The Devil's Excrement

Every
time there is some incident involving the police or the military, where
innocent people are killed, Government officials from the Chavez
administration argue that these type of things happened with previous
Governments also, as if this excuse in some sense exexmpts their
responsibility for these incidents. When such statements are made,
reporters sort of nod with their heads, as if agreeing with what the
Government official is saying.

I
have argued in the past that while the Government likes to talk about
the “previous” Government, in terms of contemporary Venezuelan history,
the Chavez administration has already become the previous Government.
No President in the 40 year history of our modern democracy ruled more
than five years, thus with the change of the Constitution, Chavez is
already the longest running President of Venezuela since 1958 when our
last Dictator departed.

But
the truth is that these Government officials are absolutely wrong.
While it is indeed true that such incidents as the recent assassination
of the three students in Barrio Kennedy by the police are not new, it
is also true that the frequency of such incidents has dramatically
increased since Chavze became President. In fact, both homicides and
deaths in confrontations with the police have ballooned since Chavez
took over.

In
contrast with economic numbers that are less and less transparent with
each passing year, the Government has yet failed to completely hide
crime numbers, but it is beginning to try as described in the Provea
report linked below. In fact, the coroners’ office, the Minister of the
Interior and Justice, the investigative police CIPC and municipalities
all report the data on crime, homicides and separate whether the death
occurred in a confrontation with the police. Additionally, Human Rights
organization Provea has been
gathering, collecting and analyzing such data, even before Chavez
became President and issuing regular reports on Human Rights looking at
the status of social, economic, political and civilian rights. The
latest such report can be found here for the years 2003-2004.

A look at the sections on the right to life or the right to personal security
paint a much different picture from what the Government claims, which
shows that in these areas the Venezuelan Government is also doing much worse than its predecessors.
 

Let us first look at homicides per 100,000 inhabitants at the national level and in the metropolitan area of Caracas, as in the graph below:

Chart I Total number of homicides per 100,000 inhabitants since 1986 in Venezuela (black line) and Caracas (blue line)

One
can see that the number of homicides at the national level went from 20
per 100,000 inhabitants per year to 49 from 1998 to 2003, while Chavez
has been President. Similarly, in the Metropolitan area of Caracas,
this number went from 63 to 134 in the same period. (It has continued
to increase in the last year and a half). Note that the numbers had
actually been dropping since 1994, which has been explained as being
the result of municipal police forces being created in the early 90’s.
These forces are better trained and prepared than either the
Metropolitan police or the National Guard and helped reduce crime.

These are HUGE numbers, as an example, most European countries have rates in the low single digits and the US is typically in the mid single digit range. Now, these numbers do not include deaths which are incurred in police incidents, which are shown below at the national level. (Note 2004 is only partial):

Chart II: Number of deaths in police confrontations since 1198 in Venezuela. The 2004 numbers are not for the full year.

These
numbers have also had a dramatic increase, with a four fold increase
nationwide in deaths by police forces. In fact, these numbers alone
would make the country’s homicide rate as high as that of any developed
country. There is no way that these numbers can be defended. They show
that the situation is certainly not the same as it was before Chavez
came to power and while it can not be proven that it represents a
policy, it does represent an attitude and the disregard by the
Government for human rights in general. Venezuelan security forces and
military have always been very repressive, if nobody tries to contain
them, they will act like they have been doing for the last few years an
worse.

If
these deaths by police also are included in the total number of
homicides, the rate of homicides for the country goes up to 59 deaths
per 100,000 inhabitants and that for Caracas
to 154 deaths per 100,000 per year. The absolute numbers are 11.342
homicides in 2003 and 2.305 deaths in confrontations with the police in
the same year. This comes out to over thirty deaths per day!

Two things have to be pointed out. First, these deaths affect mostly the poor. The deaths in Caracas every weekend are in the barrios where the cops sometimes do not even dare go in. Thus,
it affects primarily those that Chavez professes to care and love so
much. Second, when Chavez was elected in 1998, many people voted with
him because he was former military. They thought that he would make
crime a priority within his administration. The fact is that the word
crime is never mentioned by the President in his lengthy speeches. It
is unclear whether this is because he wants to separate himself from
the failed actions by his Government in this field or whether this is
not an important issue for him.

