Lying has become a way of life in the Chavez revolution. Last weekend I saw a few that would make Pinocchio feel almost honest:
-The first one was Venezuela’s representative to the Interamerican Human Rights Commission German Saltron who said that it was totally false that there was overcrowding in Venezuelan jails and that the Government fed all of the prisoners. Maybe he has not seen the video I posted, or read the article about how the prisoners run the San Antonio prison in Margarita Island. And just to add to the lies and exaggeration, he claimed the Chavez Government inherited this problem, without mentioning the tripling of the number of yearly homicides since 1998 or the more than doubling of the prison population since then. In fact, homicides went down during Caldera’s Presidency, not my favorite Presidential term before Chavez, but that happens tobe a fact.
-And then came Minister of Planning and Finance Jorge Giordanu who in a rare interview in El Mundo (by subscrpition only) said a few hard to swallow ones. The first one was that taking money out of the international reserves and into Fonden “made sense”, because of the very low yields around the world. Of course, he did not mention that this practice was begun in 2004, when yields had not fallen. In fact, they started going down sharply after the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Thus, this was simply looking in the rear view mirror to justify what they had done.
But then, Giordani began talking about the new financial institutionality of the country and how the money from the international reserves is now “invested” for the people. well, I don’t have the latest distribution on expenditures, but Quico did a very nice pie chart a while back (2006-201) showing that at that point the largest percentage of Fonden money went to oil and energy, followed by transportation, the Cuba-Venezuela commission and Defense in the first four places. A full 60% went to these four areas, of which only one, Transportation, can truly be considered investing for the people. For the people of Cuba maybe, but that is another matter, no? And the numbers don’t seem to have changed much since 2010, according to this article in El Universal.
Oh yeah! He also said there would be no devaluation in 2013. Yeah! Sure!
Such are the lying ways of the revolution.
The Devil's Excrement 
November 12, 2012 at 11:11 am
[…] VENEZUELA Lying As A Way Of Life In The Chavez Revolution […]
November 7, 2012 at 11:20 pm
Boludo Tejano,
I agree with you….those who would call someone racist who is not, and disqualify others for their belief in God,in my opinion are not only authoritarian in nature but getting very close to the kind of politics that can become dangerous.
The whole scare tactic they had going concerning women was another doozy.
The propaganda wars are becoming so very unethical and unfortunately they influence the vast hoards of weak minded and prejudiced.
November 7, 2012 at 11:10 pm
Miguel Octavio, I apologize in advance for mentioning US politics. 🙂
Firepiggette, a.k.a. Coche de Fuego:
I was born and raised in the North in a secular household in a deeply blue town. I remain unattached to an organized religion. While I don’t agree with a lot of what social conservatives say, they don’t scare me. Scare stories about what Romney would do regarding women ignore the track record of twenty years of Republican Presidents since 1980.
While I am secular, there have been churchgoers in my family- including a Buddhist sister. While my grandmother would have been overjoyed had I converted to her fundamentalist church, she was tolerant enough to maintain loving relationships with relatives who did not belong to her church. While some may get all bent out of shape about being in a political party with religious people, my point of view is- so what? Politics involves coalitions of people who disagree on some minor points but agree on some major points.
.
The Politically Correct,the fiscally incontinent, the Give Peace a Chance Democrats [I was a pacifist, until the slaughter in Cambodia.] and the US as Great Sinner crowd [see Bill Ayers-Obama connections] scare me a lot more than the Bible Thumpers, which is why I have no hesitation in voting Republican.
Call me a Post Liberal.
November 7, 2012 at 7:59 pm
Rosanet: I dont like my blog to be dominated by US news and politics, there are blogs for that. But, I agree with you. I was even more offended by the rejection of Romney’s chruch (All churches are weird when you come down to it) Moreover, events in Venezuela have dominated my attention this year. But, as a ten year resident of Massachusetts, in the McGovern/Kennedy years (Don’t blame me, I am from Massachusetts time), one day I would like to read enough to understand how a Mormon, Republican, somehow managed not only to get elected, but reelected in that Democratic, Catholic state.
November 7, 2012 at 11:10 pm
I don’t get the rejection of any of this stuff.
To reject someone because they are religious or atheist to me is just bizarre, and Rosanet is correct, there is no evidence that Romney is racist….just a bunch of unethical propaganda
November 7, 2012 at 7:50 pm
I have been a Democrat all my life. I was elated and proud when Obama got elected. However, the Democratic propaganda during this electoral campaign portraying Republican voters as racist simply because their candidate is white has been nothing short of a scandal. The Republican party or Romney’s platform was never racist. That is a fact. So the libel of racist (which was thrown only at the whites) was due solely to Romney’s (and the voters’) white skin .
