The Devil's Excrement

Tonight as described blow by blow
by Daniel, who happened to be blogging live Chavez’ “cadena”
(Nationwide obligatory TV and radio transmission) , Hugo Chavez had less than kind words for Mexican President Vicente Fox, telling him among other things:

–“It saddens me to see you give yourself up like that to the US”
–“The Mexican President left bleeding thrugh his wounds”
–“How can the President of such brave people become a puppy of the empire”

Curious how Chavez’ words were posted immediately
in the MINCI site, suggesting this was not as improvised as it may
seem at first sight. You could say that Chavez’ verbal diarrea hit the Fox, as the
Mexican Foreign Minister took only minutes to call the Venezuelan Ambassador tot “explain”o his Government the statements by President Chavez against President Fox.

This will likely create a crisis between the two countries, which will
not be as easy for Chavez to get out of as others in the past. Only
last week he had a bitter exchange with Peruvian President Toledo who
told Chavez not tyo try to teach him about economics, because he was an
economist himslef and not to try to teach him about poverty, because he
grew up poor too. As usual, our President knows how to destroy for the
sake of destroying, in this case relations with the most important
Latin American economy and one of the most important Venezuelan tarding
partners.

Note added: To add insult to injury the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry today justified
Chavez’s insults against President Fox, saying that Fox was very
agressive against Chavez in Mar del Plata. Of course, Fox never
mentioned Chavez directly when he criticized the anti-Free Trade treaty
Group, but Chavez simply insulted Fox directly. This looks like the first chapter in
what could be a long and unnecessary fight!

A few days ago I wrote about the strange
case of the structured notes which remarkably has received little attention
from the local press, but today Tal Cual Editor Teodoro Petkoff tells the same
story I did, which I will not repeat. He estimates the profit in the “transaction” at
only some US$ 120 million. It is worth translating the last part of this
article with his conclusion about this strange transaction, which to me simply proves
the depth of corruption, putrefaction and dishonesty at the highest levels of this
“revolutionary” Government and at the highest levels in this country’s history.

What is the excuse this time? That Chavez does not know
about it? If he did, he should be impeached for corruption, if he didn’t, he is
too incompetent to be President. But we know that! Here are Petkoff’s conclusions :

Thus,
without an auction, without the needed advertising, in
a fingercratic transaction, the Minister of Finance, The National
Treasury (the
Head of which, coincidentally is the wife of the Minister of Defense)
and the
Director of Public Credit held the sale of bonds for US$662 million,
leaving in
the air a number of questions about which neither Clodosbaldo (the
Comptroller)
nor Isaias (the Prosecutor General so keen on political cases involving
his enemies) have done anything about it: How were the buyers selected?
Who were
they? Why some and not others? What was the method used to establish
the price?
Who pocketed the difference?

In any case, within the regime of Exchange controls, some
financial institutions received securities for US$ 662 million, that happily
left the country singing along, for them, there was no prohibition to leave the
country.

From the New York Times by paid subscription, full text courtesy of Under the Broom Tree

The Idiots Abroad by John Tierney in the NYT

If President Bush wants to know what went wrong on his trip south, I recommend
a book by three Latin American journalists. Their “Guide to the Perfect
Latin American Idiot,” a best seller when it was published nine years ago,
remains indispensable for understanding phenomena like Diego Maradona.

Maradona, born in a shantytown near Buenos Aires,
became the world’s most famous soccer player in the 1980’s after he left Argentina to play for teams in Spain and Italy. Besides collecting his $5
million salary in Europe, he played exhibition
games in Arab countries at $325,000 per appearance and made $10 million
annually in endorsement contracts with corporations based in at least four
continents, companies like Puma, Fuji-Xerox and Coca-Cola.

And what did he learn from this international rags-to-riches tale? During
Bush’s visit to Argentina,
Maradona took time out from his busy schedule (he now has a television show) to
help rally tens of thousands of people against that horrible modern scourge:
free trade.

He was one of the headliners at the rally along with Hugo Chávez, the socialist
president of Venezuela, who
is determined to prevent a free trade agreement among Latin American countries
and the United States.

“We are going to stand against the human trash known as Bush,”
Maradona told the crowd, between puffs on a cigar given to him by one of his
heroes, Fidel Castro.