In
any case, the sharp jump in homicides and deaths by police represents
another one of the many failed promises of Hugo Chavez. In my mind,
this is the result on the one hand of a lack of interest in the issue
by the maximum leader, while the violent deaths in police
confrontations are simply a consequence of the repressive minds of the
leaders of police forces, all of which are former military.
Unfortunately, those that should raise their voice about these issues
like the Attorney General and the People’s Ombudsman, are so aligned
with the Government, so as to be essentially invisible on these issues.
And Human Right organizations like Provea and COFAVIC, praised by
Chavez when he was a candidate, have become the object of attack and
criticism by this irresponsible Government.

A while back I translated
an article by Eduardo Mayobre, because I found it to be an extremely lucid
illustration of how Chavez tries to sell what is only militarism, as a new type
of socialism. This is a very important point because many people abroad don’t
seem to understand how pervasive the military element has become in what is
going on in Venezuela.
In this week’s Zeta magazine, Mayobre once again addresses the issue with
clarity, in the context of the new book by Petkoff entitled “The two lefts”. I
don’t know Mayobre, but he seems like a very clear thinker that should be paid
attention to and read frequently.

Two lefts and a rifle by Eduardo Mayobre

Teodoro
Petkoff has put on the table a topic that without any doubt is important. In his last book, he proposes the existence of
two lefts. In one side, there is the one embodied by Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez,
and on the other, that represented by Lula, Lagos, Kirchner and Tabare Vasquez. He points
out that these leaders that rule part of Latin America
and constitute a reaction to the neo-liberal policies of the last decade of the
last XXth. Century. Despite this common trait, he considers them to be very
different. In his own words: “These two currents of the left coexist in the
continent and even if superficially they can be taken as part of the same
“family”, there are visible contradictions that oppose each other.”

The
difference consists-according to Petkoff- in that while one left, that of Fidel
and Chavez, persist in the “infantilism” and “voluntarism” and tries to impose
itself with the use of force, the other one has internalized democratic values
and tries to march “by a path of advanced reform, which makes compatible social
sensibility with the understanding that transformation in societies passes
through economic development with equality and through the strengthening and
deepening of democracy”

Teodoro’s
analysis is intelligent and astute, as he has accustomed us to. But it lacks
two factors that, we think, can not be forgotten. On the one hand, that the
contrast between the two lefts exists not only when you compare different
countries, but that you also find it within each one of them. On the other hand
there are factors foreign to leftwing movements that condition this
contradiction, very particularly their militarism.

With
respect to the first, the democratic left and the totalist left (let’s not call
it totalitarian) have coexisted throughout the years. Thus, the diagnose can
not be made looking only to what is currently happening, but also considering
what happened in the previous years. From this last point of view, limiting ourselves
only to Venezuela,
we can observe how the two lefts have had a struggle that goes back to the
thirties of the XXth. Century. While one advocated making changes that would
have as their base the democratic system, the other one insisted in making a
total revolution, like the Soviet one, so as to advance faster towards the
forefront of history. The first reached power in 1945 and part of the second
one in 1999.

The other
observation about Petkoff’s focus is that he does not give sufficient importance
to militarism as a live and present force in our history, the same one that led
to some of those leftwing projects to support themselves on the crutches of the
men of arms. The progressive left, that in Venezuela has been nothing but Acción
Democrática, partnered itself with a military conspiracy in 1945 in order to
reach power. As Romulo Betancourt referred to the revolt: “The de facto
Government was born from a typical coup d’ etat and not a brave popular
insurgence. One should not underline what the negative aspects of that
circumstance”. The other left has also reached power, half a century later,
behind a military officer.

The
difference between one ascent and the other consists in that while in 1945 Acción
Democrática reached power with a big welcome and imposed its policies during
three years, the role of the totalist left in the current Government is almost
symbolic and it limits itself to the submission in front of the strongman On October 17^th 1945, a day before
the coup, Betancourt sad at a rally that “Acción Democratic will never be part
of a Government like the poor relative that goes in thru the service door and occupy
two or three of the so called technical ministries” That is exactly what the
totalist left has done now.

In both
cases they ended up being dominated by the military. In the first, sending the
adecos to jail or exile. In the second, managing to put the vanguard to its
service. The adecos learned that it was not possible to rule together with the
military without them ending up drawing their revolver, while the vanguardists
concluded that it is better to lower your head when they draw it.

On the other
hand, in the sixties there appeared a left that wanted to confront the military
with weapons. They had their inspiration in the triumph of Fidel in Cuba and
counted on the army being weakened, in the face of public opinion, due to the abuses
committed by the regime of the armed forces in the fifties. They were defeated.

