The Devil's Excrement

http://www.11abril.com/

http://alfredo.octavio.net/2002/04/11.html

http://arenaspace.blogspot.com/2005/04/what-happened-on-april-11-2002.html

http://caracaschronicles.blogspot.com/2004/04/untold-story-of-venezuelas-2002-april.html

http://daniel-venezuela.blogspot.com/2003_04_06_daniel-venezuela_archive.html

http://blogs.salon.com/0001330/2005/04/11.html

Jorge Arena.

After I published the last post where El Universal  mentioned the video sent to the family of the
Faddoul brothers, some of the readers were asking me about the three girls that
were kidnapped in the Tuy Valley,
the same area where the Faddouls were staying in captivity.

I did a little search and I found that the case had some similaritied  to that of the Faddouls.  The
story can be found here.

There were three sisters, ages 16, 14 and 13 that were
kidnapped closed to their homes in Ocumare del Tuy. They went out with their
cousin to buy Chinese rice and stopped in a convenience store where the
kidnappers took possession of the car. After a while, the kidnappers let the
cousin out of the car and took the three girls.

The girls were advised not to try to escape because the
whole region was full of “captors”.

The kidnappers explained to the girls that the kidnapping
had been planned in Colombia
with a roulette. They had chosen at random Venezuela,
then Ocumare del Tuy and finally they had searched the richest people in the
area. They knew exactly the dayly routine of the Blanco-Bandes family.

One day the girls were told that his dad had payed up the
ransom money and that they were going to be liberated. They were left alone.
The oldest stayed and told the other two to get into the bush so that if the
captors came back, they would only take one of them. But this time their dad
and the police were the ones who came and the story for them had a very happy
ending.

According to this link,
two of the kidnappers were detained when they were to Petare, in Caracas,
to take the ransom money. They were the ones that told the police the precise
location where the girls were kept. They belonged to the band of Alirio
Contreras, a Colombian with a kidnapping ring in all the Miranda state.

Now, about the dates. The report form La Voz says that the
girls were kidnapped on March the 3^rd and that they were liberated
on the march 10.

Interestingly,  a few
days later, La
Voz explains that  days after the
release of the three girls, the Police was searching the whole area to catch
the head of the kidnapers band, Alirio José Contreras.

Alirio Contreras was finally arrested in Petare on March the
15, according to El Universal.

After reading this story, I found the relationship with the
Faddoul case even more puzzling. When the Police was looking for Contreras,
didn’t they ask for hints about the Faddoul? 
Don’t forget that the Faddoul were in
the area all the days the girls were in captivity and afterwords when the
Police supposedly searched for Contreras.

 
Don’t forget either that the  Faddoul video was produced on
March 9 and handed to the family on March 12.

So here are the new corrected event dates (according to what
I could extract from the newspaper articles):

Feb 23, the Faddouls are kidnapped
March 3, the Blanco girls are kidnapped
March 9, the Faddoul video is produced
March 10, the Blanco girls are released
March 12, the Faddoul family received the video
March 10-15 the Tuy area is searched for Alirio Contreras
March 15 Alirio Contreras is arrested in Petare
April 4 The Faddouls are found dead
April 7 The case is almost solved.

Bad luck? Incompentence? Or convenient overlook by someone around
the whereabouts of the Faddoul brothers?

Reporting from Cyberspace

Jorge Arena
Devoted Ghost Blogger.
http://arenaspace.blogspot.com
http://chavezfortheun.blogspot.com

Just two days ago, I was writing about the absence of
President Chavez in moments of national commotion. I was amazed at the absence
of news about the killings in any of the official channels. I was surprised that
none of the Chavista heavy weights were out except the Justice Minister and the
Attorney General. The MINCI pages were for the first time in probably a year,
unadorned by ANY photo of Chavez (usually he is in ALL the pictures) and the ABN,
VTV and RNV were all very languid in their choice of topics.

