The Devil's Excrement

When a bunch of military stage a coup in 1992 led among others by Hugo Chavez, the ostensible reason was that they were tired of the levels of corruption by Venezuela’s politicians and that they were doing it “for the poor”. Time has proven that the military cadre that surrounds Hugo Chavez could care less about the poor, honesty and morals. Never had Venezuela witnessed such levels of corruption and unethical behavior that under these cadre of former military officers that is raping the country.

Former Generals and military officers jet around in their own private planes around Venezuela, usually the latest models from Citation. They use them to visit their farms, many of the on the same land taken over by the Land Institute from private hands, later abandoned and given to these friendly military buddies. Meanwhile the inefficient Chavez administration is run mostly by former military officers, their buddies and relatives, most of them enjoying the highest civil service salaries in the country’s history, both in absolute and relative terms, which fantastic end of the year bonuses, peeks, cars and anyone who is anyone drives around in two or three armored cars full of bodyguards. Most of these military officers have little if any management experience, which explains the incompetence and inefficiency of the Government, as they have replaced all of the previous existence structure.

They name their friends and relatives to positions, give each other salary increases and perks, while publicly saying they are working for the poor. Nepotism is rampant, last names repeat and there are no scruples, morals or ethical values left as checks and balances have simply disappeared.

Case in point is the resolution issued in the official gazette on March 1st. by the so called “Minister of the Popular Power of defense” and signed by General Raul Baduell who is always speaking about doing things for the poor. In it, Baduell increases the pension of Jose David Cabello to 100% of the salary of the military rank when he retired because “He requires permanent attention to carry out the activities in his life due to the fact that he is totally and permanently incapacitated.

Cabello is the brother of Miranda Governor Diosdado Cabello and is currently Minister of Infrastructure, where he enjoys a second high salary, expenses and bodyguards on top of his recently increased pension. Other than looking somewhat overweight, Cabello looks healthy and requires no aid for any of his activities as Minister, contradicting the generous decree above. Note that Cabello, because of his age, did not even complete 25 years in the military but was given a special pension by none other than President Hugo Chavez.

That is how the military cadre not only took over Venezuela but are quickly becoming the new and very rich oligarchy of Venezuela in the name of socialism and the poor. That is how they rip off Venezuela day after day.

All in the name of the “revolution”…
;

While Argentina’s President Nestor Kirchner defended today allowing Chavez to hold his anti-Bush rally at local Ferro sports arena, it is clear that people in that country resented the rally and what it stood for. That country’s press is full of highly critical opinion pieces criticizing the rally, the Venezuelan military presence in that country, the money spent on it as well as the fact that Kirchner allowed it, but was not part of it.

Others criticize the fact that Chavez went to Argentina coinciding with Bush’s visit to Uruguay and Brazil , which did not sit well with Argentina’s neighbors. Lula was less than diplomatic today, taking an indirect shot at Chavez’ economic policies and his less than democratic attitude, when he said in reference to our President’s criticism of Brazil’s ethanol project: “Brazil has a relevant contribution for the transittion of the world
energy matrix and it presents itself to the world as a truly
democratic partner…it is also a sovereign and competitive one”

Below, I translated one of the articles I was sent by the readers of the blog, which clearly measures the mood of many Argentineans:

Who explains the inexplicable? by Malu Kikuchi in Notiar (March 12th. 2007)

“I ask the saints in the heavens
that they help my thinking
that they refresh my memory
and clarify my understanding”

Like Martin Fierro, I need help. The majority of Argentineans need help. It could be possible to assume that the rest of planet Earth also needs help to explain� the inexplicable.

How do you explain that the President of Venezuela, with permission and consent of the President of Argentina, comes to this country to host a colorful, populist demagogic and absolutely aggravating show, � dedicated to the President of the U.S.A., visiting that day in the Federal Republic of the Brazil and the Eastern Republic of Uruguay! How can you explain this?

