The Devil's Excrement

How many time can I say it: Weil is a genius!

They may say that Rosales is moving up in the polls, but I have my reserves

Even if you don’t speak Spanish, this video of an interview of the pro-Chavez Governor of Carabobo state proves that there is more than one clown in this Government of fools.

One of the
ironies of the current Presidential campaign is that while Chavez became President
by visiting every barrio, town and city in the country and being in touch with
the concerns and worries of the people, he has so far campaigned only by
holding rallies, where he is carefully protected from any contact with the
people.

Meanwhile,
Manuel Rosales’ campaign is exactly the opposite. Everyday Rosales visits numerous
barrios, concentrating his campaign on attracting those whose support for Chavez
has become lukewarm to cold in the most popular barrios of the country.

Rosales
has now been attacked a few times by pro-Chavez groups, some of which have
gathered hours ahead of Rosales’ scheduled stops, to attempt to block his path.
While these thugs are threatening, Rosales has refused to stop his visits and continues
his daily visits to these areas.

The day
before yesterday Vice-President Rangel, representing
the absentee President in his nth. trip in 2006, said that the attacks on
Rosales are simply a reflection of the rejection by the people of his candidacy
and that Rosales should simply go “at his own risk” into those areas.

There are
quite a number of conclusions that can be derived from this statement by the
Vice-President:

–First of
all, this is an irresponsible and inefficient Government incapable of providing
security for its own citizens, as demonstrated not only by crime statistics, but
by the fact that it can not even provide the necessary security for people to
go out campaigning in the exercise rights guaranteed by the Constitution.

–Second,
the Government assumes no responsibility if anything were to happen to the
unity candidate of the opposition, saying he is provoking the people and if he
does go in the barrios, he does at his own risk

–Third,
Rangel is indirectly authorizing the aggression of a leading politician in the
country, just because he is daring to go and campaign in what apparently Rangel
believes is his own turf as if 100% of the people supported Chavez. To me, this
is simply an attempt at intimidation.

Obviously,
Rangel fails to see a number of ironies in all this. Yes, Rosales has been
attacked a few times, but he continues doing this day after day, attracting
large and festive crowds and in some cases, protected not only by the police
but by but Rosales’ own supporters in the barrios. Listening to the problems
the people have, talking to them, being with them.

But the
biggest irony of all this, is that Chavez does not dare campaign openly in any
barrio or even city. It is not only his intense paranoia which stops him from
doing so, but the fact that he can not tolerate the criticism, complaints and
protests that have met him when going into facilities or stages to hold
rallies. In fact, only last week, two ladies started heckling him and kept
complaining at the President during one of his staged indoor “events” and
Chavez asked them to quiet down and said that his party needed unity and not
“washing the clothes in public for everyone to see”. This from the man who
eight years ago loved crowds and went to sports and artistic events so that he
could receive the daily dose of adoration from his supporters.

He can no
longer do that and even if he did, his intolerance to dissent and discussion,
would simply make him look very bad, with his outrageous outburst and his
unhappy expressions.

That is
why Chavez prefers to campaign in Beijing,
Harlem, Buenos Aires or New York and enjoy the comforts and pleasures
of international travel, reading Chomsky and Sartre and meeting his heroes. he loves signing
agreements that nobody will ever complain to him were never completed or
fulfilled and dreaming of becoming the leader of the Third World, while failing
to fulfill his most basic campaign promises to the people of this small
country, despite the biggest oil windfall Venezuela has ever seen.

Funny how
it is the Democrats that are coming out and defending Bush from Chavez’ insults
yesterday at the UN General Assembly. Despite Chavez saying he got along really
well with Bill Clinton, today Clinton blasted him
saying:

“I think Chavez would be much more effective if he would say
something that’s true…You know, to me, that would be a much cleverer thing
for him to do, where he’d really be doing something good, and he could say, ‘I
disagree with President Bush,’ instead of calling him the devil.”

While Democrats like Charles Rangel was quite harsh saying:

“You do not come into my country, my
congressional district, and you do not condemn my president. If there is any
criticism of President Bush, it should be restricted to Americans, whether they
voted for him or not. I just want to make it abundantly clear to Hugo Chavez or
any other president, do not come to the United States and think because we have
problems with our president that any foreigner can come to our country and not
think that Americans do not feel offended when you offend our Chief of State”

While
House minority leader Nancy Pelosi said:

“He
fancies himself as a modern day Simon Bolivar, but all he is an everyday
thug…Hugo Chavez abused the privilege that he had, speaking at the United
Nations,” said Pelosi, a frequent Bush critic.”He demeaned himself and he
demeaned Venezuela.”

