The Devil's Excrement

The recent
tale of IVIC,
persecuting
Physicist Claudio Mendoza for writing an opinion article under his own name
and using his right to free speech, contrasts with another case, which Chavez
and his Government turned into a free speech issue, but was simply an academic
issue.

In 2002,
Felipe Perez (who later became Minister of Planning) was under contract at
IESA, Venezuela’s
premier business school. The way I remember it, he had been in a tenure track
position, but failed to have even close to an adequate level of productivity
while a Professor at IESA for three years. Thus, his contract was not renewed and
he was given a temporary contract until he found a job. Right about that time,
Perez made some statements to the effect that the Government should nationalize
the banking system or something like that and Perez’ contract was not renewed when
it came due.

The
Government made a big issue of this. It used all of its influence on the Board
of IESA, where the Government holds quite a number of positions and eventually
led to the resignations of a number of important figures at IESA, including its
President and the Dean of the Graduate School who felt the Government was
intervening on academic matters and they would not compromise their academic
integrity over the issue.

The
Government simply turned the whole thing into a freedom of speech issue, which
it was not, in contrast to Claudio Mendoza’s case, which it certainly is. The
whole thing was so ridiculous that Chavez in his Sunday Alo Presidente program
actually talked about it and here is what
he said:

“On
November 15^th. this economist made statements making a series of
criticisms about certain private sectors calling them to reflect, specially the
banking system. And I salute my friends the bankers, but we continue to call on
them. I join the call that Felipe Perez is making and IESA can not kick me out”.
Chavez criticized the decision against Perez and congratulated him saying he
wanted to talk to him personally. “I think we have to reivindicate people, I
think it is an abuse of IESA, where they speak of freedom to be critical, and
we should welcome it, but this a call to reflect on it.

As I said,
because Perez was pro-Chavez, IESA was pressured and forced into hiring him
back, forcing the resignation of many of that institutions authorities.

You can be
sure, that if anything, Chavez will celebrate Claudio’s firing from IVIC since I have
information that it was Chavez himself that was behind the letter Dr. Mendoza received.

That is
what cynicism and freedom of speech mean in the stupid revolution.

This is Venezuela’s Ambassador to the UN today, calling Hugo Chavez “a sick man” “a bandit” and “an assasin” four years ago on April 12, 2002

Today he says with the same outrage, that Bush is calling President’s to vote for Guatemala. Well, Chavez visited some of these same Presidents and offered them presents, contracts and gifts. Essentially, he tried to buy them out, Al Capone style. This guy simply shows that this revolution has the moral consistency of tapioca. He was one of the four leaders of the 1992 coup and was the man who ran against Chavez for President in 2000. He had been trying to get a position back with Chavez since 2002 and held a job with Caldera from 1995 to 1998. What a jerk! What a disgrace!

So, after
ten rounds, Guatemala pulled
ahead of Venezuela
once again in the vote to occupy a seat in the UN Security Council. Supposedly
in the complex language of diplomacy, these ups and down are part of a birds of
paradise mating ritual in which the loser is being told to get out of the way,
even if we still may like you. But even if former Foreign Minister Roy
Chaderton should have the experience to understand such language, his mind has
by now been embedded for too long in the empty desert of Chavista rhetoric and
ideas, which are quite capable of erasing any signs of intelligence for the
sheer absurdity of it all.

Unfortunately
or fortunately for Venezuela,
all the largesse, all the generosity, all the waste and all the promises, does
not appear to have been enough. The Security Council Elections are not
organized by a partial electoral Board, a
la CNE, which makes up rules or changes them as the process moves along. There
are no fingerprint machines at the UN and the vote is so secret that the
corresponding nations have no idea as to whether their Ambassador is voting for
their choice. It is just a matter of trust.

Thus, Guatemala, a country with few embassies in Asia
or Africa, which does not even recognize China
as the true representative of the Chinese people, a poor country, managed to
stay ahead of Venezuela,
a country that has offered favors, contracts, aid and bribes to anyone that would
pay attention. And the silly revolutionaries believed the promises and were
sure they would top one hundred votes in the first round, a number not reached by
far in any of the ten rounds today. Venezuela used to get more votes
doing nothing!

But you
could tell the whole plan was in trouble when even those that have tried to
back the autocrat, found no alternative but to pull out. Madame Bachelet in Chile said only a few weeks ago that it was “natural”
for her country to vote for Venezuela;
until Venezuelan built military bases in Bolivia would have made it
supernatural for that vote to stay the course. And all signs are that her hear
was with the revolution, but realpolitik won.

