The Devil's Excrement

Jose Rafael Lopez Padrino is a Venezuelan scientist who considers himself a true socialist and thus is against the fake Chavez revolution. Recently he has written a few letters to local daily Tal Cual explaining why Chavez so called revolution has little to do with true socialism. I thought it would be interesting to translate the latest one comparing what a socialist state would do with what is going on in Venezuela.

Socialist revolution
or State Capitalism? by Jose Rafael Lopez Padrino

The Lt. Colonel has
continued his verbosity about the anti imperialist and socialist character of
his political project. An immense shadow of doubt is spread over the Venezuelan
geography, because what little is known about his political proposal points not
precisely towards establishing a socialist experiment, but more towards a
project of a state capitalism.

Certainly what the
Lt. Colonel is proposing as “socialism” is in reality state capitalism, in
which the dominant and production relationships of the past are preserved. The
economic measures recently adopted by the Government (nationalization of CANTV
and Electricidad de Caracas, the creation of mixed companies in the Orinoco Oil
belt) have been put in motion in order to widen the bases for sustaining the
state capitalism that the regime promotes under the mask of a fake socialism
(socialchavismo). These nationalizations (not expropriations) have allowed the Venezuelan State to take control of them, but not
the workers, as it would correspond in a socialist state. The regime has
demonstrated that it does not have the smallest intention of modifying the
social relations of production and the forms of ownership with a true socialist
sense. In effect, the forces and social relations of production, which act in
Venezuelan society, have remained identical since about the midpoint of the
XIXth. Century. Let us recall that it is the relations of production, which
constitute the economic structure of a society, over which the political and
legal superstructures lies upon.

Of which socialism
can we speak about if this regime has allowed the rise of an ostentatious and
spendthrift boli bourgeois class, as perverse and exploiting as those linked to
the Adeco/Copeyano Governments? On top of that, it has allowed a
flexibilization of labor rules (cooperatives and other forms of management
sharing at companies) which area aimed at lowering costs of production and thus
at increasing the rate of return of the profits of the owners.

How can anyone speak
of a revolution that denies the stellar role of the working class (the social
subject of a true socialist revolution) in its political project (“five motors
of socialism”) and which continues its predatory practices on the already damaged
labor conquests and in making illegal the existence of unions? How can one
affirm the anti-imperialist and anti capitalist nature of the process, if you
have handed over our energy resources to the imperial multinationals (Exxon
Mobil, Statoil y Conoco-Philips, Petrobrás, Repsol) and it favors financial
capital devoting multimillion sums of dollars to subsidize bankers with bonds
with high interest rates, while the real economy of the country is in a grave
crisis.

These are all samples
of the true features of the “national socialism of the XXIst. Century “ whose
ideological substrate has nothing in common with the scientific socialism
postulated by old man Marx. These evidences clearly show that this revolution
is not socialist, nor is it going towards socialism. Exactly the opposite! That
is the problem of the gullible and the naïve that still believe in the kindness
of the messianic process of the Lt. Colonel.

As if accusing 29 people of conspiring to aid former
Governor Lapi escape from jail was not ridiculous enough, Minister of the
Interior and Justice Pedro Carreño, said today that he
would apply “all of the weight of the law” to the judge who freed the 29 people
jailed because of lack of evidence.

Minister Carreño appears to think he is the law, but he is
not. He is the man that pays the salaries of the Courts and coordinates the
judicial system but it is the Courts who impart the law, who in the end are
really the law and the Prosecutor’s office is supposed to enforce the existing
laws. But Carreño, of “the CIA is spying on us via the Direct TV set top boxes”
fame, has no clue how the Government functions and thinks he is the law. Of
course, the poor judge that ruled there was no evidence will now feel the full
effects of the autocracy, her career will be destroyed and they will suggest
she is opposition, despite the fact that Chavismo has loaded the Courts with
the faithful.

That is the travesty that justice has become in this country
under Chavez, that even the absurd massive indictment of everyone who was
working at the jail where former Governor Lapi escaped from are indicted “just
in case”, but even a pro-Chavez judge knows how stupid the whole thing is and
rules against them, which unleashes the ire of the autocracy.

When you think you´ve heard it all from the revolution…

Even during Easter week, called Holy week in Spanish, the revolution never stops in surprising us with its use of logic:

—The head of Civil Protection, the same one that said yesterday that accidents this year were running 38% above last year’s levels, said today that the alcohol prohibition had reduced traffic accidents. I guess the logic must be that if they had not prohibited alcohol, they would be running at 50% more than last year. Well, I propose the following improvised experiment next year to see if Venezuelans drive better under the influence: Let alcohol be sold 24 hours a day, if accidents drop, we know the answer, if they don’t, we can try a different improvised experiment two years from now.

