The Devil's Excrement

Today, human rights organization Amnesty International
warned about the dangers to freedom of speech in Venezuela as the Government
threatens TV station RCTV with shutdown after announcing that it would not
renew its concession.

According to the human rights organization, this is the last
in a series of measures that have increasingly reduced the rights to freedom of
speech in Venezuela.
Others include aggression against reporters, threats to reporters, including
the murders of two of them in the last year and prosecution of reporters
together with legislative measures which are aimed at limiting freedom of
speech.

“ It is imperative that that Venezuela authorities protect
the right to freedom of speech, particularly in moments of political
polarization and that they send clear message of rejection to any attack to
reporters, opening investigations of these attacks” said Amnesty International
in their communiqué.

With this report, Amnesty International is taking a strong
position in the face of the arbitrary shutdown of broadcast station RCTV, which
is scheduled to take place in 18 days. Such a shutdown will deal a blow to the
rights of all Venezuelans, as well as the availability of channels for
Venezuelans citizens to provide criticism and complains about Government
actions, which have been closing down in the last few years under the
Government of President Hugo Chavez. 

An article that contains the term The Devils’ Excrement
already has something going for it in terms of being translated for my blog,
but today’s Editorial in Tal Cual easily is worth the effort, even without the
term as parts of it are truly priceless.

We do have it Editorial in Tal Cual

The President is right: if oil is the Devil’s
Excrement, ethanol must be the entire accumulated defecation of all of Hell.
Later Fidel was able to recognize the error on time, before the enemy had been
able to be incubated within our Fatherland and, to save us from the
misadventure-thank you Father Comrade!-he has already published six articles on
the subject in Granma. It so happens that it has not even been three months
since the Governments of Caracas and Havana signed an agreement to plant in the
country 276,000 hectares of sugar cane to provide the raw material for eleven
ethanol plants that both nations were planning to build, just when Venezuela is
suffering the calamity of food shortages. Only that curse that alcohol entails,
as pernicious as all of the alcohols that emanate from sugar cane, can explain
this phenomenon.

There is no sugar in Venezuela, despite the
fact that the revolutionary Government has invested thousands of dollars in the
reconstruction of the sugar processing plants such as Caaez and that the Cuban
brothers were always willing to send u “for free”, like the oil-tons of the
sweet product that sustains its economy. There is no meat, even when the
revolutionary Government has advanced at the pace of winners in its fight against
large farm states and has created as many cooperatives as were necessary to
help the food independence of the country and, as if this were not enough, they
have also imported thousands of cows from Argentina and Brazil so that the
freezers may be full of sirloin. There is no powdered milk, despite the fact
that the revolutionary Government invested US$ 15 million in refloating of
Argentinean milk concern Sancor and despite having invested a few hundred more
in the construction of milk plants south of Maracaibo Lake, with the
disinterested cooperation of our brothers from Iran. There are no black beans,
even though the revolutionary Government has bought thousands of pods from the comrades
from the Popular Republic of China (we should note here that even is some
empirical studies have demonstrated that the black beans are good raw material
for the production of gases, science has determined that those can not be
converted into a fuel like ethanol). There is no chicken, nor eggs, even if Brother
Lula sent a flock of carioca laying hens.

And the worst part of the shortage is that Yankee
imperialism has overflowed the internal market with imported garbage: you can
get Dutch cheeses at the supermarket but not white criollo cheese to grate,
there is scotch güisqui by the gallon, but no whole milk in a carton.

There is no doubt that the Bolivarian
revolution is facing the vilest conspiracy that it has had to face. That is
why, in order not please the right, the fascists, the Government ahs made its
own the saying that collective wisdom willed us: fellow corner store owner:
instead of telling the client don’t say “we don’t have it”, say “we do have it,
but we ran out of it”, as we say in Venezuela. Because the people are NEVER
wrong.