The Devil's Excrement

I guess civility is no longer in place in the relations between the US and Venezuela. Republican Senator John McCain said today that the US can not be held hostage to “whackos” in Venezuela. This certainly can not help future relations between the two countries, but Chavez did go first, calling Bush an a……, Condoleeza Rice illiterate, and making some comments with sexual innuendo about her, as well as calling her “blackie” which may be an endearing term in Venezuela, but not appreciated in the US.

Unfortunately, we seem to have reached a point in relations between the two countries, which will be very hard to turn back, at least as long as Chavez and Bush are Presidents, and now McCain may be extending it.

Not exactly the way civilized people and countries should treat each other, more so, when the US is Venezuela’s most important trading partner.

The opposition march was quite succesfull, I was suprised at the size of the crowd today as you can see on the left from the podium where the speakers were addressing the crowd. In the picture on the left you can not see the end of the corw as far as it goes. The pictures on the rights shows a lady holding up a poster saying that 2006 will be the year of change. I did not expect the march to be so large, publicity was scant, people were afraid and I thought apathy was the rule of the day. But they showed up in droves. When the speakers began talking, there were still people leaving the starting point a few kilometers away. If there was something different this time around is that the crowd showed a lot of anger, which I had not seen before in any of the opposition marches. The presence of cops, intelligence police helicopters and the simple mention of Chavez’ name simply released a lot of anger from the people there. You could also see it on the posters, lost of swear words in them, something you did not see as much before. People are p….., you better believe it and they are very vocal about it. The best part was: no buses like those Chavez needs to bring to his marches and everyone was there out of their own will, this is a powerful base for December 2006.

There were a few speakers, young and old, old and new, some good like Alexandra Belandia , others representing the old school of speeches that seem to scream at you, I could have done without Eduardo Fernandez and Ramos Allup, but nobody asked me anyway. This is a fisrt good step at mobilizing people in 2006, the crowd, the voters and the people are there, all they need is leadership. It felt good to march and end the day very tired again, with a feeling of accomplishment. Took lots of pictures, the best of the rest are here.

On Sunday,
the opposition will hold a march to commemorate the anniversary of January 23d.
1958 when Dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez was overthrown. This will be the first
march in quite a while and should be the beginning of trying to mobilize the
opposition for the December election.

After the
high abstention levels of December, the Government is concerned that the march
will be a success, I suspect attendance will be low, but just to make sure it
is, both the Head
of the National Assembly and the
Mayor of the Libertador District of Caracas, in their characteristic
unethical and fascist way, attempt to scare people away by suggesting the
opposition itself is planning to ambush the march or plans to reedit the events
of April 11^th. 2002.

As usual
with this mockery of a Government, there is no evidence other than that the
security detail of the organizers of the march “have been going over the route,
looking at buildings in a suspicious way”. It is the usual cheap Chavista shot
at trying to make something into what it isn’t. Moreover, it is done without
following the appropriate channels of Government, because these people after
seven years in power, seem to believe and act as if they were still the opposition, not assuming their responsibility for their jobs as Government officials.

If they were
part of a true and responsible Government, they would go the appropriate
authorities and show proof of their accusations and the authorities in charge
of security would be the ones in charge. But of course, there is no substance
to what Maduro and Bernal are saying; the same way there is really no organized
Government in Venezuela
but just a bunch of unethical thugs and crooks, like Maduro and Bernal, who
only care about political survival.

For myself,
I will certainly be there tomorrow, no matter what threats, whether real or
imaginary they make, fighting for my beliefs and against this fascist,
irresponsible and autocratic Government. I invite all readers of the
blog who are in Caracas
to go and participate in the march.

A special message for those attending the World Social Forum from abroad: The double standard, manipulation and cynicism of the Chavez revolution.

Dear World Social Forum attendee:

Today the Mayor of part of Caracas said that holding the Forum in Caracas would not imply any additional expenses for his municipality. We can forgive him for this hyperbole, he is probably just excited in his revolutionary spirit by the holding of the Forum in the municipality he runs.