According to the dictionary, �to explain� means: to present the cause or reason for something; to arrive to include/understand the reason for something, to realize something. �Inexplicable� means: that it is not possible to explain it. What happened in the Ferro sports field, district of Cabaliito, City of Buenos Aires, Republic? of Argentina, Friday March 9th. 2007, is absolutely INEXPLICABLE.

There are many questions. There are no coherent answers to those questions. Is there a reason why the Argentinean President wants to insult and offend the President of the U.S.A.? Logic says that no, history, policy and the most elementary diplomacy, say that no, that there are no reasons. But, if that reason existed, President Kirchner would have to assume the risk of doing it himself and not through another person with whom he does not even share the Argentinean nationality. Inexplicable.

If President Ch�vez does not have enough with his Bolivarian Venezuela to insult the President of the United States, why does he choose Argentina? Why not from Mexico, or Peru, or Colombia or Chile? It must be because these are serious countries, those that do not use their seriousness as an electoral slogan (which are seriously serious), would not allow it. Argentina allows it. Inexplicable.

The Argentina of President Kirchner allows it because Venezuela is the only buyer of Argentine bonds, (which gives the Venezuelan Government good gains) Let us clarify that our so clucked divorce from the IMF has cost us a very expensive marriage with Ch�vez, who charges us interest which is sensibly much higher than the highest of the Monetary Fund. Inexplicable.

Does the Argentina of President Kirchner allow anything to President Ch�vez because it shares his ideology of the XXIst. century socialism? It is not easy to accept this, when Kirchner claims it is an urgent necessity to have a native and strong business sector, respects oil concessions, airport concessions, road concessions and all those in which his friends are represented.

Ch�vez is openly anti-Semitic, Kirchner is not. Ch�vez insults the U.S.A. while it sells 60% of his oil to them, buys 30% of his imports from them and always, in any place, he lodges in the local Sheraton hotel. This is not the case the Argentine President. We do not have, unfortunately, as much commerce with the U.S.A. and apparently, Kirchner does not have a chain of favorite hotels. Then, why? Inexplicable.

For whatever reason, Argentina allowed Ch�vez to gather all of the local left, social movements, piqueteros, mothers of Plaza de Mayo, some deputies, Argentine flags with Evita and the Che (???), taken �spontaneously� in 436 buses, that filled the stage of Ferro sports arena. It was seen on CNN. The planet saw it. Inexplicable.

The hosting of the act was in charge of �the mother� of the Argentina President, Hebe de Bonafini, who effusively thanked her �son� for allowing this act of freedom. Soon afterwards, Ch�vez insulted Bush. He treated him as a political corpse, – all American presidents who are in the second half of their second and last mandate are, and made a peculiar mixture of Bolivar, Washington, imperialism, poverty, dignity, Kirchner, the crises, all grouped in a lengthy, very long tropical speech, filled with jokes for the gallery. Everyone saw it or at least, all learned about it. What shame! What shame for Argentina! Inexplicable.

While Ch�vez, from his Argentine watchtower, offended the President of the most powerful nation on earth, on the way, he also insulted the presidents of the countries that were in the itinerary of Bush�s visit. We were, gratuitously and in a single act, mean to the U.S.A., Brazil and Uruguay. Inexplicable.

They say that the act cost $600.000. Who paid for it? Venezuela or Argentina? The 300 Venezuelan military (did they have permission from our Congress?) that arrived in Buenos Aires with Ch�vez, were supervised by PDVSA, or the University of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, or the Government of the City? Nobody clarifies anything. Nobody asks for explanations. Inexplicable.

Chancellor Jorge Taiana hurries to declare that �the government did not have anything to do with Ch�vez� act in Ferro�. He did not have anything to do with it, but he allowed it. He allowed that the University of the Mothers of Plaza de mayo invite the Venezuelan President to host an act against the president of another country that was visiting a fourth one. If the government �did not have anything to do with it� it should not have allowed Ch�vez� visit to coincide with the one from Bush to Brazil and Uruguay. A peculiar way of not having anything to do with it. Inexplicable.