And even the
naie and sometime silly, Spanish Primer Minister Zapatero, had no recourse but
to back out of supporting Chavez, and surprising everyone by
announcing that country’s vote for Guatemala. Not that Zapatero is
pro-US as his recent snub
of the US flag shows, but it is difficult to defend Chavez’ democratic credentials
by now. You see, setting aside recent sulphuric and somewhat satanic performances
at the recent UN meeting, Chavez’ Government has simply refused to recognize the
elections in Peru and Mexico, establishing
a new and spurious criteria of only accepting the elections of his friends and buddies. A
peculiar form of democracy and democratic ideals indeed.

Thus, the
world is slowly watching and discovering what Venezuelans have known all long
and has been the subject of this blog for four years. This Government knows how
to buy democracy, but not how to practice it. Witness this weekends rushed
inauguration
of the Caracas-Tuy train system. A train that stops nowhere, except at the endpoints,
because the other stations are simply not ready. A train that will only
function a few hours in the morning and the same in the afternoon, because not
even the personnel is trained yet. But it had to be readied for electoral
purposes.

Oh yes! The
train is free! But not for the reason you are thinking with your dirty mind. It is not populism. It is free for the simple reason that the token/ticketing system is
not ready yet, it has not been finished. A country that managed to install the most complex, efficient,
intimidating and useless fingerprint electoral system in the world in only six
weeks in 2004, is incapable of doing the same thing for a simple pay-and-spit-the-token-system
for the trains. It is just a matter of priorities and devious attention to the
right problem. Politics always rules. It just sounds neat to make it free, to
the jealousy of most of Venezuela
who could care less about that train.

And we
come down to the subject of accountability. Will the Venezuelan people make the
Government pay for it? How much did this experiment in making the Lieutenant
grandiose cost us? How many promises? How much was promised? How much was paid? Of course, we will never know who reneged on their promises.

What was
clear is that we as a country have lost many, many friends in the last few weeks. Hopefully,
the Lieutenant will lose an equal fraction of intended votes between now and
Dec. 3d. He deserves it.

–And some
more lies or at least inconsistencies proving once again that the verbal
incontinence among revolutionaries does create some problems. First, we heard
from the Venezuelan side that there will be 20 military bases built and
financed by Venezuelans along the Bolivian border. This was immediately denied by the
Bolivian Foreign Minister, who said that only two facilities would be built.
But then today, none other than Bolivia’s
Army Commander says the plan is to build ten border “modules”. So,
they can’t even agree on the numbers, let alone on what they are building. I
guess the term “asymmetric” war must have something to do with this.

–And today Chavez in his exuberance over
inaugurating a train, that is not ready, was planned before Chavez, has no
stations other than the first and the last which have been completed, offered
to build a train that would connect the Mercosur countries. I guess it will run
with the apparently forgotten “Pipeline of the South” for which Venezuela
has failed to show up at the last two meetings or the now infamous TV station
Telesur, which Venezuela created, financed and I guess will shut down when the people
that run it, its only viewers to date, stop watching it.

–And why
did a Central Bank Director say that Venezuela was producing only 2.6
million barrels of oil a day. Could there be another lie in there? But we knew this one!

–Oh yeah!
And Chavez invited
to end the “corrupt state”. What has he done in eight years? Has he looked
around? His family? His Cabinet? Who is he going to call? Ghostbusters?

–And as
usual, the Government simply
rejects another Human Rights report. Somehow they are always biased, but
things are beautiful in the Bolivarian
Republic of Venezuela. Ask for example, the
gold miners…

–And how
about this report by Economist Orlando Ochoa in Reporte Diario de la Economia: “Venezuelan
banks lend related companies Bolivars to buy dollars…official deposits are paid
2% to attract them to private commercial banks…Argentinean bonds are assigned
via obscure communications from the Ministry of Finance…the open impunity is an
incentive to financial corruption and a few members of the
revolutionary-socialist hierarchy are complacent with the local bankers”

–And
tonight, the Governor of Tachira state proceeded to expropriate
some houses. Unfortunately for him, the President’s relative Lieutenant Ramon
Chavez was one of those affected. He threatened to call his relative. How long
will it be before his home is returned? Make your bets!

And continuing
on the subject of official Government lies, two articles in El Universal this
week by reporter Gustavo Mendez, told the public what the blogosphere has known for quite a
while: UNESCO never certified that Venezuela is free of illiteracy. This
has been a huge
lie, President Chavez and his Minister of Education Aristobulo Isturiz have not only
made the claim publicly, but a huge banner with the claim was plastered
over the Ministrys building for months.