The best that the Chavistas on call could come up with
during the few days that people went to the street in signs of protest, was to
shame the media for politicizing a sad event and mention here and there
that Colombians may be in the plot.

Then, all of the sudden, the wind changed. The new Minister
of information appears giving declarations about a new conspiracy theory. We
are saved! If there is a new conspiracy theory in town, we are in good hands,
we know that is business as usual. All of a sudden, President Chavez decides to
finally call the mother of the victims, after two days of absolute silence, and
tell her that the killers will soon be caught. The pained mother that the day before had
called a TV station declaring that she despised the government because of the
little attention they had put into the case, calls the program again and asks
the media not to politicize her suffering.

It follows that the MINCI publishes in its first page the mother’s
declaration so that EVERYBODY can conveniently read it in the most politicized
site that there is on the Venezuelan Internet . The article appears on the first
page just below
a huge face of a very calm and serious President Chavez occupying half page and
announcing, like a true statesman that they will not rest until all the guilty
are found. On the right, another article with
the Italian flag, that has not yet been changed by Berlusconi, where the
Italian government thanks effusively the Venezuelan government for having been
so efficient in the resolution of the Sindoni crime. Such a nice, very nice
piece of foreign gratitude was published alongside other news that recall that Venezuela
just signed an agreement with Italy to build a
network of trains.

Meanwhile, three suspects, all Venezuelans (didn’t they tell
us they had a Colombian accent?) are found. So quickly, in such an efficient
and dynamic manner that we all are I in awe at how quickly the Venezuelan
government is able to solve the case.

Then, I check VTV, Maduro is there again, in charge, just
finishing a technical workshop on, how convenient, Crime and
Violence. He was pretty busy because
a few days ago he was still in Cuba
with a parliamentarian Venezuelan delegation discussing parliamentary
discussions with the parliamentarians of the Cuban parliament. At that time, I
was amazed to learn that there was indeed a Cuban parliament, let alone that a
delegation had to go to Cuba
to learn anything from the parliament we did not know it existed.

I decide to see RNV. Here he is. A triumphant
Isaias Rodríguez saying the names of
the five suspects in the Faddoul case and announcing that they are also about
to solve the case of the killed photographer.

This ghost blogger keeps reading and is amazed at how
efficient this government really is. How
fortunate we Venezuelan are of having elected this group of dynamic and
competent people that can deal with the most difficult situations.

After finishing my official carrousel, I go to El Universal
and find a tiny note among tthose that are not considered important
news. It says that on March 12, the
Faddoul family had received a CD showing that their sons were alive. The video
shows an airport that looks like the one in
the Tuy Valley,
that is the area where the bodies were found. What is more amazing is that one
day before the kidnapping, three girls had been kidnapped in the same region
and were found alive six days afterwards. Moreover, it seems that the Faddoul
kids were never moved from the area and yet the area was never searched. I
figured the following dates:

The girls were kidnapped on February 22.

The kids were kidnapped on February 23.

The girl s were found on February 28

The video was sent on March 12

The kids were found dead on April 4.

The case is almost solved on April 7.

And this ghost blogger asks. Is it really possible that they
were so efficient at the end and so incompetent when it was really needed?

If the kidnapping had lasted a few days, I would understand
such an outcome: lack of time to find the people involved. But 40 days? In 40
days they either had the clue or they did not.

Reporting from Cyberspace,

Jorge Arena
Disgusted Ghost Blogger.

———————————————
Note.- I based the dates of the girls’ kidnapping using the information
reported by El Universal article. Further investigation shows that the
girls were kidnapped on March 3. Please refer to the following post for
the details. Jorge Arena.

So Chavez reappered tonight on the MINCI pages..just when I
had almost finished a post showing that for the first time in many months he
WAS NOT in the MINCI pages! Well that’s
the ghost blogger life. Some people get to swim among Polynesian sharks
and others have to rewrite their posts!

Chavez said that his
government will not rest until they find those guilty and mentioned that there
are those that are taking advantage of the situation to destabilize his
government.