But more bothersome to those Venezuelans like me, who reject the Chavez Government due to its militaristic, fascist and autocratic nature, was the following statement by Mayor Bernal:

“In the Los Caobos Park, there will be 400 officers dressed in civilian clothes, because there are groups of diverse tendencies that are antimilitaristic, thus dressing them as civilians we can offer the security without them being perturbed”

I simply find this statement terribly disturbing my dear friends. Disturbing, because I do not believe for one moment that Mr. Bernal, a former convicted criminal, soldier and cop, suddenly has changed his nature and is trying to be respectful of political diversity. It is more likely that he wants to hide from all of you coming to the Forum the true militaristic and repressive nature of this Government. Moreover, Mr. Bernal expresses a respect for diversity he has never shown before since becoming Mayor of the Libertador District of Caracas.

Just to prove my point about our esteemed Mayor let me briefly tell you two stories, which are fortunately well documented in this blog:

-In December 2002 the opposition had made Altamira square in the East of Caracas its meeting point and symbol. On December 3d. 2002 a lone gunman with a Glock, managed to kill three and injure 27 people (Believable, no?). Well, a couple of days later an amateur video showed your now-respectful Mayor unloading weapons at the headquarters of the Venezuelan oil company at 2:30 AM in the company of none other than the gunman that was captured after the shootings. Please understand that the protest at Altamira was always peaceful, so you have to wonder why this guy who appears today so respectful of diversity in politics that he wants to disguise military uniforms for your peace of mind, was unloading weapons at such a God awful hour, under the cover of darkness and at a civilian installation.

-The second case is even more dramatic. On February 27^th. 2004, Venezuela hosted the meeting of the G-15 leaders. A letter was written to these leaders meeting in Caracas and a peaceful march was held to hand over a letter expressing our difficulties on holding a recall referendum against Hugo Chavez as allowed in our Constitution. The idea was simple, a comittee from the march would be allowed to go beyond security and the letter would be handed over and the event/march would be over.

Well, to begin with, this is what was waiting for us even before the march began, right next to the Los Caobos Park where coincidentally you will apparently be protected by these fake civilians for your peace of mind in the next few days:

If you are part of the anti-militaristic group of the Forum, you may wonder why such a peaceful and respectful Government would await a peaceful march with this Robocop-looking army of National Guards. I was naïve enough that day to go the march even without the tear gas mask I had learned to bring to all marches as I relate in this post from that day. (One advantage of having a blog is that I have perfect memory of events!). But it was a terrible day, one person was shot dead by the National Guard no more than a few meters away from where I was. I eas gassed over and over by the Guards. The National Guard used repressive tactics that would make you sick, such as attacking the protesters in motorcycles with two guards on them, with the one on the back carrying a tear gas gun and shooting at short range at the marchers. Nice, no?

But you can get a very good idea of how things played out by reading this post, also from that day, in which you will see a picture of a Venezuelan woman with a flag in her hand approach one of the guards to complain about their violent and repressive attitude. You can then see how this guy proceeded to savagely attack this woman and threw her to the ground, injuring her. Here are some pics:

Nice people, no?

My whole point dear attendee to the World Social Forum, is that you are being fooled into believing that this revolution is “nice” and non-militaristic, while the opposite is actually the case. In fact, the respect that Mayor Bernal claims to be having for your political ideals would be in the best case a double standard of discrimination of those Venezuelans that oppose this fascist Government versus the visitors from abroad like you that they want to impress. But the truth is that this is simply another cynical manipulation of well-meaning people like you who may think and believe that Chavez really cares for the Venezuelan people. But you see, Chaves believes only in Chavez, as seven years of his rule and US$ 300 billion in oil income without any impact on poverty levels clearly show. But that is another story, also well documented in this blog in the last three and a half years.

Have a good time in Caracas, but please don’t let them fool you, your ideals of human rights and anti-militarism are surely closer to mine than to theirs!

Your friendly blogger.

In the latest contradictions in the Danilo Anderson case, Colombian documents have established that the “super-witness” in the case, whose record as being reliable leaves a lot to be desired, was actually in jail in Colombia while the meetings he claims to have attended in Panama and Maracaibo with the intellectual killers of Prosecutor Danilo Anderson were taking place!

According to the testimony of the fake psychiatrist Giovanny Vasquez de
Armas, he attended a meeting sometime between September 3 and 6 of 2003 in
which those charged with Anderson’s murder planned to kill President
Chavez and other Venezuelan Government officials. However, documents obtained by
Globovision show that Vasquez was in jail in Colombia at the time. He
was detained on August 16th. 2003 for impersonating a medical doctor at
a hospital in Santa Marta. He remained in captivity until December
16th. of that same year.