EU representatives were not too happy either, calling Chavez’s statements “undignified”

Meanwhile,
while Chavez gave Chomsky’s book Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global
Dominance,” a big boost in sales, Foxnews is reporting live that Chavez
also killed the MIT linguist, saying he would have liked to have met him before
he died. Chomsky is alive and well and it sounds like Chavez had not read the
book until last week and knew little about him.

I guess Chavez’ speech
writers must be the same ones who write the speeches for Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, who said three days ago in Caracas when referring to Simon Bolivar:”
He was assassinated by the enemies of the revolution”, indicating that the
bacteria Mycobacterium tuberculosis,
which killed the Liberator was somehow against his movement. This is revionisim
at its best.

Finally,
pro-Chavez news sources like the Agencia
Bolivariana de Noticias have said very little locally about Chavez’ insults
against the US
President and the outcry they have caused. Chavez repeated the word devil today in referring to Bush, but added alcoholic to the repertoire, simply refuting the position by those tried to aplogize for Chavez today, saying he did not mean what he said yesterday at the UN, “but was simply caught in the excitement of the moment”. Yeah, sure!

If you wnat to know what Rosales is doing, where he is and what the average Venezuelan says and thinks, stop a minute by Alek Boyd’s page and read his daily posts on Rosales’ campaign. Just think, doing this is a privilege that a pro-Chavez supporter could not do, as he would either be travelling outside the country bwith Cahvez or staying cooped up at the Presidential Palace, but seldom out in the real world.

Funny
how Chavez’ stunt at the United Nations led so much traffic to my blog.
You see, if you combine the words Chavez and Devil in any decent search
engine, guess who is right at the top with many entries? Thus, I had a
Devilanche of visitors as people tried to read more about what Chavez
was saying about the leader of the country that buys the most oil from
Venezela in the world. Fortunately I had made a post of the subject
from work, which I rarely do, so that those arriving here could
actually read about what happened.

As usual, and as expected,
we got our share of PSF’s and superficial Chavez admirers, who came to
tell us what a great guy he is for daring to tell it like it is.As if
disliking Bush is enough of a reason for liking our autocratic
President. Well, I will tell them what it is like here: While Chavez
was talking about peace and the rights of people, he continues to
neglect his own country where, since Chavez took over in 1998, 90,000
people have died on homicides as murders have tripled in these eight
years Chavez has been President. To put it in perspective this is more
deaths under the “caring Chavez” than in the armed conflict in Colombia
(73,000), The Persian Gulf War (63500), the Chchen war (50,000) or the
war in Afghanistan (33,000).And those who die come from the lowest
social strata, the “pueblo” that Chavze claims to care so much for.
Meanwhile, 44 Venezulans die daily in homicides as Venzuela has 40
violent deaths per 100,000 inhabitants per year, an achievement that
can be blamed completely on the Chavez Government which has tripled the
numbers in eight years by ignoring the problem as well as its total
incapacity to attack it.Venezuela now has the dubious honor of being
the number one country in the world in deaths by firearms according to
UNESCO.

Meanwhile, the country’s judicial system, the
cornerstone of Chavez accomplishments in the first three years in
office can claim the following:

–90,000 monthly crime complaints are filed and processed.
–There are 98 cops per 100,000 people, less than one third of what is needed.
–Prosecutors handle 3,000 cases monthly each
–Judges decide on 1.6 complaints per hour
–93% of homicides go unpunished.
–Deaths by confrontation with police have increased by a factor of 5.
–Kidnappings have doubled in eight years.
–Over half the judges are temporary.

Thus,
our “caring”, “daring” President spends his time abroad insulting
others and accusing them of the same crimes he is responsible for in
Venezuela: His total neglect for his people as he travels and has
become an absentee President, who in the end cares only about his
personal project and not the “peace”, “rights” or welfare of his
Venezuelans citizens. Hopefully, he will spend sometime here in the
next few months and leave his US$ 83 million Airbus parked, stop buying
more weapons, planes and helicopters and worry about and work for his
own people. But I doubt it.

The rest is simply a charade. But
that is all we have seen for the last eight years. Ask what Vargas
state is, what happened there in 2000 and what conditions are like
today. Ask what inflation has been in the last eight months or in the
last eight years. Ask what corruption is like at the highest levels of
power. Ask how many corrupt politicians have been prosecuted. Ask what
the fascist Chavez/Maisanta/Tascon list is. Ask who pays Chavez’
campaign. Ask what the gag law is. Ask if the same person is the
Minister of Information and spokesman for Chavez political party. Ask
how many people have died in opposition rallies in the last eight
years. Ask how many political prisoners there are. Ask who the El
Llaguno shooters are and why they are free. Ask if Chavez’ relatives
owned so much land before he became President. Ask what has happened to
the thousands of hectares of expropriated land. Ask how many military
are part of the civilian Government. Ask how many fascist dictators
Chavez has visited and embraced in the last eight years. Ask what
happened to the 2.4 billionUS  dollars missing from the FIEM fund.
There are hundreds of questions like this you can ask and the answers are
all absolutely terrifying and horrifying.