To be fair, this sort of thinker exists on other continents, too. But what
distinguishes the Perfect Latin American Idiot is his persistence. No matter
how far the continent falls behind the rest of the world, its populists cling
to the same beliefs in socialism and big government, the same distrust of
capitalism and free trade, the same conviction that Latin American poverty is
the fault of the United
States.

“Maradona embodies the wonderful possibilities of globalization, yet he
does everything in his power to deny people poorer than himself to participate
in that world,” said one of the “Perfect Idiot” authors, Alvaro
Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian journalist (and son of the novelist Mario Vargas
Llosa). “Everything Maradona and Chavez stand for has been tried before.
These populists are repeating the mistakes of the Mexican Revolution, of Brazil in the 30’s, of Argentina in the 50’s, of Peru in the
80’s.”

The new wave of populists is led by Chávez, who’s been using the recent
windfall in oil revenues to expand government and solidify his hold on power.
But even while $100 million in oil money pours into Venezuela
every day ($60 million of that from those terrible gringos north of the Rio Grande), the poverty
rate has risen above 50 percent.

Meanwhile, the poverty rate has declined sharply in Chile, to about 20 percent
(compared with about 50 percent in the rest of the continent). Chile has become South America’s economic
success story by embracing capitalism and making its own free trade agreements
with the United States and
other countries, most recently China.

Bush went to the Latin America summit meeting hoping to persuade the rest of
the continent to follow Chile’s
example – the right message but the wrong messenger and the wrong place. Any
American president, especially one as unpopular as Bush, makes too easy a
target for the populists and rioters who turned the meeting into their own
photo opportunity.

“Nothing has ever emerged from a Latin summit,” said José Piñera, the
Chilean reformer who started the first private-account social-security system,
and then helped introduce similar systems in two dozen other countries.
“Real change blossoms from good internal public policies. President Bush
should not attend and dignify these weapons of mass distraction.”

The best American strategy, as Alvaro Vargas Llosa says, would be to do less in
Latin America. Instead of publicly pressuring
the whole continent to sign a free trade agreement, quietly make deals with the
countries that want one. Instead of denouncing and plotting against Chávez,
ignore him.

And instead of fighting a drug war in South America,
surrender. The war has been utterly ineffectual at stopping the flow of
cocaine, which has actually gotten cheaper on American streets. But by
infuriating communities in the Andes, the war
has created a political base for populists running on anti-American platforms.
They may be economic dunces, but in this case the perfect idiots are the drug
warriors in Washington
helping to elect them.

Here is Petkoff’s take on the Danilo Anderson case. The Prosecutor had
said that they had the complete movie of who killed Anderson and why,
step by step. Well, the whole things is so full of inconsistencies and
gaps, that it is very hard to take the thing seriously. Here are just
two facts:

-All of the “evidence’ is just the testimony of a single person, a
former member of the Colombian Auto defenses according to some, just a
Colombian Doctor according to the Prosecutor Isaias Rodriguez. Imagine
that the testimony of one person and some the fact that some
of the people talked to each other is the extent of the evidence. There
is nothing else in the case files according to the defense lawyers!

-The Attorney General/Prosecutor Isaias Rodriguez had said that the
“CIA was involved”. Then a warrant for the arrest of reporter Salvador
Romani was issued. Romani has been accused by the Cuban Government of
working for the CIA. The problem is that that Romani does not live in Venezuela. Thus, the intelligence police left empty handed, only to come back half an hour later with a different
arrest warrant to detain Romani’s son. Not even the Keystone cops
screwed up so badly! In fact, Romani’s wife still thinks they want her
husabnd and not the son. But the revolution does not care for such
petty details, what is important is that they have a Romani in jail,
even if it’s the wrong one. I wonder what hapened now to the CIA
connection?

That is the state of the judicial power in Venezuela. To those that are
pro-Chavez I just remind them that one day, they or their close
relatives, may have to face that same system of (In)Justice, they will
then join the opposition they so despise today.