What did Argentina gain with this stupidity in the fourth degree in charge of a third party, as if we did not have the courage to do it ourselves? Perhaps he gained voters, people say that we are the most anti-Yankee country of the planet, that 92% of the Argentineans hate the U.S.A. Which is the reason why it is so hard to explain that most of the Argentineans who emigrate, do it towards North America (even at the risk of living illegally) and not towards Cuba or Venezuela. Inexplicable.

What did Argentina lose with Ch�vez� diatribe against Bush and of the countries that received him? On the material side, probably, we did not lose anything. Everything will be as it was, a little more deteriorated, but without visible sanctions. Only that as the Prince of Saint Exup�ry used to say, �the essential, is invisible to the eyes�. And although it is not seen, the prestige that Argentina once had, has disappeared. We stopped being credible. We stopped being reliable. We lost all notion of nobility. We are irrelevant. We are vanishing while immersed in shame. Inexplicable

We began with Martin Fierro, and in order to dream that we are still Argentinean, that some of us still have left some dignity left of the Argentina that was and no longer is, we remember that:

�if shame is lost, it is never found again�

PS.: Call to solidarity; if somebody finds Argentina�s shame, which was misplaced at Ferro last Friday, we plead that it be returned back on 28/10/07 in the ballot boxes. It will be compensated with a REPUBLIC!

(In Spanish here)

Sometimes the actions of this Government and our elected President are simply absurd. Ideology dominates reality and if anything goes against the pseudo-Bolivarian thinking it must be bad. Meanwhile, things are done in the name of that ideology, call it the Bolivarian revolution or the ever evolving and ill-defined XXIst. Century socialism, that are either illogical or have no foundation on fact, knowledge or logic. While crime soars, the Minister of Information says statistics are no worse than any other country and crime has not increased despite a three-fold increase in homicides since Chavez took over the Presidency. Meanwhile poverty remains at the same levels of 1998, despite the fantastic oil windfall of the last few years, but we are led to believe that things are being done for the poor, but they are only being done in their name but not for their benefit. Meanwhile Chavez travels in luxury to give away the money to richer countries that rightfully belongs to Venezuelans and only yesterday for the first time in eight years, did he go visit the only country in the region whose poverty does indeed deserve some help from us Venezuelans, Haiti.

But the smoke and mirrors of the ever-moving ideology of the empty revolution rule everything else. Knowledge and science are of course sidelined whenever it is necessary. Environmentalism is invoked when convenient, but Lake Maracaibo is a disaster due to the neglect of PDVSA. That company’s environmental research projects are dead after the experts were fired in 2003 and little if anything has been actually done to replace them. The project of using natural gas for cars was canceled in 2000 by the Chavez administration because it was part of the previous Government’s plans, only to be resurrected last year with the dramatic surge in local gasoline consumption made the Government realize something had to be done after six wasted years of inaction. Gasoline in use in Venezuela contains one of the most harmful additives for the enviroment. Even the collapse of the viaduct in the Caracas-La Guaira highway can be directly blamed on the cancellation of the monitoring project of the pressures on that bridge by Chavez in 2000.

And all of this comes to mind because yesterday our President, showing how improvised everything is in Venezuela in all respects, suggested that he was going to talk to Lula, “as soon as he can” in order to “dissuade him from using ethanol as a fuel”. Chavez call on the Nations of Latin America not to devote their fertile lands to generating fuels for the “for the vehicles of the rich”. Meanwhile the President of Venezuela’s Petrochemical Company cancelled a meeting in which he was supposedly going to give a talk showing how bioethanol was much worse for the environment than gasoline.

There are so many imprecisions and lies in the above paragraph, that I can only address them one a time to show how what Fabre called “Government by witticism” by Chavez is not only damaging this country, but making us look like fools abroad.