Copies of the documents can be found here and here.

Way to go Isaias! Your sloppy work has reached new levels of incompetence!

Today’s Tal Cual Editorial

It is prohibited to inform by TEodoro Petkoff in Tal Cual

It was
inevitable. At some point, it had to happen that the General Prosecutor of the
Republic would attempt to cover up the sloppiness of his acts in the Anderson case via the
attempt to censor information about them. Isaias requests that it be judicially
“forbidden” to all kinds of media the publication of records from the Anderson file case. He is
threatening penal sanctions to those that would broadcast information that
would place in doubt the credibility of his “star witness”, the fake
psychiatrist Vasquez de Armas.

We are
facing a frontal attack against the exercise of freedom of speech. It happens
to be a crass and coarse attempt to silence the media in a case that shook
public opinion. If “verbatim” copies – as they are qualified by the request for
censorship- from the Prosecutors office leak from the Anderson case files, the responsibility should
not be put on the reporters, but on those that give it to them. If the Prosecutor’s
office presents as a key witness an individual of whom it has been shown with
documents that is a hardened criminal whose “specialty” is, precisely, the stealing
of identities and the forgery of public documents, which gives him little
credibility, it is not the Prosecutor’s office that has erred centrally leaning
in such a precarious testimony, but the media that committed a crime because
the discover the ruse and bring it to light.

Is the behavior of the Prosecutor casual and isolated? It
does not seem like it. If we put together this request for censorship with the “administrative
procedure” opened against Laureano Marquez and this newspaper in the context of
an article entitled “Dear Rosines”, it would indicate more that we are facing a
full force offensive, directed at silencing the media via the rogue utilization
of “justice”. It would not be the Government the one that would establish the mechanisms
of censorship” with censors provided with red pencils, the old fashioned way,
but the courts of “justice” in the supposed application of legal dispositions
so that in cases like this, “we protect justice and prevent the abuses of
freedom of speech”

And who protects the citizens from a “justice” applied in arbitrary manner,
to obstruct precisely the channels of information? Who would stop the abuses by
public powers, when they are committed, if little by little the possibility of
denouncing them is closed?

The investigation of the Anderson case has been plagued with
irregularities.

Particularly with all
of those parts relating to the “intellectual authors”, where the Prosecutor’s
office placed the leading role in a crude comedy of mistakes, unsustainable to such
a point that the court handling the case had no choice but to order the freedom
of those charged.

It was the media who made the contradictions and inconsistencies
of those charges visible. What they are now pretending is that the acts of the Prosecutor,
no matter how sloppy and erroneous they may be, be protected by a judicial
decision that would forbid speaking about them. Therefore, that they be secret.
Could it be that they are trying to
cover something up? “In the shadows of mystery only crime works” Words by
Bolivar.

After
reading this
news today that the Government may exempt people who live in Vargas
state of both the VAT and the income tax, I looked into my crystal ball and saw
the news of the future:

Chavez: Phantom Vargas residents
should be sent to Cuba
for life

El not so Universal, November 27^th.
2006

In
yesterday’s Alo Presidente, Hugo Chavez said that if it were not because the
Constitution prohibited it, he would send everyone that moved his legal
residence to Vargas state to Cuba
for the rest of their life as punishment. “These people are traitors” said
Chavez after learning that the population of Vargas state had quintupled since
the Government decreed the tax exemption last January.

The Superintendent
of Seniat, the tax office, said that there would be a shortfall of 300% in tax
collection after close to 1. 5 million people declared Vargas state as their
legal residence and thus paid not income tax. Moreover 83.6% of the country’s companies
moved their Headquarters to Vargas after the decree was passed. The tax office
banned the moves, accusing those moving of tax rebellion and claiming the whole
thing was a conspiracy to overthrow the Government. “This is another attempt
led by Pedro Carmona and the oligarchy to overthrow the legally elected
Government of Venezuela by reducing tax collection and thus limiting the
resources available for the Presidential campaign of Hugo Chavez” said Vielma.

