And Tal Cual’s Editorial was also very good:
Lack of Honor by Teodoro Petkoff
Cynicism and lies have been transformed into state policy. We are no longer only facing individual behavior, such as that bitter and provoking style that Pompeyo Marquez baptized as “useless smart ass”, but we are facing a perverse global conception of the exercise of power.
When Chavez stages his TV program Alo President in front of the astonished diplomatic corps, he is not ignoring the fact that his speech and arguments end up being grotesque and absurd, because the lies are oversized, even for the Cuban Ambassador. He is not ignoring it, but what else could he say? He knows people have discovered that the king is naked and only the reason of the lack of reason to attempt to cover his shame.
When Chavez says that young Elinor Montes “attacked” the National Guard, he knows that his listeners are not stupid and that on top of that, they saw the scene through TV, but nevertheless he insists in making them swallow that stone form the mill, when he shows videos of the march of Feb. 27th. and of the repression, he himself realizes that he is not demonstrating anything and asks the operator of the film to move it forward. On the one hand there was the verbosity of Chavez and on the other the videos, which were demonstrating the opposite of what he was saying. But he is already riding that tiger of lies and cynicism as sate policy, and he can’t get off.
When the Commander of the National Guard Villegas Solarte, says, with a clean face, that the opposition disguised people with uniforms of the National Guard and assault rifles to shoot against their own people and blame the force that he leads, it is not that he is emulating Pedro Carreño, but reciting a script of lies and cynicisms as a state policy.
When Deputy Dario Vivas affirms that the former PDVSA worker assassinated in San Antonio was killed by own co-workers and another criminal like him says that the AD Deputy killed in Machiques was also a victim of her mates, they are expressing themselves as actors of the same script.
A Government that is capable of taping and broadcasting through the Governments stations private telephone conversation, in clear violation of its own Constitution and of the most fundamental moral norms, is doing it because it wants to instill fear in society.
It wants to believe that the mechanisms of social control are based on fear. It wants us to be afraid of even our own words. Not to speak out, because it is dangerous, because they are listening, they are taping you, they broadcast you live. When the President himself is an echo in his Sunday program of illegally obtained tape recordings, it is because all shame has been lost, because all that is left are just threads of what may have been one day an ideal or a flag.
It is in the terminal stage of moral degradation and political corruption when lies and cynicism become state policy.
The young Commander of 92 would have arrested the guards that abused Elinor Montes; the silenced cynic of today hails them, because he needs them. He has to flatter them because the lie, the cynicism and the fear need a praetorian guard.
It is power reduced to its ultimate instance: force, because there is nothing else left. But, once again, it is necessary to remind everyone of Napoleon’s much cited phrase: bayonets are only good to sit on them.
The Devil's Excrement 
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