First of all, trying to dissuade Lula from using ethanol as a fuel, goes in the face of a project that is already over 30 years old in Brazil, to replace costly imported gasoline by cheaper substitutes made from sugar cane. 80% of the cars in that country can run on both gasoline and bioethanol or a combination of both and this figure is expected to reach 100% in two years. Moreover, biofuel produces 40% of that country’s fuel needs. Currently, the bioethanol cost is so much cheaper than oil, that it is much cheaper to produce than gasoline for the Brazilians, a country that four decades ago did not produce any oil either, but is by now self sufficient in that too. The biofuel project is in fact a source of pride for Brazilians, who view it as a show of their industrial capability that they developed a countrywide project like that, independent of anyone or any country in the world and they did it quite successfully.

More importantly the biofuel industry in Brazil generates more employment than the equivalent in an oil industry per barrel, as it provides also rural jobs to farmers, promoting rural areas over cities in that country. This fact was recognized by Chavez as recently as two years ago, but he seems to have a case of amnesia induced by the recent hug between the Head of the Evil Empire and his buddy Lula.

Thus, not only is Chavez disregarding history and fact, but also he is attempting to intervene in the internal affairs of that country on a matter, which is considered to be a source of national pride, and which Brazil believes can catapult that country into the big leagues of globalization. For Lula, the agreement signed with the US is actually considered a victory for his country in that respect.

Additionally, it also ignores the huge differences in food production, between Brazil, a net exporter of agricultural products, and Venezuela, a net importer, despite the fact that the Chavez administration has devoted so much money, time and effort to this field. However, the methods used, coercion and threats, rather than promote agricultural production and investment have had exactly the opposite effect, with agricultural production dropping by 9% in 2006 according to figures by the Ministry of Agriculture.

Even worse, is the President’s charge, now apparently supported by fake non-existent research at Venezuela’s petrochemical company, run by a party hack, that ethanol is worse environmentally than gasoline as fuel. Nothing is further from the truth, research in the US, Australia and Europe shows that this is far from being the case. In fact, hydrocarbons from biofuel combustion have shown to be reduce by 60-70% that of traditional petroleum contaminants.

But more importantly, biofuel is a renewable energy source, in contrast with oil, which is non-renewable. Even the processing is fairly self-contained as in the case of sugar cane, where the baggasse is burnt as fuel for the processing of the ethanol.

But the worst part of Chávez statements is that this is all simply an ideological posture on the part of our President. It all comes simply from the fact that the President of the US is in favor of biofuels, something which Chávez apparently did not learn about until fairly recently. You see, as reminded to us by Tal Cual today, on Valentine’s Day 2005, only two years ago, President Hugo Chávez signed a cooperation agreement with none other than Brazilian President Lula, by which that country as going to provide Venezuela with 30 thousand barrels a day of ethanol. Not one to be shy, that same day at the press conference, Chávez boasted that an ethanol plant was being built in his home state of Barinas and that state was going to double its production capacity for sugar cane, in order to produce even more ethanol for our country. This is the same partner that he plans to convince of the evils of ethanol as fuel.

That same day, Chávez sounded much like his archenemy from the evil empire when he said: “it will generate employment, develop agriculture, industry, clean energy for ecological equilibrium, so many benefits…”

And just so that you don’t think that Chavez was shown some new studies in the intervening two years showing the evils of ethanol as fuel, on February 26th. only 15 days ago, Venezuela and Cuba signed an agreement to
install eleven, yes eleven, ethanol producing plants in Venezuela, a contract signed by Cuba’s Minister of Agriculture.

Thus, this new position is just a pose, grandstanding by our show-off President now that he found out the Evil Empire likes and is interested in ethanol and may compete for Lula’s attention with our autocrat. What this clearly shows is how much damage is being done to our country by these stupid positions, based on empty ideology, which only create enemies and make our country less credible in the eyes of our neighbors.