Of course we still do not know what he was doing from the
moment the kid’s bodies were found until now. But we know that his government
has been busy trying to find some ways to put the blame of the righteous rage
that people were having due to the insecurity level of Venezuela’s
streets on the private media. As usual, Globovision was a
favorite target.

If Globovision didn’t exist, Chavez would surely invent it!

But the most cryptic and remarkable words of any government
official did not came from Chavez, but from the Minister of information
himself. Here is the link. Minister
William Lara said that he will propose to the Directive of Social
Responsibility to exhaustively examine the behavior of the media these days.

Lara then said that the government is considering the
Conspiracy theory. He said that there are indications that point towards a
plan, with transnational connections, against institutions and the People of
Venezuela.

Another hypothesis that Lara said is being thought of [I am
not making this up, it is in the MINCI article, I swear!] is to determine wether it is by pure chance that
two of the largest foreign communities in Venezuela,
the Italian and the Arab community, were the targets [of the Sindoni and
Faddoul cases]. Lara said that they do not do “little politics” and that, therefore,
he cannot make affirmations without proof but he makes assurances that when the government
will have conclusive evidences, they will be communicated to the Nation.

He then talked about the favorite Chavista theme, the events
of April 2002. And he finished saying that his government has a commitment with
the Truth.

So, this curious ghost blogger is wondering about the
Italian-Arab community Conspiracy theory. What did Lara exactly mean? That
because they are the largest, they have more probabibility of being hit? In
that case, the Spaniards and Portuguese should be careful. I have not checked the
migration statistics, but I think that they are larger communities. Is there
anything else that he would mean with his words?

Sad, remember when we all used to be just Venezuelans?
Since the Chavistas came to power, all of a sudden we have rich and poors,
blacks, white and zambos and now we even have Communities..

And this humble ghost blogger asks. Why don’t they just
accept that personal security in Venezuela
is a huge mess and that they cannot control their own police? Why don’t they
realize that their failure in solving the poverty problems, modernize the
justice system and reform the jails has to do with this?

Why don’t they realize that they should be busy solving
those problems instead of persecuting the very dangerous Maria Corina Machado?

Why don’t they have the humility of accepting their
responsibility?

I guess that is too much to ask.

Reporting from Cyberspace

Jorge Arena
Humble Ghost Blogger

In February 2005, during the second state of emergency due
to floods in the State of Vargas,
I was amazed at the absence of President Chavez. I wrote a post at the time
which title is “A
New Venezuelan Game: Where is Chavez?”. In that post, I recalled the
absence of President Chavez during the tragedy of the first Vargas emergency.

This seems to be a pattern: every time the country needs the
figure of a strong figure to show that they are in control, to help the
collective moral of the Venezuelan people, Chavez disappears.

In this moments in which the whole Venezuela,
Chavistas and non-Chavistas are in a state of shock because of the brutal murders
and kidnappings of the Faddoul brothers, Miguel Rivas and now Jorge Aguirre, the
commander in chief is nowhere to be seen.

This is the guy that uses 6 hours every Sunday of TV time to
say anything that comes to his mind. This is the guy that every other day asks
for a “cadena” to make silly announcements or to use the attention of the world
to insult his political foes. This is the guy that wants to be president for
life.

At first, I thought that I had probably overlooked a Chavez
declaration about the case. I searched my usual governmental sources and could
not find anything about Chavez.

Finally, I found this note
in El Universal this morning. It says that the executive repudiated the
assassination of the Faddoul brothers and of Miguel Rivas…it was the Minister
of labor, Ricardo Dorado, that declared
to the press! Did you guys know that Venezuela’s
minister of labor was named Ricardo Dorado? I did not.

Where are the heavy weights of the government in this
moments of profound sadness and collective crisis?

Where are the Rangels and the Maduros that are always so
quick in declaring when it is time to insult political dissidents?

But first and foremost, where is the President ?

Where is Chavez?
Jorge Arena

Puzzled Ghost Blogger.