Here is more in Petkoff’s usual clear words

Purple
Soup by Teodoro Petkoff in Tal Cual

The Government is turning the Venezuelan Judicial system into pieces. Last
week, for the nth. time, a judge, Maria Mercedes Prado, was removed because she
sentenced in a way that the Government had not authorized. That is the way it
is now: judges can only sentence, especially in cases of political connotation,
according to the instructions that officialdom gives them.

Yesterday, this judge tried to explain her case, in front of the media,
in the Press Hall of the Supreme Court. She was unable to do it. The
electricity was cut off and between the National Guard, the subpoena servers
and private guards she was kicked out of the room and the reporters and photographers
were kicked out violently. The Press Hall was shutdown indefinitely.

What was the judge going to say? That according to the Penal
Processing Code she had no other recourse that give one of the suspects
conditional freedom for the case of the bombs placed in the Spanish and
Colombian consulates, because the Prosecutor in charge of accusing him, Gilberto
Landaeta, had not done so? She would have pointed out, thus, the negligence of
the Prosecutor and by extension, of the Prosecutor’s office as a whole. With
violence, she was denied her right to express her criteria, using a procedure that
can only be explained by the thick and smelly atmosphere of authoritarism and
abuse to the rights of citizens that is enveloping the country. The Supreme
Court Justice that ordered that barbaric act did it because she feels like a
bully, but above all, because she knows she is supported. Because she knows
that this is the official style.

A typical style of bullies. Nobody in the Supreme Court was capable of
calling her to order because bullies, sometimes, manage to create a climate of
intimidation in their surroundings.

While that judge was being removed, another was put in charge of the Anderson case. Only three
hours later she issued the warrants for the arrests. Quite a prodigy of speed
reading, because the case has hundreds of files. Someone with a dirty mind
could speculate however, that the new judge knowing the fate of Doctor Prado
(and others before her, for the same reasons), “prudently” opted to preserve
her health, doing what was asked of her, without stopping to investigate too
much. In fact, when she was asked about the evidence to substantiate the case,
besides those pointed out by Isaias she “revealed” two more: that someone died;
a second one, that his name was Danilo Anderson. If the other eight are like
that (Isaias spoke of twelve), it looks uphill for the Prosecutor’s office to convince
us that they really have a case.

The judicial system and the Prosecutor’s office not only need to be
honest but have to appear to be honest. Up to now there are too many observed
inconsistencies and too many questions that are raised by what they have done.
If things continue to go like this, the respectability and credibility of the
Prosecutor’s Office, that the Prosecutor himself questioned in his ineffable
internal memoranda, are being put into question. The suspicion that we may be
facing a montage for political ends
is establishing itself in public opinion. And Isaias’ interview in Channel 8
does nothing to dissipate that suspicion; on the contrary, it emphasizes it.

Continuing
in its attempt to intimidate and block the opposition just prior to the
upcoming elections for the National Assembly, a Judge decided tonight to
charge four of the Directors of Sumate for conspiracy against the Government.
The charge comes form receiving funds from the National Endowment for Democracy
for electoral education. Sumate has been a thorn in the Government’s shoe as it
activities allowed the opposition to gather the signatures to be able to call
for the recall of Hugo Chavez. Sumate has unveiled all of the problems with the
electoral process in Venezuela
and its leaders have been
going around the world presenting this document (in English here) about
the State of Democracy in Venezuela. In
contrast to the Government that uses State funds for party activities without accountability, Sumate
has provided all of its financial information on the web, including contracts with funding
agencies, as well as its
financials.

This is simply another fascist act by the Government: find a way to criminalize
the opposition activities in order to stop them and intimidate them. The
Prosecutor handling the case is Prosecutor Luisa Ortega, who has taken over
most of the responsibilities that Danilo Anderson used to have of handling
political cases. Meanwhile, all accusations against the Government, including
murders, abuse of power and corruption are simply shelved or
“decided” by a Judiciary that is totally controlled by the Government.

Did I forget to say some people claim this is still a democracy?

There is no question that this Government has no shame. It is no longer
a matter of whether you are pro-Chavez or not, you simply have to be
unconditional. Judge Maria Mercedes Prado, was handling the case of the
bombings of the Colombian and Spanish Embassies in February 2004.
According to the Government the case was “solved”, it was “clear cut”.
Despite this time went by and no evidence of any worth was presented to
the judge. Even President Chavez got involved in the case in his Sunday
variety show “Alo Presidente”, saying “we have the video that shows who
did it”. But the pro-Chavez judge disagreed. To her, there was little
evidence to charge anyone in the case. Thus, she told te Government
that she was going to rule on the case, saying there was no evidence to
convict any of the suspects.

