The Devil's Excrement

I would like to see if anyone out there can help me. As you know, the Government has not allowed aircraft to fly over opposition marches for quite a while. The reason is simple, someone could make a very good estimate of how many people go to them. For the last two weeks I have been looking for a satellite image of Caracas on Saturday March 6th., between say 11:30 PM and 4 PM, a day when I think the opposition managed to get a huge amount of people out there. The picture has to be high resolution, let’s say no more than 2 or 2.5 meters. I thought I had it nailed when I found this image (this is the low resolution version):

I found this image from the French satellite Spot, but there were two problems: First it says it was taken at 14:49 PM, but it does not say if this is Caracas time or Paris time. Second, once I placed it on the shopping cart, it would have cost me “only” 5400 Euros to purchase the high resolution version, somewhat more than I was willing to spend for this little research project. (It’s actually cool to compare this to the map below)

Thus, I appeal to my faithful readers: If you work in satellite image processing or related fields, or know someone that does, I would love it if you could get me (us) such an image and I am even willing to spend a little money, but not as much as the Spot people want. (I  do understand why they charge that much). Thanks.

From the Forum Venezuela (Thanks Eric!) I get this interesting link of an Editorial by a Trinidad and Tobago newspaper. It’s always good to read about opinions from another perspective. Very interesting sentence in the end of it:

“But is Caricom seriously prepared to go along with the Chavez agenda? Are regional governments prepared to risk decades of their own favourable relations with the United States in order to throw their support behind the maverick Mr Chavez? “

Somehow people assume the Caricom will go along with Chavez because of oil if it came to a vote on the Democratic Charter at the OAS. The article suggests it might not happen.

From the Forum Venezuela (Thanks Eric!) I get this interesting link of an Editorial by a Trinidad and Tobago newspaper. It’s always good to read about opinions from another perspective. Very interesting sentence in the end of it:

“But is Caricom seriously prepared to go along with the Chavez agenda? Are regional governments prepared to risk decades of their own favourable relations with the United States in order to throw their support behind the maverick Mr Chavez? “

Somehow people assume the Caricom will go along with Chavez because of oil if it came to a vote on the Democratic Charter at the OAS. The article suggests it might not happen.

The Minister of Health just said that all workers of his Ministry will be fired if the signed the petition to recall President Hugo Chavez. According to the tolerant, democratic and open minded Rodrigo Capella, anyone that signed the petition is participated in an act of “conspiracy and terrorism” which is unacceptable.

A Hospital in Caracas fired fourteen Doctors this week for signing the petition against Chavez

Thus this new icon of freedom and liberty in Venezuela says that a Constitutional right is an act of conspiracy and terrorism. How fanatic and totalitarian can these people get? Is this still a democracy?

When Hugo Chavez was going around the country asking people to rebel against the Government, which later turned into his successful campaign for the Presidency, he would always talk about the “Caracazo” that tragic event in 1989, when riots which began with a fuel price increase turned into a carnage when the military was brought in too late to stop the riots. More than 200 people died those terrible days. Chavze repeatedly talked about those events, recalling Simon Bolivars phrase “Damn the soldier that aims at his own people” and citing and praising the work of COFAVIC and its leader Liliana Ortega.

For years after the Caracazo, only Liliana Ortega worried day after day about it. She single handedly and painstakingly brought the case against the Government to international Courts. COFAVIC, which stands for “Committee for the defense of the victims of the Caracazo” became the country’s most reputable human rights organization and extended its reach to human rights violations in Venezuela.

Today, Chavez is no longer praising either Liliana Ortega or COFAVIC. Nor is he reminding people of what Bolivar said about pointing their guns at their own people. In fact, Chavez has done nothing but attack COFAVIC, since it got involved in the investigation of the deaths of April 2002. Most recently, Chavez accused COFAVIC of receiving money from abroad, being a traitor to their country.

When I think of living Venezuelans I admire, I think curiously, of two people, Oscar D’Leon, “El Diablo de la Salsa”, because of his hard work and the universality of his music and fame and Liliana Ortega, because for 15 years she has pioneered the defense of human rights in Venezuela with passion and single-mindedness and has not allowed anything or anyone to distract her from her purpose or stand in her way. In fact, many times during the last fifteen years, she has been proposed for Government positions and has refused to even be considered for them, so that she can devote her time to her work. Additionally, she has always been against the use of praise for her work for political purposes.

Ms. Ortega’s most important victory took place about one year ago; when the Human Rights Commission of the OAS ruled that the Venezuelan Government had to indemnify the relatives of the victims for their abuses. Only in the last two months did the Government finally do it after ignoring it for almost a year.