Mendez has
clearly been very thorough in his research of the issue. In the first
article on Friday, Mendez shows how according to UNESCO’s own statistics
for 2005, 7% of Venezuelans were till illiterate. Thus, despite all of the
noise about Mision Robinson, illiteracy ahs barely budged during Chavez’ years
in power.

The lie
was there from the beginning as Mision Robinson was supposed to eliminate illiteracy
in the 1.5 million Venezuelans who could not read and write, but the 2001
census said there were only 1.2 million. Thus, a researcher from Universidad
Central de Venezuela asks in the article: Where are the 660 thousand people
that the Government claimed were going to be taught to read and write in the first
six months of Mision Robinson?

It turns
out that the infamous “certification” was simply backing by UNESCO for the method
being used in Mision Robinson which was twisted around by the spinners of the
Chavista Government as a “certification” of the elimination of illiteracy in Venezuela..

In today’s
article, Mendez quotes a study by Francisco Rodriguez, a one time Chavez
supporter, now at Wesleyan University and researchers at IESA and the University
of California at Berkeley, which show that indeed in 2001, there were only 1.08
million people in Venezuela who could not read and write and compared it with
the 1.05 million who, according to the Government Statistics Institute, were in
that condition in 2005: 1.01 million. The researchers conclude that it is next
to impossible to evaluate if Mision Robinson had an impact or not.

Thus, another
fraud, another lie and another claim by the autocrat and his followers.

So now,
they plan to export the plan to Bolivia
and the Dominican Republic.
Will they export the lie or actually do something?

The “pretty”
revolution strikes again!

So, the
lying President said this week: “Last night (Tuesday) Foreign Minister Maduro
was in Bolivia, he must arrive today bringing me a report, but we are ready to
defend ourselves…Evo, Resist brother and may God take care of you.”

Well, in
the same speech Chavez said he had information there would be a coup led by the
US in Bolivia.

But it
was all lies. Today, the Bolivian Government
said that Maduro was not there at all. They said he could come anytime, but
he didn’t, so Chavez was just improvising, letting his imagination go, the same
way he does with his accomplishments, his proposed projects, the assassination
attempts, his love. It is just all lies, in his mind, that’s all, as simple as
that. Maduro did not go, there was no trip, no report, no arrival…

I have been meaning to address the question of whether to vote or not in
the upcoming presidential elections for quiet a while. Maybe I am still early
in addressing it, but wanted to make sure I did, because there are lots of
comments and emails on the subject.

Background

First of all, recall that I am a firm believer that there was cheating
in the 2004 recall referendum. From a statistical point of view, it is clear
that the results were tampered with. Having said that, these studies can tell
there was cheating, but they are not capable of saying by how much. Thus, when
I say there was cheating, I can not guarantee that the opposition actually won,
although the three exit polls do suggest we did.

As a result of the frustration derived from that result, the opposition
basically demobilized itself, disappointed in the leadership from the
opposition and believing that it would be hard or next to impossible to
dislodge the autocrat. Despite this, the opposition actually voted in the
October 2004 elections in numbers that do not reflect the intuition of most
Venezuelans. Then came the 2005 parliamentary elections. A week before they
were to take place, it was discovered that despite assurances that this could not
happen, the voting machines kept the sequence of the vote, so that it would be
easy to reconstruct who voted for which candidate.

The opposition pulled out after this. While there is a generalized
perception that the conflict arose over the discovery of the possibility of the
knowing the sequence led to the opposition abstaining, it was more complicated
than that. In the end, it was the arrogant reaction of the CNE to the discovery
that really complicated matters. Jorge Rodriguez began making offers to “solve”
the problem which in the end did nothing but complicate matters. Basically, he
offered to “protect” the identity of the voters suing technological solutions
like erasing the disks that would not have erased it in the end. Between this
and the disgust at the discovery, the opposition simply pulled out, despite an
eleventh hour effort by the CNE which decided to withdraw the fingerprints
machines as a gesture to bring the opposition back. Curiously, it was Manuel
Rosales who pit the nail in the coffin, when he announced that his party was
withdrawing.

In some sense, withdrawing from the 2005 elections has had a positive
effect. In the absence of the opposition in the Parliament, Chavistas began
fighting among themselves and whenever they grabbed the stage, they had nobody
to snap at, since they were running the whole show. Since Chavismo ahs always
appeared to be in the opposition rather than Government, this actually did not
help. As an example, whenever an investigation was carried out by the national
assembly, it was the discrepancies between the different chavistas groups which
surfaced, rather than between chavistas and the opposition.

