaracuy, my humble home state now on the front page of the WSJ (it was not front page in the NYT...). Since it is subscriber only I am delighted to report that already 4 readers have sent me a copy of the WSJ article. Impressive. For those like me who cannot afford a WSJ subscription (now that I think of it the WSJ should give me a courtesy one considering all the free advertising that they got through this blog), I have put a copy here.

The first thing to be said is that the WSJ opus is much more direct and plainly condemnatory of Chavez policies than the NYT does. This by itself is not surprising, and contrary to what some might infer, it makes the lecture of the NYT even more necessary. Simon Romero deals more with the psychological impact of the issues, a tremendous impact, whereas Jose de Cordoba focuses more on the negative economical consequences (and future aggravated psy impact?). Thus it is truly something that we have these two reads on the same day (and even better if we consider the not very optimistic Forero piece on the Washington Post also published today about the communal councils, who supposedly will direct some of these land grabs as the WSJ so justly qualify the land invasions in Yaracuy). Now, let's comment on the WSJ piece (which comes with a great slide show).

First we get the hard hitting fact: from 10 000 tons a year of sugar cane the farm went down to zero. The lost crop has been replaced at best by some banana/plantain stuff. Sugar is missing on the markets but bananas can always be found, as well as plantains. The reader can already draw its first conclusion. A drastic one at that considering that banana is the easiest crop to grow in Venezuela low lands such as Yaracuy and as such is the one with the lowest financial return unless you can export it all. As a cash crop substitute, bananas are a bust!

The next thing is that Cordoba provides us with more hard data (it is the WSJ after all) and we can read the following:

Since coming to power, the Chavez government has handed over 8.8 million acres, an area bigger than Maryland, for use by the poor. While much of this was state-owned land that was either idle or leased to ranchers, some 4.5 million acres were "recovered" from private owners, Mr. Chavez said recently. In some cases, the government compensated them. In most others, like Mr. Lecuna's, it has simply turned a blind eye to land invasions.

At least now we do get the first numbers I have seen of state lands involved in redistribution schemes. I cannot vouch for that number and I suppose Mr. Cordoba is well informed, but I am tempted to believe him considering that Chavez has probably given state land away but prefers to highlight for political reasons the ones he takes away from private owners.

And right after that there is another line that pretty much closes the article even though we are barely half way through it:

But so far, the effect has been to undercut production of beef, sugar and other foods, as productive land is handed to city dwellers with no knowledge of farming. Established farmers and ranchers, fearing their land may be seized next, are cutting investment in their operations to a minimum.

Nothing that readers of this blog did not already know, by the way. Still I will add yet one more excerpt that illustrates quite well how Chavez is fooling less and less people.

Mr. Chavez blames the shortages on "speculation" by distributors and producers. Agriculture Minister Elias Jaua recently called a news conference to deny there's been any decline in food production during the eight years of Chavez rule. The central bank stopped publishing agricultural statistics in 2005. A private farm association called Fedeagro estimates Venezuela grew 8% less food last year than the year before, citing factors including the price controls, land seizures and the wave of kidnappings of farmers.

All of this yours truly can verify on his own. Cordoba is not making anything up: if things go that way and if by bad luck oil production, or prices, or both, were to fall down, we will starve. Or limit ourselves to bananas.

The rest of the article is more concerned with illustrative details, but it includes a more complete description of the previous land reforms which already had ended the absentee landlord system. The implication is simple: this is not about absentee landlords anymore, it is a naked land grab for political reasons mostly.

Mr. Cordoba also underlines that the mision to train this new peasants plucked out from the cities is named now Mision Che Guevara, named for the notorious assassin, economy destructor, and a sure sign of the radicalization of the process (confirming that chavismo is preparing to kill recalcitrant landowners if necessary?).

But perhaps the best moment of the article, the most telling one, is when Mr. Cordoba interviews the Branger Family of Hato Piñero and Paraima. This noted land grab, of lands fit only for some grazing and ecological tourism, was to give to peasants to plant whatever they wanted. And they have failed, as they were bound to do. I quote because it is worth it:

But the co-op members have seen their pastures dry up in the searing sun of the dry season. Some gave up. Others, in desperation, have turned to the Branger family for help.

How often has that happening Venezuela? Always, be it under AD, or under Copei or now under Chavez. That is what populism does best, to excite the masses, to give them a few free bees and then let them hang high and dry.

But the best was in fact for the end: a fabulous description of all the corruption associated with these land schemes and how oblivious of that Chavez is. He does not care about he results of his policies and of his agrarian ones probably even less. The only thing that matters for Chavez is to have a good show every week and if thousands of people rob the country during that time, he does not care. Pathetic, and great for the WSJ to report it so bluntly and even, let's not be afraid of words, scathingly.

Unfortunately the WSJ piece lacks one thing, a closer look at the hopes that Chavez repeated shows raise in some of the population. This perhaps is the biggest damage that the whole thing will create, a class of bitter, failed peasants that could end up in guerrilla, banditry or what not. But that is why the NYT article completes this one so well. Even a bleeding heart liberal must get the message that there must be a better way than the Chavez abuses of power who end up destroying everything, even those that he is supposedly trying to help. Sad, very sad.



-The end-