I say this as a preamble to COFAVIC’s presentation yesterday of their preliminary report on human rights violations between Feb 27^th. and March 5^th.

The report is a wholesale condemnation of the Government’s actions during those days. First of all said Ms. Ortega, there is a pattern that Government security agencies and the military are following in the detentions they perform as well as the tortures. Ortega said that they were not isolated cases, since they had been able to corroborate the complaints filed by those affected that police and the military used the same techniques everywhere, throwing tear gas canisters in closed spaces, spraying water to make it itch, hitting detainees with helmets and shields, simulating firing squads and threatening relatives if they denounce what happened.

Ortega reminded authorities that torture crimes do not prescribe and it is a crime by the individual that commits it as well as by the officers that do nothing to correct or find those responsible for the aggression.

To COFAVIC it is truly alarming that high Government officials congratulate and back the behavior of National Guardsmen and other forces that participated in the repression those days.

COFAVIC also charged that the investigative police is not offering any assurances of impartiality or transparency in its investigations, since the Director of that body already issued his opinions which are clearly partial against the victims attempting to make them the criminals.

For COFAVIC, they can not understand how the Minister of the Interior and Justice calls for the victims to show up and denounce the abuses when he already denied that any had taken place. For them, the Government’s strategy is to make the accusations seem banal to hide the truth. No relative is going to show up and make an accusation after he is being called the criminal like it has been happening.

Turning the victims into criminals is a clear pattern established by the Government and the military in the last few days. Today, the General in charge of the Lagunillas fort, where people were raped, tortured and murdered, said that the woman raped was a prostitute, that the torture and death was caused by “mafias” these individuals were involved with.

In an episode reminiscent of totalitarian Governments elsewhere, the military simply disappeared the temporary fort in Lagunillas where rape, torture and death of the Zambrano family took place. In this way, there will be no way to find the evidence and the soldiers involved will be dispersed through other units.

When Hugo Chavez was going around the country asking people to rebel against the Government, which later turned into his successful campaign for the Presidency, he would always talk about the “Caracazo” that tragic event in 1989, when riots which began with a fuel price increase turned into a carnage when the military was brought in too late to stop the riots. More than 200 people died those terrible days. Chavze repeatedly talked about those events, recalling Simon Bolivars phrase “Damn the soldier that aims at his own people” and citing and praising the work of COFAVIC and its leader Liliana Ortega.

For years after the Caracazo, only Liliana Ortega worried day after day about it. She single handedly and painstakingly brought the case against the Government to international Courts. COFAVIC, which stands for “Committee for the defense of the victims of the Caracazo” became the country’s most reputable human rights organization and extended its reach to human rights violations in Venezuela.

Today, Chavez is no longer praising either Liliana Ortega or COFAVIC. Nor is he reminding people of what Bolivar said about pointing their guns at their own people. In fact, Chavez has done nothing but attack COFAVIC, since it got involved in the investigation of the deaths of April 2002. Most recently, Chavez accused COFAVIC of receiving money from abroad, being a traitor to their country.

When I think of living Venezuelans I admire, I think curiously, of two people, Oscar D’Leon, “El Diablo de la Salsa”, because of his hard work and the universality of his music and fame and Liliana Ortega, because for 15 years she has pioneered the defense of human rights in Venezuela with passion and single-mindedness and has not allowed anything or anyone to distract her from her purpose or stand in her way. In fact, many times during the last fifteen years, she has been proposed for Government positions and has refused to even be considered for them, so that she can devote her time to her work. Additionally, she has always been against the use of praise for her work for political purposes.

Ms. Ortega’s most important victory took place about one year ago; when the Human Rights Commission of the OAS ruled that the Venezuelan Government had to indemnify the relatives of the victims for their abuses. Only in the last two months did the Government finally do it after ignoring it for almost a year.

I say this as a preamble to COFAVIC’s presentation yesterday of their preliminary report on human rights violations between Feb 27^th. and March 5^th.

The report is a wholesale condemnation of the Government’s actions during those days. First of all said Ms. Ortega, there is a pattern that Government security agencies and the military are following in the detentions they perform as well as the tortures. Ortega said that they were not isolated cases, since they had been able to corroborate the complaints filed by those affected that police and the military used the same techniques everywhere, throwing tear gas canisters in closed spaces, spraying water to make it itch, hitting detainees with helmets and shields, simulating firing squads and threatening relatives if they denounce what happened.

Ortega reminded authorities that torture crimes do not prescribe and it is a crime by the individual that commits it as well as by the officers that do nothing to correct or find those responsible for the aggression.