—And a Court let the 29 jailed suspects of helping former Governor Lapi escape free, because the Prosecutor could not provide any evidence that they were involved. I think the Court was wrong, I am sure at least one of them had something to do with it, they should give the Prosecutor time to come up with the evidence like in the Anderson assasination case, where after two and a half years there is still no evidence, but there are a few people charged for the crime and even in exile. By the way, did you hear that the star witness in that case was caught with an illegal weapon and with a fake credential of being a member of military intelligence? This is the guy that never lies…

—Finally, Gral. Francisco Uson, who was jailed for five years for expressing a technical opinion, which somehow is not a violation of free speech for this autocratic Government, had his rights violated again yesterday when the Head of the jail where he is interned denied him visitation rights for writing a letter to TV station RCTV supporting them in their case against the Government that wants to revoke its concession. I guess Gral Uson has not learned his lesson and know that only Chavistas are allowed to have opinions. Recall it was only a week ago that the Prosecutor General said there was no crime by the Deputies who called for ignoring a Supreme Court decision, as this was simply an “opinion”. Uson’s lawyers went to the People Ombudsman, where he got no support. I guess the meaning of the word “people” is as restricted as that of “opinion” in the revolution.

In December President Hugo Chávez announced that the Government would
not be renewing the concession for TV channel RCTV, after more than 50 years in
the air. It was the end of years of threats against the media, including very
direct threats such as the day Chávez pointed a rifle at the RCTV camera and
suggested he could shoot the camera down at a large distance.

While I have outlined the legal arguments before, I thought it would be interesting
to go over them in detail in simple fashion, given the recent events against
the TV channel and the approaching date for the cancellation of the concession.

The Government argues that the concession of RCTV was renewed in 1987
for twenty years under a decree ( No. 1577) published in May of that year and
thus it can simply let the concession expire. This is the only legal argument
provided by the Government. However, article 4 of that same decree says
explicitly that after the first twenty years, the concession will be extended
for another twenty years “as long as the regulations on telecommunications
matters have been fulfilled”

Thus, not renewing the concession would require that CONATEL, the
telecom regulator, prove that RCTV did not fulfill all of the requirements of
the regulations and give RCTV the chance to defend itself. This has not occurred, nor has
the company been sanctioned for violating either the Organic Law of Telecommunications
or the Social Responsibility law.

In fact, application of the 1987 decree to RCTV can not be justified, if
it is not applied to all TV stations, since it should be equal to all of them
that the 20 years expire for RCTV, the Government’s TV station VTV or any other
station. It would also apply to all radio stations in the country. Why the
differentiation?

But on top of that there is the fact that a new Telecom law came into
effect in 2000, which required all TV stations to convert their concessions
before September 2002, by requesting the conversion in front of the regulator
and the Ministry. RCTV as well as all other TV stations submitted all of the
paperwork, but only one of them (Venevision) has been informed of the
conversion. However, they have all operated for four years, paid the required
taxes under the telecom law and has participated in all of the activities
required by CONATEL as a holder of a valid concession.

Fulfilling the requirements for conversion under the 2000
Telecommunications bill implies that RCTV’s concession was automatically
renewed for twenty more years or until 2002. Under Venezuelan legislation, since the change was manadtory, a reason had to be given for not coverting the title of the concession, thus not replying in itself could be legally interpreted as the change being approved, not only for RCTV but for all TV stations that did not receive a reply (All but Venevision).

Thus, the conclusion is very simple from a legal point of view, if
decree 1577 from 1987 is applied, there has been no formal proceeding against
RCTV that would justify not extending the concession and it is an outright lie
that the Government is simply letting the concession die. If, on the other
hand, the 2000 Organic Telecommunications Bill is applied, the Government has
allowed RCTV to switch its concession title not only by the fact that it never
responded to the company’s submission of the required paperwork, but also by
the fact that for four years after the deadline for the conversion, the
Government ahs recognized RCTV as having a legal concession.

Thus, the Government the decision by the Government represents a
violation of RCTV’s rights to due process, it is being discriminated against
and it represents a violation of freedom of speech as it represents an abuse of
official controls as typified in the Inter American Human Rights convention.

Thus, the Government of Hugo Chávez hides behind a smokescreen,
encouraging its hoodlums to attack that station as
detailed in Publiuspundit and even
“invites” them using the official TV channel to go and participate in these
acts of fascism.

No rule of law, human rights violations, no due process and state
sponsored fascist attacks on the media.

Not precisely the definition or hallmarks of a democratic Government, no?.