From the
experience, two currents arose that began to differentiate themselves more and
more with the passage of time. On the one hand, those-like Teodoro-incorporated
themselves to democratic life. And, on the other, some decimated and
demoralized groups that he has called the “borbonic” left, because it does not
learn, nor does it forget. The latter ones hid themselves out until they found
a military officer that remembered them. Thus, they arrived to the Government
on the coattails of the lieutenant colonels. And they were more borbonic than
ever, because, much like the royal house, they only fulfill a role of protocol
in the effective Government. Because one has to have it clear that the regime
is, before anything else, the armed forces

Unfortunately,
in our history, besides the one, two, many lefts-we have always had as a
determining factor the men of arms. That is why both in political practice as
well as in the historical analysis, it becomes very difficult to do away with
the role of the rifle. (This Government has this very clear, that is why it
imports them from Russia).
The left that, has forgotten that it has been right, but it does not have the
public positions. We could call it-imitating Teodoro- the anti-borbonic left,
because it forgets, it learns, but it never gets the power and is only left to
write in the newspapers, if by chance they are allowed to do so.

The
difference between Venezuela
with the other South American countries lies in the fact that in the latter the
Armed Forces are profoundly and recently discredited due to the barbaric acts
they committed during the second half of the XXth. Century. That has determined
that the military have retired themselves to their forts and do not participate
in political life. This has allowed an ideological debate without the
interference from the men of arms. The discussion has benefited most of the
time progressive forces, and because of this, in many of them the representatives
from the left have won.

Here, on
the other hand, the military have been absent from politics for almost forty
years-but they have come back en force. Because it was little what they had to
offer, they had to search for a political orientation and they found it in the
borbonic left. But because they had learned the lesson in 1945, they did not
allow their leadership to be taken away. The civilian that has pretenses of
leadership is sidelined (Miquelena’s case) and those that want to stay have to
obey… That is why the military promotions of this month of July have been
followed with passion and with the detailed attention that was once dedicated
to the elections of the general secretaries of political parties.

The evident
dominance of the military recently led the British magazine The Economist to
conclude, after making an evaluation of the current administration, that
“whatever the outcome of the revolution is, the most lasting legacy of Chavez
will be a politicized Armed Forces”. Thus it is possible that we may have to
wait until, much like the South,, the military establishment loses its prestige
(hopefully not for the same reasons) in order to have a civilized civilian life
and in order to have a meaningful debate about the two lefts without having a
rifle pointed at us. Fortunately a politicized Armed Force always loses its
prestige, as has been possible to observe already. But hopefully it will not be
necessary to have a confrontation for the military to have conscience of this. Meanwhile,
in our analysis we can not forget to consider that, between one left and the
other, there is a loaded weapon.

Don’t forget to check out “The Sumate files” blog, which will cover  and document the absurd trial against the ONG by this fascist Government

I like
numbers, but I also like to understand them. Whenever I hear a number, I try to
figure out whether it is reasonable, makes sense or if I need to learn more
about it. Some may think that is my science training at work, I think it is the
other way around, that is why I became a scientist originally.

All of
this comes to mind because during my vacation I came across a statistic that
flabbergasted me, but that I am still not sure I do understand or can even come
close to understand: Venezuela was once again the number one country in per
capita consumption of imported Scotch whisky.

Now, you
may think this is not that hard to understand, but I do. I have always said
that I am almost 100% Venezuelan, except for two facts: I like to arrive right on
time and I don’t drink Scotch, which may explain how mystified I am by the fact
that Venezuelans consumed in 2004 a staggering 25 million liters of Scotch
whisky that comes out to basically a liter per year per capita. To put this
number in perspective, the US
imported 139 million liters in 2004 or less than half a liter per person (0.45
to be more precise).

Problem
is, how can Venezuelans consume so much more imported scotch per person than
the US,
given the much lower purchasing power of the Venezuelan population? Imagine
this: Let’s assume 10% of the Venezuelan population can afford to buy scotch.
Let’s then say than half the population is under 18 and can not drink. Let us
further assume that like me, some percentage of people just don’t like scotch
and moreover, men drink more scotch than women, let’s say aggressively by a
factor of two. That says that roughly these Venezuelan scotch drinkers consume
50 liters of imported scotch per year or one liter per week.

