The Devil's Excrement

From my brother the Tyromaniac, on today’s article in The Washington Post

A Split Screen In Strike-Torn Venezuela

This is clearly an oil strike, not a “general strike,” as it is often described.

[From The Washington Post]

I can’t tell you how depressing it is to read what passes for news in the the american media. Bloggers are right, media is dead. This is not a General Strike? So how come we can’t go to the movies? (all movie theaters ion Caracas are closed); Buy a soft drink? (not a single one can be found in Caracas stores, they few you can find are fetching a mark up of 1200%); Drink a beer? (Only a few foreign made beer can be found). What lies! How does a reporter invent them? They probably accept government help to write the report. Forget independent thinking, that’s out! Some of the criticism of the opposition is true, but the government has done the same things and that is worst, because the government has a higher responsibility. While it is not in the constitution to held an early election it wasn’t in the previous constitution (of 1961) to call for a referendum to make a new constitution, Where was this asshole then? Finally, more than 70% of Venezuelans want Chávez to leave, that includes most of the poor. Buy a clue you dimwit!

Well, the National Guard is out in force already as if our march were violent. There are over 2,000 guards out there with small tanks and putting barbed wire up all over the place. Why don’t they do that when the chavistas, who are indeed violent, demonstrate? Moreover, the Government has held chavistas demonstartions in Los Proceres while we are not allowed there. Such are teh ways of the Bolivarian revolution.

By the way, the march has a permit all the way to Los Proceres, its final destination, the guards are blocking the way about half a mile ahead.

Big march on Sunday. The Democratic Coordinator has decided to have a march to the same place as the one ten days ago that ended with all the tear gas and shootings. The idea is that this time we will go to the end, unlike the last time when we were not allowed to. Given the increased levels of  violence (today alone, two marches in the interior were blocked by chavistas) it makes you wonder what may happen. Have my gas mask ready, hope I don’t need it. No posts until the afternoon.

I just heard Chavez say that he will not negotiate, “the country is not negotiable”. I wonder what the OAS, Cesar Gaviria and the rest of the people think about this.

It reminds me of an article I read today in El Universal called “The word that ruins us” by Gerver Torres, where he relates that he was participating in negotiations in Costa Rica and the head of the union said they were pulling out of the negotiation because the President had said something different than what was being negotiated. He tried to tell her that maybe he had said that without knowing what he was talking about. She said: “Maybe that is in your country where the President says things whether they are true or not…here in Costa Rica when a President speaks we understand he is telling the truth”

What a different world, no?

The Minister of Energy and Mines said on TV that PDVSA would be reorganized as its costs were the highest in the world among oil companies. This presentation prepared by the people from Gente del Petroleo argues that the argument is incorrect as the US$ 7.5 per barrel of royalties charged by PDVSA was included in the calculation of what is the cost to produce a barrel of Venezuela’s oil. Gente del Petroleo should not be confused with Unapetrol. The former is a Civil Association of PDVSA’s employees to interact with society, the latter is the white-collar union formed at PDVSA after April 2002 tragic events.

Since we are on the PDVSA subject and I want this site to have a complete documentation of what is happening, here is the link to the interview with Harvard Professor Ricardo Haussman in NPR, it is long (almost an hour!), but worth listening to. Haussman was Minister of Planning in the early nineties and was Chief Economist at the Interamerican Development Bank.