Update.-10h30 a.m. The mother of the three kids gave an interview
this morning denying that she had attempted suicide. She is a devoted
catholic. She had very harsh words for the goverment and in particular
for President Chavez. She literally said “when he is overlooking and
not giving importance to the torture and killing of four people, of
which one was a handicapped kid, I, Gladys Diab declare, I despise him. I do not hate
him. For me this and other cases of apathy of the law of God will be
the begining of the end, that will route Venezuela towards the Divine
light of peace and Justice”

When Jorge Aguirre took his camera this morning to cover for
the spontaneous protests that were taken place in Caracas
for the deaths of the Faddoul brothers, he probably never imagined that that afternoon
his camera would contain the last picture of his life: the picture of his
killer.

According to the journalists that were with him, Jorge
Aguirre, a photographer for El Mundo, was shot by someone that was dressed like
a policeman (see here)
when he was in the car that was taking him and his peers to report one of the
protests.

In fact, this morning, people took to the streets and closed
some major arteries in Caracas to
protest for the Faddoul assassination and for the state of insecurity that
Venezuelans are living day in and day out (see
here).

In the evening, several vigils were announced all over Venezuela.

Meanwhile, Isaias Rodríguez said that they had a lot of
leads and that there is no connection whatsoever between the Sindoni case and
the Faddoul case. He criticized the sectors that are protesting to politicize the
case (see the MINCI news here). In other
words, protest in solidarity but do not protest if you find that the personal
security problem in Venezuela
is huge and you blame the government for the state of affairs.

The chief of the technical police that was in charge of
dealing with the kidnappers said that the investigation was not a failure but
what happened was a “desperation” from the kidnappers…

Rodriguez also said that the government had been in touch
with the kidnappers and from the accent they sounded Colombians. This was
repeated later by Minister
Chacon.This of course, is always convenient: blame the Colombians. I am not
saying that the assassins are not Colombians, they might very well be, but I
find it very particular that this would be the first tip that government
officials would give on this investigation.

You see, Venezuelan people have traditionally blamed the
Colombians for all their security problems. I do not know if that is true or
not, but it is accepted as a fact by many Venezuelans. So this is an easy way for any government
to get rid of its responsibility: find a
likely scapegoat and put the blame on him. The poverty, the corruption, the
state of the judicial and jail system, the drug dealing and the money
laundering, the government ineptitude and the state of hate that Chavez has
fostered over the years…nothing is the fault of the government. Just find the
appropriate Colombian and people will forget about the fact that they are
living in a state of siege led by an incompetent government.

In the meanwhile, other governmental entities have been busy
promoting their solution to the problem: more and different Police forces. As I
mentioned this morning, the mayor of Caracas,
Juan Barreto, even published today an
add in El Nacional to praise the neighboring police. Again, here is the add.

Barreto’s add says that with the People’s organization,
personal security advances. It says that in Caracas,
the fight against crime advances despite those that do not believe in the
People’s organizations. It is said that
with the Community Assemblies several security networks have been built: the
Security tables, the Neighbouring Police, the Motorized Police, the Tourist Police
and the Family Police to oversee the problems in Schools, Hospitals and inside
the Families.

More than 3600 neighbours have been trained and armed to be part of these new
neighbouring forces.

Today, Barreto, like
Rodriguez, also asked not to use the
pain and the death as a political flag (but wasn’t him the one that ordered the
add in today’s El Nacional?). He also
announced the Militarization of the current Metropolitan Police by creating the
“Mayor State of Citizen’s Protection” composed of 11 military members that will
be named by…the minister of the Defense and Chavez himself.

On the other hand, Barreto’s collegue, Freddy Bernal, asked
that the law for the creation of a National Police be passed as soon as possible.

So this ghost blogger, after having read and analyzed all
the facts, came to the conclusion that there are too many Policemen and too many Police forces in this story.