Problem
is, this is simply one type of liquor, and this excludes beer, rum, crummy
Venezuelan whiskies and the like. Thus, let us assume, imported scotch makes up
half the drinks they have, this leaves us with a liter of hard liquor per
person every three and a half days. Can a country function like that? Maybe
that is part of our problem. Who knows?

The truth
is that I think that politicians (of all sides) have something to do with this.
I am sure an outrageous percentage of Government funds pays for the nice scotch
that politicians consume. Any anniversary of a political party, meeting or
negotiations seems to be followed by the boxes of bottles of Scotch, ice, water and soda. But even
with this, I really have no way of justifying the numbers and have begun
gathering the consumption of other alcoholic beverages, in order to delve even deeper into
the problem in the future. Stay tuned!

Imagine a
country in which a Central Bank Director warns that a change in the law will
eventually “burst somewhere”. Markets would panic the currency would
drop, Congress would reconsider what it is doing.

But not in Venezuela.
Yesterday the Finance Commission of the National Assembly approved the reform
of the Central Bank Law requested by Chavez and Central Bank Director Armando
Leon had
such dire warnings in an interview in El Universal today. But nothing
happened. The currency can’t move because there are exchange controls and
little money is invested in the local stock market these days.

But Leon’s
statements represent a very serious warning by a trained economist that nobody
could accuse of being rabidly anti-Chavez. Leon warns that the transfer of
international reserves will create economic disequilibria. He goes even further
than that warning: “If that is maintained in the reform, there will be a
permanent financial instability”, concluding:”sooner or later the pressure
created by these changes will burst somewhere”.

Scary warning from a respected central bank board member. 

This Government professes to have an unrelenting belief that the Government can
do better than the private sector. International and historical experience
shows that to be the case extremely infrequently. As the Government creates new
institutions almost daily, it turns out that the old ones, even those that
should be easily profitable, like Banco Industrial de Venezuela, continue to
lose money and seem to prove exactly the opposite of what the Chavez administration
wants to sell to the people and the world.

Banco Industrial is a good example to follow. It has been capitalized twice
already during the current Government, it has been the subject of accusations
of corruptions repeatedly in the last few years and Chavez has changed its
President three or four times in the last seven years. In addition, the
financial sector has benefited dramatically from their large spreads as well as
the tax free status when they invest in Government bonds in an environment of
dropping interest rates.

Despite this, the bank is asking the Government for some US$ 80 million in a
capital injection, because it ahs enjoyed huge losses in 2004 and the first
five months of 2005 In the first five months of 2005, Banco Industrial lost
close to US$ 400 million, on top of the US$ 3 billion that it lost in 2004. In
fact, the bank regularly violates the indices of liquidity and overdue loans
required by law.

Like many
other institutions, Banco Industrial is the victim of mismanagement and the
belief that it is one of many sources of “petty cash” for the Chavez Government.
The amazing thing is that they can even manage to lose so much money. 2004 was
a banner year for the Venezuelan banking system with outrageous profits based
on return on equity. But not for the
main Government bank, which is not only the source of easy credit for the
friends of the Government, but periodically receives orders for financing
projects like its recently inaugurated office in Cuba.

Of course,
the Government will contribute the US$ 80 million and will check little of the
bank’s management until the next crisis. But the deeper problem is that Chavez’
belief that Government can do it all has led it to create an inordinate amount
of institutions such as Telesur, Conviasa (does it fly?), the Venezuelan
satellite, the people’ s bank, the floating of bankrupt companies and the like,
which can easily hide their loses thanks to the strength of oil prices.

But in the
end this is an irresponsible use of state funds at the expense of the “People”
who should be the true beneficiaries of the bonanza. But all the money is doing
is hiding the inefficiency and corruption of Chavez’ collaborators. And giving the
appearance, for the time being, that Chavez’ statist model works. But at some
point the growth in the cash flow will stop and the model’s day of reckoning
will be here.

While I
was away, an accident took place in the Las Mercedes area of Caracas.
A high speed motorcycle went by a police post, hit the sidewalk at high
speed and rooled over. A woman riding the motorcycle with teh driver
died and the driver of the motorcycle fell and
hurt himself sufficiently to spend some time in intensive care and he
remains
hospitalized to this day.

In any
country an accident like this would be investigated with diligence and the
driver of the motorcycle would be charged with involuntary manslaughter. The
driver would be sentenced according to whether it is determined that the driver
acted irresponsibly or not, after interviewing the witnesses of the accident.