And just so that I don’t get accused by the Minister of Information William Lara, who incestually continues to be the official spokesman for Chavez’ political party MVR, this post will represent the official coverage of Chavez’ South American trip by The Devil’s Excrement.

The picture below is Chavez in Bolivia using a military salute, while wearing a Bolivian ruana and flower guirnaldas given to him by the Bolivians. I don’t want to minimize the trip or the picture, to use the Minister’s words, but I can’t help but feel that Chavez does not look too comfy in it. Not because of the serious face, he clearly enjoys wearing costumes as history has shown, but because he was not given a red shirt and/or a military uniform/hat/weapon (Note military salute even in their absence), which always makes him right at home even at high altitudes.

Chavez was also in Argentina, but we only provide international coverage for events with two Heads of State (note Evo in the background of the picture) and not one, as was the case in that stadium rally in Argentina. By the way, that stadium held 40,000 people without using the field, so that 20,000 attendees is a very poor showing. It does go to show that next time they have to double the budget for the event or pay half the amount per person if they want to fill it to capacity. PDVSA really blew it this time. Somebody should be reprimanded for not being rojito enough.

And yes, I did not provide coverage of the other meeting to the north with the guy from even further north, even if it had two world leaders in it. There were three reasons for this: First, none of them were a Venezuelan Head of State and this blog is about Venezuela. Second, having a picture of those two may have represented a historical low for The Devil’s Excrement. Finally, last time I mentioned just some candidates for President of the Evil Empire, we ended talking about Global Warming in the comments and exceeded the limit in the number of comments.

How much lower could a blog get?

Above is the letter from ABTIVIC, the Bolivarian Assembly of Workers of Venezuela’s premier Government research center, which is likely to lose that status the way it is being run and when “Assemblies of Workers” are capable of writing this type of crap and please pardon my french.I wanted to post the letter, so that it is on the record of the type of persecution and fascism that we are seeing in Veneuzla today.

Here Dr. Claudio Mendoza, a world renown physicist, one of the most distinguished from that institution because of his research and winner of the prestigious Polar award is taken to task. I will not translate it all, I already translated some sentences earlier, but suffice it to say that because he wrote an opinion piece with some very ironic sentences about Chavez’ hairbrained nuclear plans, he is being accused of hating the country, lying, conspiring, stateless, destabilizer and the like.

Well, all I can say is that those who wrote this are joining the fascist Government in persecuting those that disagree with their ideology and foolishness. Imagine, some of these people dare to ask that the recall referendum be binding and not a simple consultative referendum! How dared they!

Is this intolerance or what? Is there room for that in a democratic society? I think not!

Either you are with them or you are against them. Note that in one sentence they bunch all of IVIC’s researchers in one, as if that institution would have any meaning without the “Investigadores”, the research leaders without whom that Institution would make no sense.

In the end, they call for a more severe penalty for this man who having the choice of living and working anywhere he wanted, he chose Venezuela, his country of birth, where he has worked with dedication and passion and has made Venezuela proud of counting him among his citizens.

And if there is treason in the above letter, it is that against the Spanish Language, misused when arguing that Claudio was not “votado” (Voted), instead of “botado” (Kicked out). Claudio was indeed “votado” in order to remove him as Head of his Laboratory, when the highest authorities of that Institution, shamelessly voted to remove him because he said something that the almighty leader was offended with. And the level of the offense is such, that one can only wonder why they took it that way, unless you think…

That maybe Claudio was so right in his article, that it hit the Government where it hurts…and thus the revenge and the attacks.

But perhaps the stupidest thing is to suggest that the shortages the country has had in the last few months are part of the same conspiracy, as if the average Venezuelan did not go daily to the markets only to find the shelves empty and even the Mercal leaders have admitted they screwed up royally.

What a bunch of sad but dangerous clowns these intolerant guys are!