First the Sindoni case, next the Faddoul killing, then Jorge
Aguirre’s killing…in all there seems to be policemen involved. It is like the
Police forces have gone totally out of control or someone is really interested
in having Police officers portrayed as kidnappers and killers.

And, of course the solution of the Chavista government is,
as usual, instead of fixing what is already there, weaken what we have and
build new entities where they can control everything. What they are putting in
place is really scary: at your local level, a neighbouring police, a family police, a
tourist police….and on top of everything, a National Police directly controlled
by Chavez..and on the existing local Police forces, military men, also controlled
by Chavez.

I do not know about you, but I am REALLY feeling that there
are too many Police stories in this story

Jorge Arena

Worried and skeptical ghost blogger.

This is one of the saddest posts I have ever written

El Nacional reports that four bodies believed to be those of
the Faddoul brothers were found in the town of Yare
today. Two of the bodies had the T-shirt of the school attended by the brothers…in
later news it has been confirmed that it is indeed the
Faddoul brother’s bodies.

The three Venezuelan-Canadian
kids, ages 12, 13 and 17, were kidnapped with their driver when they were
taken to school on February 23. According to witnesses, the car with the kids
was stopped and then escorted by several
police officers in motorcycle. The 13 year old was said to have a physical
disability. A ransom of 4.5 million
dollars was asked for the release of the kids. The Government of Canada had
contacted and pressured the Venezuelan
government about the case, but said that had received minimal information.

This crime reminds me of last week abduction and immediate
killing of Venezuelan-Italian businessman Filippo Sindoni, the successful
owner of a pasta empire, a TV station and a newspaper. In this case, the car carrying
Sindoni was also stopped by what looked
like Police officers.

So Chacon just said that he hopes that this case is not
given a political bias. But, what is going on, Minister Chacon? How can you
explain those kidnappings? It looks like too many police officers involved in
those cases…and what have you been doing about the personal safety of
Venezuelans all these years? Why so many
kidnappings and killings?

I would also like to get Vice
President José Vicente Rangel’s version for those cases .

This is not a film to “falsify the truth” Mr. Vice
President (1), these horrible kidnapping and killings are for real. This is the
true state of affairs in Venezuela,
where there is no personal safety and where the justice and police system seem
to be in place just to persecute the government political opponents, but not to
protect its citizens.

Jorge Arena

(1) Referring to JVR comments about the film “Secuestro Express”.
—————————————————————————————
Update note.- Daniel also wrote about the story here
and showed a n image that appeared TODAY in El Nacional. A propaganda
by mayor Juan Barreto to justify the creation of a sort of armed
neighbouring seceurity forces, which in my view further pursues
the  militarization of the civil society. Was it bad timing or
Barreto was purposedly exploiting the death
of the Faddoul brothers to promote this new type of popular brigades?
Note that the bodies were found before 4 o’clock yesterday afternoon. Here is the link to the infamous add.

As if we did not know he is an autocrat, Hugo Chavez said this Sunday
that he suspected the opposition would not field a candidate in the
December Presidential elections. If that was the case, he said, and
then he will propose a change to the Constitution to allow for his
indefinite reelection.

This was spoken like a true autocrat with
no belief in democracy, rather than promotes more democracy, let’s have
less! Why not count all the ballots, have a balanced CNE or make the
electoral system more transparent. Nah!

But what is even worse
is that he is saying he will be President for life, as none of his
followers can even aspire to become President. After all, there are no
primaries to select him and he has no plans for any, ever.

This
is nothing new, but it amazes me that statements like these do not
bother those that claim Hugo Chavez is a democrat. The aim of term
limits is to provide more democracy, not less. To prevent someone from
grabbing so much power that it is impossible to remove. To stop someone
form perpetuating him or herself in the position a la Castro or his
imitator, Hugo Chavez.

Reading the comments session (thanks Deanna) I realized
there was this article on President Chavez. Here is the link.
Read it and tell the National Geographic what do you think.

The complete url below, just in case:
http://seabed.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/forum2.tmpl?issue_id=20060401&forum_index=2