To COFAVIC it is truly alarming that high Government officials congratulate and back the behavior of National Guardsmen and other forces that participated in the repression those days.

COFAVIC also charged that the investigative police is not offering any assurances of impartiality or transparency in its investigations, since the Director of that body already issued his opinions which are clearly partial against the victims attempting to make them the criminals.

For COFAVIC, they can not understand how the Minister of the Interior and Justice calls for the victims to show up and denounce the abuses when he already denied that any had taken place. For them, the Government’s strategy is to make the accusations seem banal to hide the truth. No relative is going to show up and make an accusation after he is being called the criminal like it has been happening.

Turning the victims into criminals is a clear pattern established by the Government and the military in the last few days. Today, the General in charge of the Lagunillas fort, where people were raped, tortured and murdered, said that the woman raped was a prostitute, that the torture and death was caused by “mafias” these individuals were involved with.

In an episode reminiscent of totalitarian Governments elsewhere, the military simply disappeared the temporary fort in Lagunillas where rape, torture and death of the Zambrano family took place. In this way, there will be no way to find the evidence and the soldiers involved will be dispersed through other units.

If there was a prize for manipulation and cynicism, Vice-President Jose Vicente Rangel would win it more than once. After MAS founder Pompeyo Marquez reminded Rangel of their common friend Alberto Lovera killed in the 60’s by the Government, Rangel suggested that it was Marquez that had switched side and was now on the side of the killers.

But Marquez did not let the issue end there. He reminded Rangel of the many deaths of the ten days of repression in late February and early March and warned him that one day he would pay for it.

Well, yesterday Rangel held the most obnoxious, immoral and cynical event, when he invited some relatives of victims of torture and death of the forty years of of the IVth. Republic to “back them” in having world Courts know about their cases. Makes you wonder why it took him five years to make this “generous” offer or was he simply taking advantage of tehir evrlastin grief?.  Trying to become a hero of Human Rights, Rangel said people could not make such denunciations before (Oh Yeah! How did Rangel become famous? Except his denunciations were mostly lies and he never had proof) He even managed to involve the US  in his despicable show, by saying that the term “desaparecido” was born in Venezuela by military trained in the US.

But I don’t want you to think I am exaggerating, here is the translation of Petkoff’s note in today’s Tal Cual, about Rangel’s perverse show, in which Lovera’s widow Maria del Mar participated.  Remember that Petkoff was a founder of Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) party which backed Rangel as a presidential candidate twice and was also part of the active guerilla movement against the Government in the 60’s, which Rangel was not:

To Maria del Mar Lovera, my old and dear friend by Teodoro Petkoff

What a coincidence! Just when he has deaths to cover up, Jose Vicente Rangel remembers the crimes of the sixties and, taking advantage of the understandable pain that never ceases, gathers some of their grieving relatives to stage a show.

We have seen few operations of manipulation than are more cynical, more indecent and with so few scruples than this one. But his mind played a trick on him. Another lapsus brutis (stupid slip). “You can not cover some deaths with others”, he said, or better, he confessed.

Sadly for him, that is what everyone understood, that Rangel is trying desperately to kill Alberto Lovera for the second time to erase the tracks of the crimes for which he himself has to respond. After five years in Government, Rangel announces that he will take these cases to the OAS. Why did he wait so long? Why now and not before? Who does Rangel think he can trick with this coarse manipulation? Only a con artist would attempt to cover up the death of Eva Carrizo in Machiques, or of Zambrano the teenager in Lagunillas, with those that took place in other eras. Is it that the relatives of today’s victims are responsible for the assassination of the past?

If there was a prize for manipulation and cynicism, Vice-President Jose Vicente Rangel would win it more than once. After MAS founder Pompeyo Marquez reminded Rangel of their common friend Alberto Lovera killed in the 60’s by the Government, Rangel suggested that it was Marquez that had switched side and was now on the side of the killers.

But Marquez did not let the issue end there. He reminded Rangel of the many deaths of the ten days of repression in late February and early March and warned him that one day he would pay for it.

Well, yesterday Rangel held the most obnoxious, immoral and cynical event, when he invited some relatives of victims of torture and death of the forty years of of the IVth. Republic to “back them” in having world Courts know about their cases. Makes you wonder why it took him five years to make this “generous” offer or was he simply taking advantage of tehir evrlastin grief?.  Trying to become a hero of Human Rights, Rangel said people could not make such denunciations before (Oh Yeah! How did Rangel become famous? Except his denunciations were mostly lies and he never had proof) He even managed to involve the US  in his despicable show, by saying that the term “desaparecido” was born in Venezuela by military trained in the US.