Big mistake! Judge Prado was fired last week, precisely for not being
willing to rule as the Government and the Prosecutor’s office wanted.
She was mad, she was trying to hold a press conference
today to denounce in the press briefing room of the papalce of Justice
when Judge Belkis Cedeño ordered the electricity to be shut off and the
National Guard to expel the Judge from the Hall of Justice. In so doing
the guards assaulted reporters,
attempted to take their cameras away and kicked them out of the
building. As of today, the press room of the Hall Justice will be
eliminated and reporters will not be allowed in the Hall at al from now
on.

Oh yes, they claim this a democracy! Justice and freedom of speech are
non-existence as the ochlocracy controls everything and has no clue
about what democratic values are. 

I saw this table in a report from J.P. Morgan and I just had to post
it, judge for yourself the list which is separated into two groups: Oil
exporting countries and oil importing countries.Except for a couple of
exceptions, there seems to be an inverse relationshop between the
economic health of each country and the price of a gallon of gas

I found this excellent article from Argentina so insightfull that I had to translate it for all.

Politically, a failure for all by Joaquin Morales Sola en La Nacion (Argentina).

If democracy is  an arithmetic of
majorities and minorities even if, from the start, it is not only that, we have
to agree that the US took almost all of the Americas in Mar del Plata, that
Venezuela remains as an isolated “mono” block and that Mercosur has the size of
a small neighborhood party.

The extreme ideology of both sides (in favor and against
ALCA) and certain diplomatic ineptitude managed to give George W. Bush an international
victory, which he had not achieved in a long time, after a number of defeats in
Washington

Instead, if Mar del Plata is observed from a political point
of view, the failure belongs to all of us, including the White House, that was
absent for too long from the rest of America. A document split into two is
certainly a very poor result.

Kirchner had promised to be a kind and aseptic host of the
summit. He would carry with him the success or the failure of the meeting. There
was, in the end, more of the latter than the former, despite the effort to exhibit
a better result. But he changed course in the middle and lost his neutrality in
the opening speech. Like a textbook Argentinean (which is what he is), he
overdid the contemplation of his own navel. He wasted a large part of the
speech, as the owner of the home court, with talking about the urgencies of Argentina and
his misadventures with the FMI. He could have, instead, placed his eyes on the common
conflicts of Latin America. It is the zone of
the planet with the biggest social inequality. It registered, in the last few
years, advances and reversals, both in the economy as well as the quality of
its democracy. And there are different concepts and alternatives for the region
to change the state of things. A consensual piece is what was expected from a
warm host.

Perhaps he did not like that Bush avoided to frontally
commit his position with respect to the FMI; that backing was Kichner’s obsession
up to the point he shook Bush’s hand. Perhaps he liked less that the Chief of
the White House made his the proposals of others foreign leaders and of many
investors about the need for legal protection and clear rules of the game in
the country. And he was certainly petrified with stupor that Bush expressed to
reporters the need to fight against corruption. That word is just not mentioned
in Kirchner’s Argentina.

But even from before then, things were not looking good. There
were thirty countries, with differences in nuances and plans, in favor of a
free trade agreement for the hemisphere. Four others established intransigent positions
and one was keeping vigil over a corpse which is not dead. The addition and
subtraction pour off a correlation of forces that looks too much like a defeat
for the minority.

There was a lack of diplomacy, even if the argument that
conditions for integration have to be analyzed carefully is reasonable. There
are no identical situations in Latin America.
But watching over the content does not mean you withdraw from the indispensable
dialogue, which is what has not happened in the last few years. Mercosur fell
sleep with its convictions and Washington
with theirs. Despite all, efficient diplomacy always has a formula to dress up its
divergences. Those possible diagonals were what was missing in Mar del Plata. Brazil also suffered a serious
misstep; its efforts to create a South American community of Nations was reduced
to a bunch of photo opportunities. With Bush sitting at the table, that project
turned into air particles. Except the four nations of Mercosur, where the
natural leadership of Brazil
is present, the rest were all just closer to Washington.