This week, while the People�s Ombudsman, was saying that the US Government had no moral right to talk about human rights, his ears must have been buzzing, because that same day the OAS Interamerican Commission for Human Rights (CIDH) was once again blasting the Chavez Government for precisely that. Of course, the Ombudsman has seldom defended human rights, devoting his time mostly to the defense of the same Government the CIDH was blasting.

Just so you understand the CIDH is composed of seven members, each proposed by a member country of the OAS. But the members are not representatives of the Government, the Government�s propose them, but they have to be people who have a track record in the defense of human rights. Once they are accepted as members of the commission, the members are independent of the Governments.

Besides hearing cases on human rights, the members of the CIDH, write a yearly report. This report includes a chapter on which countries are considered to be �delinquent� countries in that severe human rights violations are or have taken place.

In 2005, the CIDH had four countries in the list: Cuba, Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador. Ecuador, because democratically elected Presidents had been removed from office. Colombia, because of the continued violation of human rights by the paramilitary and Cuba and Venezuela for numerous violations. What sets apart Cuba and Venezuela is that in the other two cases, the CIDH did not say the Government was doing nothing about it, while in both the cases of Cuba and Venezuela, the CIDH noted the lack of effort by the Government�s to defend Human Rights.

This years report was no different in the case of Venezuela. There were four cases heard in front of the commission: The situation of human rights defenders in Venezuela, the problems of freedom of speech, the problems of instutotiunaility and respect for human rights and the problems with citizen security and para-police groups.

This generated a confrontation at the CIDH when the Venezuelan representative accused that body of bad faith, partiality and distorting informations. Members of the CIDH were offended by the language used by the Venezuelan diplomat in charge of human rights.  They said never had the commission been as insulted. Moreover, he noted the attitude of the Chavez Government towards the CIDH and its seven members. The head of the CIDH recalled that Chavez called tem intellectuals eunuchs and once again reminded everyone that the Venezuelan Government ahs not allowed the customary visit by CIDH members and staff, which in his opinion, proves the lack of political will by Venezuela. He noted that his term will expire and he has never been able to go to Venezuela. Moreover, the Government has yet to act on any of the requests by the Commission to provide special protection to more than 200 jpurnalists or human rights activists that have been attacked, largely by pro-Chavez activists.

The Venezuelan Government considers many of the actions and activities of the CIDH to be an intromission in the country�s affairs, but country�s that signed the charter, recognize that it has constitutional hierarchy within the country, something the Ch�vez administration has refused to recognize.

For the second year in a row, Venezuela will once again be in the delinquent list, while the People�s Ombudsman and Chavista human rights defenders look the other way or spend their time defending the rights of the Government.

Fifth and last part. here are parts One, Two,Three and Four

Fifth problem: Government by witticism

The central problem of political economy is probably how to coordinate the action of the innumerable agents of a complex society, so that it results in the efficient management of goods in short supply. In capitalism that coordination takes place due to the decentralized initiative of economic agents, guided by prices that form impersonally in open and competitive markets. In the standard theory of socialism, the State assumes upon itself the tasks of coordinating agents through centralized planning, fixes prices and production quotas of many goods and services and assigns which agents must produce and which receive each thing. Markets are marginal and state planning becomes the key to the economy.

A good part of the failure of real socialism lies on the fact that in societies as complex as contemporary ones, with well develop individual and collective subjectivities, and in which cultural creation and technological innovation are decisive to generate economic value, the precise information to carry out efficient planning is not within the reach of the State. It is not, because the bulk of the information is subjective, thus only each agent knows his own. On top of that, the invasion of the economy by the bureaucratic logic continuously intervenes the generation and transmission of information, introducing distortions. The citizens lie, the civil servants lie, and the politicians lie, each according to their purposes, without effective horizontal controls, as in open societies. These problems are common to all systems with central planning, but in the case of real socialism they proved themselves to be fatal.