But I don’t want you to think I am exaggerating, here is the translation of Petkoff’s note in today’s Tal Cual, about Rangel’s perverse show, in which Lovera’s widow Maria del Mar participated.  Remember that Petkoff was a founder of Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) party which backed Rangel as a presidential candidate twice and was also part of the active guerilla movement against the Government in the 60’s, which Rangel was not:

To Maria del Mar Lovera, my old and dear friend by Teodoro Petkoff

What a coincidence! Just when he has deaths to cover up, Jose Vicente Rangel remembers the crimes of the sixties and, taking advantage of the understandable pain that never ceases, gathers some of their grieving relatives to stage a show.

We have seen few operations of manipulation than are more cynical, more indecent and with so few scruples than this one. But his mind played a trick on him. Another lapsus brutis (stupid slip). “You can not cover some deaths with others”, he said, or better, he confessed.

Sadly for him, that is what everyone understood, that Rangel is trying desperately to kill Alberto Lovera for the second time to erase the tracks of the crimes for which he himself has to respond. After five years in Government, Rangel announces that he will take these cases to the OAS. Why did he wait so long? Why now and not before? Who does Rangel think he can trick with this coarse manipulation? Only a con artist would attempt to cover up the death of Eva Carrizo in Machiques, or of Zambrano the teenager in Lagunillas, with those that took place in other eras. Is it that the relatives of today’s victims are responsible for the assassination of the past?

Primero Justicia Deputy Gerardo Blyde. who is a Constitutional expert, introduced today a brief in the Venezuelan Supreme Court. In it, Blyde accuses the three members of the constitutional hall of the Supreme Court of process fraud when they tried to interfere in a suit in which they had no jurisdiction so as to benefit one of the sides.

Blyde suggested that the Justices should go to jail and promised that he will introduce another brief accusing the directors of the CNE of disrespect for disobeying the order by the CNE to proceed with the ratification process and add the signatures with the same calligraphy to the totals.

The worst part was that Blyde described how surprised he was when he went to see the decision by the Constitutional Hall and discovered that it simply does not exist. Blyde said they were trying to bar him from looking at the file for the case, but when they finally gave it to him, the sentence that the President of the Supreme Court had said they had published is not there.

Blyde concludes that in the absence of a decision, it just does not exist. Thus, there is not even a conflict at this time before Halls and the CNE should obey the decision of the Electoral hall.

\Blyde concluding by saying: “Think maliciously and you will be right. We presumed that were unfortunately ready for the consummation of a fraud to the legal process, that they had a sentence signed by three justices and were not placing it in the file. They are preparing an additional sentence that will attempt to void the ruling by the Electoral hall and they will place in the file both at once, violating the law and the right to dues process”

Well, there may be another explanation, these Justices know how absurd and illegal it is that they are doing that they are too afraid to place it in the file and later be tried for it. Supreme Court decisions are actually sawn into the file of each case, so they will be very difficult to remove, particularly if new parts are added to the file itself in later dates.

Primero Justicia Deputy Gerardo Blyde. who is a Constitutional expert, introduced today a brief in the Venezuelan Supreme Court. In it, Blyde accuses the three members of the constitutional hall of the Supreme Court of process fraud when they tried to interfere in a suit in which they had no jurisdiction so as to benefit one of the sides.

Blyde suggested that the Justices should go to jail and promised that he will introduce another brief accusing the directors of the CNE of disrespect for disobeying the order by the CNE to proceed with the ratification process and add the signatures with the same calligraphy to the totals.

The worst part was that Blyde described how surprised he was when he went to see the decision by the Constitutional Hall and discovered that it simply does not exist. Blyde said they were trying to bar him from looking at the file for the case, but when they finally gave it to him, the sentence that the President of the Supreme Court had said they had published is not there.

Blyde concludes that in the absence of a decision, it just does not exist. Thus, there is not even a conflict at this time before Halls and the CNE should obey the decision of the Electoral hall.

\Blyde concluding by saying: “Think maliciously and you will be right. We presumed that were unfortunately ready for the consummation of a fraud to the legal process, that they had a sentence signed by three justices and were not placing it in the file. They are preparing an additional sentence that will attempt to void the ruling by the Electoral hall and they will place in the file both at once, violating the law and the right to dues process”

Well, there may be another explanation, these Justices know how absurd and illegal it is that they are doing that they are too afraid to place it in the file and later be tried for it. Supreme Court decisions are actually sawn into the file of each case, so they will be very difficult to remove, particularly if new parts are added to the file itself in later dates.