Surely there was no political adhesion to Bush on the part of
the majority of the Latin American leaders, but a different vision to the
solution of their national problems. Why not respect them? Why not find the
words that would comprise the interest of some and the others?

Venezuela
is a case apart, from the beginning. But, what is left of the Bolivarian ambitions
of Hugo Chavez when his speech only penetrates a club of excited militants and
no other country in the region is ready to follow him? The only thing left is
his oil and his petrodollars. Without them, Chavez would be less insignificant from
what he already is in Latin America.

Kirchner and Lula will no longer be able to cover up for him
without conditions for much longer; they run the risk of catching the isolation
of the Venezuela
one. Containing Chavez, which was promised by Kirchner, did not work in Mar del Plata: the
populist Venezuelan leader shouted and offended without measure or limit, very
close to the correct and classical Presidents.

Is Mercosur one? Apparently it is. But appearances do not
show everything. There is in Uruguay
a sort of tiredness because of the eternal fights between Brazilians and Argentineans
within Mercosur. On top of that-one has to say it-Tabare Vazquez disappointed both
Brasilia and Buenos Aires with his airs of independence. And
Paraguay established its own
relationship with Washington,
especially in matter of Defense.

In Mar del Plata,
there was a deep fight, which did not compromise Kirchner or Bush. It was staged
by Mexico and Brazil, the two most powerful countries in Latin America. Mexico
had, it needs to be said, more echo than Brazil among Latin American
Presidents. Argentina did
not treat Mexico
well, a country with which it has important trade agreements, which are
essential for its economy. It is true that Kirchner could not offer to have bilateral
meetings with more than 30 Presidents, but Mexico
is not part of the bunch, it is the first economy of Latin
America. Kirchner found time to meet alone, once again, with Chavez,
why not to listen to Vicente Fox?

Fox asked more than a year ago, in the Argentinean city of Iguaçu, its incorporation
to Mercosur. Nobody replied anything to him, ever. In that extended Mercosur
meeting, Fox saw first the incorporation of Venezuela to the commercial alliance,
proposed by Lula. Venezuela
will be, in December, a full member of Mercosur. Fox complained, from the
initial discussions of the Mar del
Plata meeting, about the need for regional attention
for the problem of migrations, which is a priority of his Government. They did
not even devote one minute to the matter.

It also happens to be a prejudice without foundation to
suppose that Fox and Chile’s
Lagos act as spokesmen for Washington. Fox and Lagos
gave Bush a notable defeat in the Security Council when Washington tried to give the Iraqi war international
coverage. They have been more firm, when push comes to shove, than the rhetoric
of Kirchner or than the verbal incontinence of Chavez.

The permanent equilibrium between ideology, history and
practice led the main leaders of Mar Del Plata
to ignore the gravest of all the things that have recently happened in Latin
America: the inexplicable decision by Peruvian President Toledo to extend its
sovereignty of his country over the sea, which directly affects the security of
Chile.
You don’t do that to Chile
without any consequences. Toledo, with his
popularity indices rubbing the bottom of measures, imitated Gaitieri when he
grabbed the Falkland Islands to give oxygen to
his already unpopular dictatorship. The crisis between Chile and Peru places at
risk peace in Spanish speaking America and block any solution of a way out to
the sea for Bolivia , which Jose Maria Insulza had been working on, first from
Chile and now from the OAS. Insulza could ask for help from another intelligent
head in Latin America, Enrique Iglesias, now executive
secretary of Iberoamerican summits.

Bolivia
could be the solution to many Latin American problems, because it has energy
reserves in a region starving for energy. But it could also show, if its destabilization
or its secession were to happen, the tragic specter of broken peace in the
southern part of America.
Argentinean diplomacy has lots to do, if it abandoned its comfortable position
of doing nothing, in Bolivia,
in Peru and in Chile

To do that, Argentinean foreign policy has to stop looking at its navel. The world
is neither a geographical error nor a geographical excess, and Latin America lacks solutions. It does lack indeed
leaders of the stature of Insulza and of Iglesias, ready to accept that it is
not the same thing to put things in their place than to recognize the place for
things.