Just don’t believe the charade.

         
(Thanks Mora and Gabo for pics)
Chavez at the UN today:

The Devil is at home, the Devil himself is at home, the devil came here
yesterday, the devil was here at this same place, here in the same place
it still smells like sulfur, this table where it is my turn to talk
from, yesterday ladies and gentleman, from this same tribune the
President of the US, who I call the Devil, came to talk as if he was the
owner of the world, a psychiatrist would be necessary to analyze the
speech of the President of the US, as spokesman of imperialism he came
to give us his recipes to maintain the current scheme of domination, of
exploitation and of looting the people of the world.

You can watch it here or here(Thanks Pedro), in English partially here. US Ambassador to Venezuela says calling someone a Devil is something for churches to do, not for Governments. State Department rejects personal attacks.

I guess after the two speeches, the stink must be unbearable.

My friend, physicist Claudio Mendoza wrote an article in El Nacional last Wednesday, entitled “Critical mass”, in which in a very pedagogical fashion and linking it to the play Copenhagen, currently being shown in Caracas, Claudio, who won the Polar Science award a few years ago, describes what critical mass is, how the German nuclear project failed to see that using an isotope of Uranium would make a bomb possible and how the bomb was made to work. He also describes how the number of centrifuges a country uses can give indications if it is embarking on a plan to make a bomb or not. I note that Claudio just signed the article as Claudio Mendoza, without indicating where he works.

In closing, Claudio, who has a fine sense of humor and irony says, adding a peaceful tone:

“Do we really want to survive? We are terrified at the intransigence of countries who decidedly want to sneak in (into the Nuclear Club): North Korea, Iran and now our dear Venezuela. But in our case there is something that gives us some sense of tranquility: the revolutionary scorn for experts. Here we build bridges without engineers, we make diagnoses without doctors, refine oil without oil engineers, we educate without being teachers, and we govern without being statesmen.

Will we then exploit nuclear energy obviating physicists”

To everyone’s surprise, on Sunday, a paid ad (“communique” in local official speak) appeared in a newspaper different than the one in which Claudio’s opinion piece appeared, signed by the Board of Directors of Venezuela’s premier scientific institution IVIC, which thanks to the strange technology used by some local papers to publish their internet editions, you can read in Spanish here, and says:

“The Board of Directors of IVIC, upon learning about the opinion article published in El Nacional on September 13^th. 2006, page A8, under the title “Critical Mass”, signed by citizen Claudio Mendoza, considers it opportune to express its concerns for the concepts contained in it and points out the following:

–In the article, statements are made in relation with nuclear activities in the country that supposedly could be being carried out in the country that have no foundation on proven facts.

–The person signing the article is a researcher at the Physics Department of IVIC and as such he should know that to give an opinion on topics as delicate as the use of nuclear energy, he should have the specialized knowledge on the matter. Especially in fulfilling the fundamentals of professional ethics as to not affirming things that have no support on facts.

–We need to emphasize that according to Article 28, section 2 of the Law that created IVIC, acting in this way could affect the institutional credibility and interest of IVIC, since within it peaceful uses of nuclear energy are developed through the Nuclear Technology Department, the PEGAMMA plant, Sanitary Radio physics, nuclear engineering and calibration and dosimetry, ion which highly qualified and specialized personnel works on nuclear matters and its peaceful applications, besides IVIC having a Commission of Nuclear Safety.

–Similarly, we must note that this way of acting on the part of the person signing the article, not only questions the institution where he works, but also the country, since it attempt to make it seem as if our Nation is involved in activities that could entail great damages to the security of the State, which we find unacceptable as a way of behaving.

Thus, because of the above, we make it known to public opinion; our total rejection for the unfounded and irresponsible statements made y that researcher of IVIC.”

Jeez, where do I start to laugh at this overreaction by a bunch of humorless bureaucrats of this silly revolution

—Aren’t they the same ones that prohibited a researcher from talking to the press about her conclusions on increased levels of anemia in young children in the northern states of the plains?

—Aren’t they the same ones who collaborated with the infamous audit of the Electoral Registry by including Anthropologists, Sociologists and low level people from the Physics Department with no relevant acadmic connection to the problem, but bypassed the Math department? What were their “ethical” reasons for this and what “specialized” knowledge or academic qualifications did this people have over the Statisticians from the Math Department, if any at all? Wouldn’t “ethics” have indicated not participating in the audit, instead of sending a team that simply followed and supported the ideology of the regime?