Vielma has
asked the Supreme Court to ratify the rebellion charges against the 1.6 million
people accused of tax evasion and send them to jail for a sentence from 6 to 14
years according to the tax code. The Constitutional Hall of the Supreme Court took
the case away from the Penal Hall, because one of the Justices in the Penal
Hall lives in Vargas and thus paid no taxes. But the Court has yet to give an
opinion, except for the comment by the Court’s President who said: “Clearly
anyone that does not pay taxes and thus limits the number of votes that Chavez
may get next week is simply conspiring against the Government and participating
in a very explicit form of rebellion, but I will not say more, it would be unethical as I am writing the majority opinion on the case”

The
President of the National Assembly Nicolas Maduro said the Assembly will begin
an investigation of the case immediately, beginning with a house to house
census of Vargas state. Said Maduro: “We have found one room houses with more
than 1,500 residents and the top four industrial companies in the country have
now moved to Vargas. We will pass a bill prohibiting this retroactively. While
the Constitution prohibits passing any law retroactively, this is a national
affront and an emergency and we can not tolerate this type of conspiracy. Opposition members, as defined by the Maisanta/Tascon database/algorithm version 17.3, will have an “O” tatooed on their forehead and will need Congressional approval to change residences. This is not a violation of their rights, but a necessary precaution”.

Maduro
also said that they had found CIA pamphlets explaining how to move to Vargas
state, without using the collapsed viaduct in the Caracas-La Guaira highway or the old road which takes now three days to drive after it also collapsed all over the place. “Once
again, all of our problems can be traced back to the CIA; I don’t understand
why it is that while the CIA botches up all of its operations in the world, all of those
carried out in Venezuela
are successful, except for the fact that we always discover them”. Maduro also showed a bazooka which was actually not used by the CIA in the operation.

Deputy Iris
Varela said yesterday that her committee on enviromental issues would look into why no
banks had moved to Vargas as that sounded very fishy to her. When told that
banks pay no taxes, the session of the committee was cancelled.

The
Minister of Energy and Oil Rafael Ramirez announced with a stern face that he
will look into who within the company moved PDVSA’s legal residence to Vargas, exempting the oil
company from paying taxes to the Government: “We only noticed it last week,
because we were very busy preparing the 2004 financial statements which we had
promised to the SEC for
November of one of these years” said Ramirez at a press conference.

Deputy
Pedro Carreño said that this was all planned at the White House by Jorge W. Bush
using a new weapon, a “Superconducting-levitated diamond knife linked to 12,000
DirecTV satellites controlled by all the Coca Cola truck drivers in the world, which were used to cut the viaduct into two pieces, causing the
crisis”. He claimed that US Ambassador Brownfield wrote the decree exempting Vargas
from the taxes and slipped it into the agenda of the Cabinet last January, while the Cabinet was watching the winter ball baseball finals, in which Leones beat Magallanes 23 to 21 in a 30 inning, 16 hour game. The game itself is also being investigated.

Attorney
General Isaias Rodriguez blamed the media and said this was related to the Danilo Anderson case, saying he had a witness who is a Chinese economist from Bolivia, who lives in Iraq who had been at the CIA meetings in Nepal where the operation was planned and Patricia Poleo was present.

Luis Tascon said he would not say
anything because he had said too many stupid things in 2006 and was afraid of saying another one. He would speak again in 2007.

Opposition
candidates were quiet on the topic. Julio Borges said he had better things to
worry about, with his most recent proposal of a primary the day before the presidential
election. Roberto Smith said he was walking one million miles around Venezuela so
that everyone in the country would shake his hand in the week prior to his
election. Teodoro Petkoff explained that this was simply a case of human nature
and revealed that half of the members of the 100% pro-Chavez National Assembly had filed
their tax statements with a Vargas residence to avoid taxes (The other half did not even file). So had the Comptroller and the People’s Defender.

Fidel
Castro said sending people to Cuba
was not a punishment, but a reward in his “sea of happiness: lobster, prostitutes, beaches and good music for all non-Cubans”.

Chavez’
daughter Rosines could not be quoted on the subject, as there were 67 court
orders banning people from quoting her both here and abroad and in all forms of
media, TV, printed, pamphlets, viedo, FM, AM, shortwave, podcasts, analog, digital or hybrid. Additionally, she was very busy rewriting Art. 350 of the Constitution for her
father, particularly erasing the part about “rights”.