What Now

What has changed now is that the opposition basically has had no
leadership since the recall vote or a leadership that it had little trust in.
In the absence of that Chávez was clearly in the lead and the group in between
kept growing.

As expected, Teodoro Petkoff was his usual bad as a candidate, while
Julio Borges could not wipe out his yuppie image (I am being benevolent in this
assessment), so it came down to the experienced politician, Manuel Rosales, who
actually jumped ahead in the polls without even bothering to declare that he
was a candidate. This stopped the possibilities of the primaries as Petkoff
never had more than 9% in any poll, while Rosales consistently got 11-15%.
Borges showed some strength until Rosales name was included with him in a short
list.

And this was the main reason while withdrawing since June or July made
no sense. If you had no chance what was the sense of withdrawing? If the people
are not mobilized, what was the sense of withdrawing? Chavez and his supporters
would simply argue we withdraw because we do not want to lose.

Recall that Toledo in Peru went into
an election almost certain that he would be cheated if he won. He won and was
cheated, but the whole county and the international community were then
convinced that there was cheating and the rest is history as Toledo became
President of Peru exactly one year to the day, after Fujimori was sworn in as
President.

The point is that it was actually the widespread belief that there was
fraud that eventually led to Fujimori’s demise. That is precisely what we need
to achieve, go to the election and either win, win or be cheated and fight or
simply lose. The latter is one of the possibilities and if we do lose, we will
have to accept it as a democratic outcome and bear with it.

But we can not be cheated. That is why the CNE should make the election
completely transparent. If there is so much mistrust, why not count all the
ballots, all the boxes, eliminate the fingerprint machines and audit
everything? What are they afraid of? Why not prove Chavez is sooo popular?
Easy, they are not sure, they want to have the option to twist the election at
will if necessary. And that is why we
have to go and try to win and if the election is stolen, be ready to prove it,
show it and fight for it.

What then?

If there is one thing we have learned is that we are dealing with people
with no scruples. Not even the biggest cynic in the old and now defunct Coordinadora
Democratica ever thought the 128 audits the night of the RR would not take
place, or the voting machines would transmit information before the vote was
completed, or two of the Directors of the CNE would not be allowed to go into
the computer room, or the random number generator would be an idiotic one
provided by the CNE or Carter would give his Peanut Farmer seal of approval to
the results without even inspecting anything.

Hopefully we have learned to be alert and ready for it and there will be
no surprises on Dec. 3d. Personally, I give a lot of weight to eliminating the
fingerprint machines because I truly think they instill fear in people. On
those that support Chavez because they fear that if the vote blank or for the
other candidate, they will lose their job, mission rights or they will be
retribution. On those that oppose Chavez, because they think they may lose
their jobs and be forever identified as the enemy.

I do think we have an edge. I actually believe that people are
disillusioned and tired of Chavez. There is fear, so the solution is simply not
to go vote. On the other hand those that oppose Chavez, if motivated, have
little to lose, they have been blacklisted already and they want Chavez think
we can have more abstention on the pro-Chavez side than the opposition, which
would mean that even if Chavez “has” a majority we can win.

Chavez and his cohorts face a difficult decision. If they lose, the corruption
and mismanagement will come to light and they could all be prosecuted for it.
The level of corruption is such, that they could not hide everything. And
therein lays our biggest danger. The instinct of self-preservation is simply
too strong and they will try to win no matter what

But in some sense, I feel that the best outcome is for us to win and
have the Government cheat in a very obvious way. A Government like that will
simply not last.

There is a plan. There is a very detailed plan to make sure that
everything is done. There will be at least three Rosales people per booth,
without counting those that support him that were randomly selected to run the polling
stations. That is a difference between the RR and this, in this election
candidates have rights and Rosales is getting ready for it. These three people
will make sure that the official tally and the audit tally are sent out
immediately. Any major difference would be evident. There are other plans to
monitor irregularities, get the media and minimize a possible surprise by the
people without scruples, etc.

Can they cheat? Of course, but there are plans to minimize it and if we
can get our people mobilized, we could pull a big surprise. I used to know a
well known pollster here in Venezuela;
he used to tell me not to watch the levels, to watch the trends, the slopes. He
is now dead, but he was around in the 1998 elections and when Chavez was still
in second place he told me he could not lose; he had gone from 5% to 19% too
fast. I wonder what he would say today about Rosales’ slope. After all, six
weeks ago, we could not have envisioned the Avalancha, Rosales being such a
good candidate, people being so motivated.