Planning has never been a local specialty, thus we can fear that what failed in East Germany will even more of a reason to fail here. Happily we are not going to have that problem, because XXIst. Century Socialism does not consist in the central planning of the economy but a Government by the witticism of the Caudillo. His slogan is not �power of the Soviets and electrification of Russia� like Lenin, but more �The Comanadante orders, we obey� as in most local events. That is the technique of economic coordination of Venezuelan-style socialism, very similar to that of the Pharaohs of the VIth. Dynasty (also XXIst. Century but before Christ). Thus, we do not need economic information but that which the Comandante wants to give us in each moment with his great pedagogy. Why more?

The Comandante has a lot of witticism, which is why he orders this or that, according to his inspiration: today the African palm tree, tomorrow vertical chicken coops; here hydroponic farms, there Indian water buffalos; first cooperatives, later co-managed companies; with this one you form a mixed company this and that way, but then on May 1st. you break the contract; there is nobody here, so build a federal city and there, where there are so many people, why is it that no housing has been built. The Ministers learn of many initiatives that they have to execute in the same event in which they are announced to the country, thus, with the hands still warm from applauding, they have to leave urgently to figure out how you go about doing it. In the majority of cases it never gets done, and the results in terms of economic matters is a cemetery of solemnly announced projects, failed and abandoned a couple of years later, after burying a few billions.

XXIst. Century socialism will be, in summary, something completely novel: a nationalized economy on the back of a crumbled State; businesses without businessmen and markets without merchants, for an economy of imports or empty shelves; inspired by the improvisation of the Caudillo instead of the coordination of the market or central planning, and above all, the distribution of oil wealth in exchange for political obedience, money flowing without effort nor risk, so that the people and the bon vivants continue belonging to Chavez. For this journey, truly, we don�t need more of a New Man, than that Venezuelan who voted for Lusinchi because �the Adecos steal and let you steal�

And catching up with items that I had left behind, the fascist hounds of the regime were let loose and ordered to go after Physicist Claudio Mendoza this week.

Mendoza who was found to “affect the prestige” of Venezuela’s IVIC, the premier Government research center, and was thus removed from his position as Head of the Computational Physics Laboratory there, is now being attacked by another fascist group, the “Bolivarian Association of IVIC Workers”.

These hounds of the regime are calling for more severe punishment for Mendoza for his article “Critical Mass”. This ignorant mass of workers accuses Mendoza of “false testimonies” whatever they may mean and say his statements “were charged with a profound hate for the Fatherland”, because he said that Venezuela wanted to sneak in with Iran an Korea in the atomic club. Of course, when Chavez suggested it, he was a patriot, when Claudio says it he is accused of being a traitor.

Even more laughable, the Association charges Claudio and his statements to be part of a “destabilizing plan that attempts to create anguish with measures (??) such as the fake shortage of foodstuffs and medicines.”

And to prove that this is all orchestrated, former Rector (President) of Central University Luis Fuenmayor the same day accused Claudio Mendoza of treason and called for the penalty for treason for him which is thirty years in jail. He also suggested the penalty was too “soft”.

There you have it ladies and gentleman, either you are with the robolution or you are a traitor, part of a conspiracy and you should be jailed for speaking your mind. If you are with them, you can steal, corrupt and do as you wish. Even if what you are, is a distinguished scientist, become a well knwon scientist all over the world, who has won the Polar Award, one of the two most prestigious science awards in the country, you are attacked by the same people that should revere what you do and pay attention to what you say. And the orchestrated accusations come from a pseudo union of so called scientific workers and a scientist that did very little as a scientist, and certainly does not have Mendoza’s distinguished career, because he spent most of his academic life involved in politics.

The revolution fears knowledge as well the knowledgeable and feels threatened by the open discussion of issues and ideas. That is why men like Dr, Mendoza have to be silenced, as an example to others to shut up, stay put…or else.

It is fascism at its best, it is anti-democratic as it can get, it is a dramatic violation of Mendoza’s rights.

It is shameful…