But not in
the Chavez revolution, which protects its own in the face of corruption,
immorality and reckless behavior. The driver of the motorcycle, a police
vehicle according to witnesses, was none other than former stripper, turned
Head if the intelligence police, head of the training institute INCE and now
President of the National Land Institute Eliecer Otaiza, the same one that has
built his own modern and complete personal gym at each and everyone of the
institutions he has presided, none of which he had any prior qualifications
for.

You see,
none of
the witnesses have been interviewed and by now investigators have determined
that none of what they saw that fateful night is correct. According to the
conclusions of the police (the same one that killed the kids in Barrio Kennedy)
Otaiza and the woman were both run over by a “phantom car” and the Attorney
General ahs even suggested (please hold your laughter) that the whole incident
may simply have been a terrorist attempt on Otaiza’s life!

You see,
the accident was on June23d. none of the witnesses has been interviewed
including the municipal police of Baruta, thus the case will simply be filed. What
is most interesting is what witnesses say. Watchman Victor Manuel Vargas is
glad that he has not been interviewed: “I am not crazy. That man knocked himself
over by himself I saw that he was riding a police motorcycle from the back part
of the seat and now they say that he was driving a BMW, as if it was all a
mirage”

The
reporters that showed up at the scene of the accident also say they were victims
of a mirage. The role of a second car was apparently kept secret that night,
the body of the woman was removed before the coroner showed up, illegal in
Venezuelan legislation and everything was taken away in a very short time.

Oh yeah! I
forgot, it was determined that Otaiza was no driving under the influence of
alcohol or drugs. What else do you expect from a revolutionary?

Somehow the
words scruples, ethics and morality are not part of the revolutionary language.
But protecting those that show unfailing loyalty to the almighty leader is
among the priorities of the revolution. Ask Otaiza or all of the corrupt people
in the Government, the military and PDVSA.

The news
coming out of the Venezuelan Government are by now either bordering in madness
or we are seeing the implementation of a plan to buy Chavez and his Government
friends by throwing money all over Latin America in order to get political
support. Besides giving away oil to Cuba, starting
Telesur, creating Petrocaribe to
spread the oil even further, financing a Samba
school in Rio and buying
Argentina’s debt, we now hear in the span of a few hours even more
harebrained schemes:

-Venezuela will
buy half of the Uruguayan airline from Brazilian airline Varig.

-Venezuela will
buy Ecuadorian bonds to help that country.

-Venezuela proposes starting a bond trading center in Venezuela so
that the country’s in the region can buy each other’s debt. Of course, as
pointed out by a friend, the only country with money to do this is Venezuela, so
guess which country will do all the buying?

This is
simply sheer madness. A country that has borrowed so far this year over US$ 3
billion by issuing foreign debt, a country with close to 70% poverty, a Government which
can not claim it has built any serious basic infrastructure in the last few years,
can not throw money away like this…unless…the whole thing is simply an effort
to buy influence, popularity and political support for Hugo Chavez and his ugly revolution.

What comes
next? Telling the world that Ecuador
and Argentina do not have to
pay Venezuela
back as suggested by a friend today? Is this simply a plan to have Chavez gain
more international credibility and satisfy his whims?

The whole
thing is so ridiculous and absurd that I originally thought that the following article in today’s El
Nacional was funny but so silly that it was not worth translating, but I give it to you as a bonus to go with this crazy story:

Caracas to host 2021 Olympic
games by Luis
Chumaceiro Tokio/Chumapress

Caracas will organize the 2021 Olympic Games in 2021, after obtaining the
unanimous backing in the first round of votes in the election that the International
Olympic Committee held today and in which Moscow,
New York, Madrid
and Paris were eliminated.

The
organizers of the event rejected that in electing the Venezuelan capital, the
offer to pay the external debt of the small countries that are part of the organization
or the handover of oil concessions for 500 years to developed countries carried
any weight.

The vote
went against the predictions made in the last few days by members of the COI
and its President George Rodriguez, in the sense that the result would be close
and there would be a few rounds of voting. Nevertheless, the truckload of “gifts”
to federations, national Olympic committees and athletes, gave ground to all
sorts of mistrust and rang the alarms in the face of denunciations of the violation
of the regulations about what candidacies can or not do. It should be remembered
that the regulations of the COI are very strict since the organization was hit
by the scandals of corruption in Salt
Lake City.