Many things happened while I was off the air, some, like the PDVSA bonds, I
will write about later, but I can’t help but put my two cents into the following
stories:

—Former Governor Lapi escapes from jail: Daniel has covered this in detail here,
here
or here,
but the case it’s truly a reflection of the lowlifes of this robolution. He is
first called a coward for escaping from a jail in a jail system that is famous
for deaths among inmates and riots; with close to a death per day in the country’s
jail system. A couple of days before Lapi’s escape, eight people were killed in
a jail riot where he was being held and a grenade exploded within the jail. Of
course, he has been in jail for misuse of funds for a year, but the Prosecutor
has yet to bring him to trial, in violation of the laws. Moreover, all of his
injunctions at the Supreme Court have not been heard by that Court, which is also
illegal since there is a limit to how long they have to decide on them. Despite
this travesty of Justice, the Head of the Supreme Court publicly speaks on a
case she might have to rule later, saying that here is another crime committed
by the former Governor. Even more unethical is the fact that she happens to be from
the same state of Yaracuy where they have been political enemies for
years. How is that for political hate! But the laugher has to be that the Government jails 49 people who
work at the jail for helping the former Governor escape. This seems to suggest
that they have no clue who helped Lapi. In a country where three people can’t
keep a secret, a conspiracy of 49 is unheard of. Gimme a break!

—Improvised prohibition or dry laws: Here is the Government which for eight
years has shown its total disregard for human life, allowing homicides to
triple in that period and all of a sudden they become fundamentalists and
prohibit public drinking everyday after 5 PM for the whole of the Easter
vacation. (Kathy has
covered this in detail) This was so improvised, that it was announced the day
before the vacation was to begin, catching bars, restaurants and discos off
guard, they already had stocked up for the holidays, particularly in resort areas where
Venezuelans congregate for the holidays. (Imagine a disco with fruit punch!) Even funnier, it is all blamed on
capitalism which puts “profit ahead of human life”, as if the badly maintained
roads and highways of Venezuela,
which are responsible for a good fraction of all accidents, were maintained by
extraterrestrials and not by the Chavez Government itself. And then there is of
course the problem of wishing it won’t make it so: enforcement. Last night I
looked out my window to the barrio next to my building and the corner store was
selling beer en force and the people drinking it, under the watchful eyes of
the police, who would not dare interfere with the fun of their own neighbors.

—Giving away assets of FOGADE: And then there was the biggest improviser of
them all, Hugo Chavez, asking that FOGADE, the institution that guarantees the
deposits of the banking system, give away all of its properties to the
“people”. Way to go Hugo! Take the “people’s” guarantees to
give to some other “people”. As long as you sound like you are a good guy, who
cares if the “people” are the same or not? This is part of the
Government by witticism that Fabre talked about. The properties of FOGADE were
acquired in the 1994-95 financial crises in exchange for the depositor’s money
and have been sold slowly to strengthen the weak equity of FOGADE. Why not just
give the all the money away too? Who needs a guarantee for deposits? Nothing can go
wrong in the revolution, Hugo won’t allow it. Yeah, sure!

—RCTV: And how about funny guy Jesse Chacon the Minister of Communications
appearing on TV and saying how RCTV had submitted its renewal under the new Broadcasting
Bill in 2002 on time and providing legal ammunition for that station to argue
its case? Of course, in his world with no logic, the conclusion of his speech
was that the license had to be revoked because they felt like it.

More on PDVSA and RCTV later as I catch up.

I started this blog in August 2002. When I did, blogs were a new
phenomenon and I had no clue where this was going to take me, so I took an old
Windows desktop and launched this adventure into uncertain lands. Given that
the desktop was at the time already over three years old, it has really lasted longer than anyone
had a right to expect, over seven years, especially since I knew the disk drive was not in great
shape a few months ago. Then, last Friday the machine died and I found myself
in trouble. Trouble, because the backup was three weeks old and the way my
software works, the posts reside in my machine and are upstreamed to the server
and synchronized.

This weekend I tried a few things with the help of my brother, but no
luck. This morning I took it to the IT department of the company where I work
and voilá, data was recovered and here I am back in the air!

Which only goes to show that this stuff is too simply hard, since I
consider myself somewhat of a geeky type in terms of software and hardware,
even if I am willing to take any piece of equipment apart too fast. But I find
that I spend increasing amounts of time on fixing PC problems, both software
and hardware. In fact, I recently switched to a MacBook to make my life easier,
but installed Windows in it, which I need for work-related reasons. Well,
guess what? The Windows part stopped working a couple of weeks ago and I had to spend more time
bringing up the system back up than it took me to get it all started with the Mac.
(In fact, I am not there yet, despite spending considerable time on it)

All I can say is that the Mac has been absolutely much easier than
Windows, but somehow people have a basic resistance to changing, because they
think it will be hard like their windows machine. It isn’t, it is much easier,
even if there are still some quirks that take time to get over. If you are
thinking of switching but are afraid, just do it!

And the blog is back!