—-Why attempt to disqualify Dr. Mendoza, who has a Ph.D. in Physics while exalting the qualifications of the personnel of the Nuclear Departments, none of which even have a Ph.D. or any academic recognition in their fields?

—-Isn’t the paid communiqué, besides being a waste of money, an attempt to intimidate Claudio Mendoza and others within the IVIC community who may dare speak publicly against the Government or official scientific policy (If any)?

—–Are these guys so arrogant to think that the Government would actually tell them what Chavez’; nuclear plans are? Thie loyalty does not guarantee reciprocity on Chavez’ part. Do they really belive they know everything that happens in science and technology or will be privy to it?

—–Finally, I can’t help but see and overreaction in the communiqué, which indicates to me that maybe there is more to the whole thing that even Claudio knows or suggests. In fact, I ahve yet to hear these lackeys of the autocrat complain when our illustrious President has already involved our country with “activities” that represent a danger to our Nation, be it its relationship with the FARC, Syria, Saddam Hussein or the hero’s welcome and outright support to the President of Iran or the way he has divided Venezuelans into two camps as if there were a religious war?

Who do they think they are kidding?

Why the thin skin?

As the spanish saying goes “El que se pica es porque aji come” (If it burns, maybe you are eating hot peppers or in Latin, stolen from the comments:Excusatio non petita, acusatio manifesta.)

The
biggest economic problem confronting the Chavez administration today is inflation. Four months
of hyperinflation in the Food and Beverages category, reaching 19.9% between May
and August should be enough to have the Government call for emergency Cabinet
meetings to attack the problem. But it has not happened.

Instead,
we have gotten a slew of wishy washy statements by various Government officials, as our tropical Marco Polo travels abroad doing what he likes best: Avoid the local problems he can
not tackle and promote his intrenational image.

It is
clear that the inflation problem is easy to understand; the financial system has
been flooded by money as the Government has increased spending dramatically in
the face of the December elections. So, the solution is simple: reduce
liquidity.

There are a numbers of ways of accomplishing this:

–Have the
Central Bank absorb liquidity. This would help, unfortunately, it has already
been done so much, that the Central Bank is losing money and can not afford to do increase it

–Spend
less: the Government has clearly stated it refuses to do that. Are you kidding me? Chavez is very good at announcing, not doing.

–Have
CADIVI approve everything that is submitted to it; It is already doing so,
imports will be close to US$ 30 billion for the year. Local  industry is getting killed.

–Increase
interest rates so that people are encouraged to save. The problem is that they would
have to increase it so much in order to make it attractive, since interest
rates are deeply negative.

–Remove
exchange controls. Sure, as if this Government is ready to give up such a
political and powerful tool.

–Issue
dollar denominated bonds in exchange for local currency, much like the Government has done in
the last two or three years. This would be the easiest way to absorb liquidity.
Despite this, the Government has been talking about doing it, but postponing it for no reason. As the problem gets worse, it announces it may do barely US$ 500 million by
mid-October. What gives? Aren’t they interested in reducing inflation? How can
they not do this, given that it is so simple, sell a bond for Bolivars, remove those
Bolivars from the system, presto, easy economic recipe!

Not so
fast. As the Spanish saying goes: “Piensa mal y acertaras!” (Think badly and you
will be right on target!)

You see,
if the Government were to issue a large bond, say two billion, in US$ and sell it to the
public and institutions at large, it would have to do it in a more transparent
way and would be competing with the sale of Argentinean bonds that is done
weekly by Fonden, which has no transparency and is enriching a number of people beyond
their wildest dreams.

You see,
these sales are done with total discretion and no transparency by the financial
authorities as to who gets the bonds and at what price. Apparently, it mostly
goes to “friends” of the administration who reportedly have to pay someone for
each dollar assigned to them. Every week a few hundred million dollars are assigned
this way to friendly institutions, without any transparency. Imagine someone
making a profit of say only Bs.100 per dollar. Multiply by one hundred million
a week.

Get the picture?
If a huge two billion dollar issue were sold publicly, not only would it not go
to the friends, but it would seriously compete with the weekly sale of these
Argentinean bonds and its corresponding “profits”. It would just kill the goose
that is laying the golden eggs. Thus, no bond issue has been placed in the market
despite many announcements to that effect in the last few months.  

Maybe
those involved are worried about the outcome of the December elections, maybe they are not,
but just in case, it would not hurt to make a few more million dollars, before
the “you know what” hits the fan. Inflation? Chavez’ popularity? The people?

They could
just care less.

You see,
when these bonds are sold, no liquidity is removed from the financial system,
Fonden simply exchanges its dollars for the Bolivars to spend in its projects. The
Boliars stay in the system. So the mechanism competes with “their” market, but
it does not have the desired objective in terms of the Government. It has no effect on inflation

Such is
the way of the pretty robolution…