It was another day for fascism, lies and stupidity from some of the usual suspects:

Our esteemed
Prosecutor said today that
“he does not want to curtail anyone’s free speech but….”:

–His
office will open an investigation against some media sources for “obstruction
of Justice”

–He will “ask
a judge to prohibit the distribution or publication of any part of what is
contained in the files of the Danilo Anderson case”

–He will “ask
the media and telecom regulator to open a procedure against the media using the
“Law of Social Responsibility for radio and TV” to determine if they in”three incurred
in any violations and crimes which he happened to mention carry penalties from “six
months to three years”

–He said
the media (Globovision) is intimidating the witness when it says he has
escaped, when “you can not escape when you are not in jail” (My interpretation:
He flew the coop, but is not an escape)

Now this
is intimidation, fascism and violation of the rights of free speech all bundled
into a tight little package by the supreme violator and manipulator of the Constitution Isaias Rodriguez. Curiously, he said all of this on the
same day that Human Rights Watch said that in the Venezuela under
Chaves, human rights, justice and free speech have all taken a step back and it
happens to be the responsibility of Rodriguez himself to insure according to Art. 285
of the Venezuelan Constitution “that the administration of Justice and due
process work well and….to guarantee in judicial processes the respect of the rights
and constitutional guarantees…”

But, of
course, he is investigating the media, his enemies, but he did not mention
ONCE, investigating those that surround him that are providing the information to
the media. These “Chavistas”, because they have all been placed there by this Government, leak this information because they are sick of it and they see that the whole thing is simply a travesty of this
Prosecutor who is simply acting as the political Commissar of the regime, going
after whomever the regime orders to go after and not those that should be prosecuted.

Reportedly,
before the Anderson
assassination, it was the murdered prosecutor himself who provided some members
of the media with the contents of the files on cases such as the Sumate
prosecution or the case of those that went to the Presidential Palace on April
4^th. 2002, some of whom were not even there. Of course, there is no chance that that had anything to do with his murder. That avenue has not been explored.

In fact,
Rodriguez did absolutely nothing when the media got a hold of the Supreme Court
decisions in some very important cases, days before they were announced. LAtely, the rule seems to be that the decsions are published and known before they are announced, making even the highest Court of the land part of thi judicial an unethical farse. It
would be quite easy to determine who leaked those decisions, since few people
have those copies, but Rodriguez is not supposed to make the life of the
supporters of the revolution difficult, only that of those that opposed the stupid revolution.

But such
are the ways of the fake revolution, which discusses whether the horse on the
Coat of Arms should be male or female (Why not neuter?), at a time when there
are very important problems around, but ignorant Deputies,
none other than Chief fascist and human rights abuser Luis Tascon had the indecency
of saying “the collapse of the viaduct has little incidence on the national
economy” or the “Government can’t be
blamed for the viaduct problem after 2002-2003” as if 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002,
2003, 2004 and 2005 were years where Hugo Chavez was traveling or there was no
National Budget.

The old
joke used to be that this Government was like Teflon because “nothing sticks to
it”. Well, I guess not even ideas, ethics or morals stick to them, they are
responsible for nothing, they lie, persecute and are vindictive with their
political enemies and do it and say it without even changing their faces and
they are capable of saying the most imbecile things without a gesture in their faces. They
should get a patent for this, because it is really so much better than Teflon.

But where
are the opposition leaders calling these people fascists and idiots day after
day (or minute after minute)? Are they still on vacation? Who is going to defend
the media? This is being carefully planned so that in a year or two these media
outlets will simply not exist as Conatel closes them for violating the law and
nobody will remember why or how they were closed, the same way that nobody seems
to remember that Isaias Rodriguez does not defend the law and has made a
mockery of what I supposed to be an independent power.

But I will
not forget. When and if this fascist and abusive Government leaves, I will sit
down and go through every single post, crossreference all these sinisters figures and look for the documents and evidence
for their lies, abuses and stupidities and write daily in a local newspaper so
that they are shamed everyday for their actions when they thought they were
under the protection of the autocrat himself. Hopefully, HE will be in jail.

(P.S.: After completing the post I realized there is a new man competing for the job of top clown, the Mayor of Maracaibo, who apparently wants to be Governor, recently accused the Governor of having been to Colombia, which even the Chavista Minister of Justice said was not true. Well, the new charge is even more hilarious, Mayor Di Martino now accuses Governor Rosales of having a credible “parallel budget” for the State funded by none other than the US Government. Yeah! Sure, very likely. On the other hand, if each Governor could double his budget by applying for this, as Seinfeld would say: we may have something there!)