Thus, the question of whether to vote or not is to me irrelevant. I will
go and vote as a first step to recover the rights we have lost and mobilize
people against this autocracy once and for all. The rest, is a matter of
fighting for our rights.

And we go from the sublime (Claudio’s case las night) to the ridiculous with this memo from the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry telling people how to address Faxes and correspondence to the new Minister Nicolas Maduro to make such greetings more homogeneus. Note in particular how Faxes should be adressed:

“With the inspiration and happiness that produces in us to work without rest for the consolidation of the pretty homeland that we all have dreamed and deserve, receive a bolivarian, revolutionary and socialist greeting.

I am honored to address you in this opportunity to…”

This almost deserves a contest for the title of the post. Given last night’s post on IVIC and Claudio, for now I will call this “From the sublime to the ridiculous” unless one of you can top me and I will change it.

(Note the signature part is signed “Hasta la victoria siempre” by none other than “We ask the President for his resigantion, which he accepted- Lucas Rincon”)

(BTW, how does a socialist greeting work? is it like “nanu-nanu” in the old Mork and Mindy programs)

A
while back I
wrote about the case of my friend physicist Claudio Mendoza who wrote what
was mostly a pedagogical article on nuclear bombs. The article, signed by
Claudio as an individual, without talking about his position at the Venezuelan
Institute for Scientific Research (IVIC), closed by saying:

“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”

The article elicited a strong response by the Board of IVIC, which sounded like
intimidation as well as being an attempt to disqualify Dr. Mendoza, one of Venezuela’s
most cited physicists.

Well, the intimidation has now become fact, as it is clear the Board of
Directors of IVIC is getting ready to find a way to justify firing Dr. Mendoza.
He has now received the following letter:


This
letter says that the Board of IVIC has decided that:

1) That the content of the statements made by you (Dr. Mendoza) affirms in an
article authored by you, entitled “Critical Mass” and published on
page 8 of section A of the El Nacional daily, on September 13th. 2006, could
seriously affect the institutional credibility, since IVIC is the institution
responsible for most of the activities in Venezuela that have to do with nuclear
energy and it applications for peaceful means.

2) That in the cited article it follows that you openly attempt to make it seem
as if the Venezuelan nation is involved in activities that could create severe
damages to the security of the state.

Thus, this Council determined to formally request from you proof that would
support your statements which should be provided in a term no larger than 30
days following receipt of the present letter.

Well, clearly a witch hunt has started against Claudio and it does not bode
well for him as a practicing scientist at IVIC, the same way all of the
scientists fired from Intevep who looked for jobs at IVIC, were not accepted on
the grounds that there was “no money” to hire them. The Board of IVIC is composed
by a bunch of intolerant and fascist Chavistas who are only there for the love
of the position and not because they have ever shown any interest in helping
good quality science in Venezuela.

But let’s look at it closer:

–Interestingly enough, they say nothing of Claudio’s s statement :”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.”

It must be that they accept it all, including the part about governing without
being statesmen, which may have been the only thing they could legally get Claudio for.

–Then they say “IVIC is responsible for most…” Precisely, IVIC is
responsible for most, not all of Venezuela’s nuclear activities. In
fact, it has been that Ministry that was looking into buying a nuclear reactor
and at the meeting that took place in Buenos Aires, at that country’s Foreign Ministry,
there was not ONE representative from IVIC present.

As to proof, all countries that have developed nuclear weapons have denied they
were doing so up to the day it was exploded. While Chavez, has denied
being interested in Venezuela
developing nuclear weapons, he has signed numerous agreements on the subject,
without IVIC knowing about them and has always defended the rights of countries
like North Korea or Iran to do so.
So, what does Claudio have to prove? That a man that has spent billions in
useless weapons for “peaceful” purposes does not want a nuclear
weapon? Then, why does Venezuela
sign agreement on nuclear energy and not on. let’s say, research on chip
making, software developing or communications?

Do they think people are that stupid or naive?

Maybe they are in thinking that were Venezuela to begin developing a nuclear
weapon, the stupid civilians sitting on IVIC’s Board would even be taken into
account.

One thing I can assure you of, if Claudio is fired for this, I will help make
this an international issue by going to the world’s physics professional
organizations and have them raise hell with their respective Governments until
Claudio is reinstated.