French
President, Jean Marie Le Pen, recognized today upon his arrival to Gleneagles, Scotland,
that he was “naturally distressed” in that Caracas
was elected to hold the Olympic Games of 2021, which Paris also aspired to, according to AFP. The French
President is participating in the G20 Summit (G20) that groups all of the countries
which are out of luck in the world, and on top of that there is this new reversal facing them However,
he did convey some resentment because the new automated system was used,
instead of the traditional direct round of voting with paper ballots The high French
dignitary showed his surprise given that not even the French representative
voted for Paris as well as the cost of 200 million euros for this system.

Facing the
insistence of reporters, the Board pointed out that all accusations against
Venezuela will be directed to the ethics commission of the COI, led by Isaias Rodríguez,
the Venezuelan representative; Carlos Castro, the Cuban representative, Kim Lim
Piao, representative from North Korea and Muhamed Al Salami, Libyan representative.
The spokesman for the COI was forceful:” The automated system is shielded and
we defended each vote with our life”

It should be pointed out that Venezuela additionally, registered
interesting offers in the dossier for its candidacy, which was the one basis on
which the evaluation committee, which visited the five cites originally proponed.
Caracas
promised to pay the trip for the 10,500 athletes and their teams with first class
tickets.

On top of that, all of them will have free tickets to Venezuelan trains,
10,000 dollars in cash for telephone calls wherever they are and their families
may stay for free in five star hotels that they promise to build with the same
efficiency with which they developed the housing plan of the revolution.

The Director for the candidacy, Aristobulo Isturiz, metropolitan Mayor of
Caracas, confirmed that besides this, the
athletes and the delegates will have at their disposal unlimited credit lines
for their expenses in local outfits like restaurants, stores and theaters. The
winks of Caracas
also reached the national Olympic committees that will have at their disposal
1.5 million dollars to establish entertainment centers in the best places of
the capital. Besides this, the strict security of the streets of the capital
and the beauty of the great public works were also an unquestionable factor in
making the decision.

In the next Olympic Games there will be new disciplines that the Venezuelans
hope to obtain medals in for the first time in 38 years. There is special interest
in “knifing with rubber bands”, “wet t-shirts”, “beer marathons”, “100 meters
being hit by a machete”, shoot the innocent” and “canoeing in the Guaire river”.

President Jose
Vicente Rangel assured everyone that he “never doubted the victory” to have the
organization of the Olympic date, according to EFE. “The victory was tough to obtain,
but the impartiality of the COI was a determining factor in the face of good
adversaries” Rangel indicated during a visit to Havana, Cuba.

Yesterday, students marched
towards the National Assembly demanding that the deaths of the three
students by the police be investigated, that Minister of Interior and
Justice be censored and asking that the death of the three students not
be used as an excuse to cretae the National Police. The Head of the
National Assembly Nicolas Maduro met with the students, a first since
the new Constitution was pproved, as no President of the Assembly had
ever met with students that do not support it. Of course, he turned around and
proceeded to vote not to censor Chacón. Chacón meanhwile, dismissed the march as being promoted by leftwing party Bandera Roja, which is supposedly looking for the death of a student to make noise.

What has not been mentioned as widely, is the sorry spectacle of the
Bolivarian Circles which showed up to interfere with the demonstration
by the students. Not only did they try to stop the students from
reaching their goal, but as the students left the Capitol, they started
throwing sticks and stones at them and one girl was injured. This type
of intolerance was introduced by Chavez and his cronies in Venezuela’s
political life. But beyond this, one has to wonder exactly what the
Bolivarian Circles meant with their action. Do they approve of the way
the police acted in the murders of the students? Is it that they do not
want an investigation? Who were they supposedly defending by violating
the rights of others? Chavez? Maduro? Chacón? The Police? But I am sure
they did not even know why they were there. Some fascist MVR leader
organized the protest and sent them like animals to stop the students and they obeyed.

Intolerance is being promoted by the Government daily. In Anzoategui
State, the Governor created the first brigade that will go around
cybercafes, monitoring that users do not load “forbidden” pages. Of
course, they do not define, as of yet, what is forbidden, is the simple
threat that counts. The same reason why the media has downplayed the
violence yesterday: fear of the Government, fear of intolerance and fear
of sanctions against them.
 
Intolerance, threats and fear are not exactly the basic ingredients of a democracy society, but here the rule the day.