The US is the only European heritage country with a white majority population that has had the moral compass to elect as president (not once but twice) an ethnic, cultural, religious, racial outlier and outsider. (Are the Europeans ready for that, Kepler?) This has been brought about thanks to decades of dedication, atonement and sacrifice (remember the civil war?) by the majority white US population, by the population as a whole. To refuse to recognize this achievement of the white US population, by e.g. explaining away the election of Obama as resulting from a shift to a non-white electorate, is not just a twisting of the facts, it is actually anti-white racist arrogance. Entitlements are not inherited, they cannot be taken for granted.
November 8, 2012 at 5:51 am
Rosanet,
I don’t want to discuss forever the US matters here. Sorry I brought them in.
But just to tell you: you can criticize Europe all you want. I am a citizen of the world and I s..t on nationalisms of any kind. I have found those with these senses of “nationalism” or “patriotism” are not precisely the ones who have delivered the most to the community they are in.
But in any case: I find it completely incredibly you forget the simple fact
the United States of America had about or over 10% of African Americans already at the moment of its creation over 200 years ago. It was about time for an African American to be elected. Europe didn’t have something similar even 20 years ago. Yeah, very impressive…really.
November 7, 2012 at 7:06 pm
Is there any other way for a Revolution?
November 7, 2012 at 6:23 pm
I agree.A lot of people who voted Obama last time were not motivated this time but couldn’t bring themselves to vote for Romney.There is this idea that the religious are dominating the Republican party now and many do not like that.If we had had a different and less religious type of Republican he might have won.A lot of Democrats are disappointed with Obama right now.
November 7, 2012 at 6:01 pm
No Kepler, the US is a very diverse country. You are thinking very particular men over 50, which exist in certain regions of certain states. But if Romney were not Mormon, I think he would have given Obama a run for his money and beat him. Romney won by more than 20% near Miami, Obama by more than 20% on the other side of Floridato the west. Same in LA, in LA 20% for Obama, north of it 20% for Romney. Geographically, the country moved to the right, not the left, even if Obama won. And again, remove the Mormon part, which a lot of people are biased against, and Obama may have been leaving in January.
November 7, 2012 at 1:22 pm
Gee, thank God I am not a white man who doesn’t get to be part of ” diversity”. When they eliminate white men, then they will start to eliminate white women, but hey by that time I will get to smoke myself into an oblivion 🙂
What is the world coming to.I think most countries are going retrograde, just like the planet mercury does from time to time.
November 7, 2012 at 1:56 am
Hehe…white men, specially over 50, are absolutely mad. And Hugo Chávez FrÃas with them: Obama has won.
http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/waehler-analyse-so-hat-amerika-gewaehlt-a-865606.html
November 7, 2012 at 2:08 pm
Is that supposed to contain a message? Latinos in Miami are also mad, so what?
November 7, 2012 at 2:21 pm
I didn’t get the message either so I just made a kind of joke.Maybe Kep can explain?
November 7, 2012 at 4:31 pm
You mean Cubanos? The clear majority of Latinos US-wide favoured Obama. As for Miami Cubans who persevere in intransigence: their bitterness is actually counter-productive to any change in Cuba.
November 7, 2012 at 4:36 pm
Cubans in Miami are as much a majority among Latinos, as your white men over 50 one, the statement is as valid, or useless. Whether they are bitter or not, as long as the bearded one is there nothing will change. Same with Hugo.
November 7, 2012 at 4:56 pm
OK, I should have said: “mostly white men over 50 or white women over 65”, which, obviously does not mean there can’t be mad white men under 50 or the same for women under 65.
In any case: Obama’s victory is something Chávez doesn’t like so I doubly rejoice.
November 6, 2012 at 9:08 am
The US government is the same way these days, nothing but lies. Lies about Benghazi, lies about whats in laws, lies about plans, even the government statistics are all lies. We’ll see if our government has learned to cheat at the polls today.
November 5, 2012 at 2:45 pm
To name Adan, he would have to resign, name Maduro Presidente and then have Maduro resign, can Chavez trust him?
November 5, 2012 at 2:56 pm
Maduro is a puppet who can be bought quickly. Even if Chavez resigns, he will still be more powerful than any replacement. The Cubans can also show Maduro what a bullet can do to his future if he doesn’t accept cash.
Moreover, since when does Chavez follow the constitution? Chavez wrote the constitution and Chavez is the final say on interpreting the constitution.
November 5, 2012 at 2:43 pm
Apparently Chavez has minimized his public appearances and public statements since Oct 7. This is not like him. Chavez is likely suffering and on drugs. Just like Fidel appointed his brother Raoul, Chavez will likely appoint Adnan to be in charge, possibly before Chavez dies. An election might end up the prosecution of thousands of Chavistas. They won’t let that happen.
Chavez can get around the succession difficulties by simply appointing his brother Adnan to be vice-president or head of the AN or whatever position would best let Adnan move up to presidency.
For now, the only certain change in government is that the Chavistas will steal and lie even more than before. They have a guaranteed six years to clean out the country’s treasury.
November 5, 2012 at 12:34 pm
Might I further suggest that the ‘biggest’ lie is the claim that Hugo Chavez made himself, that he was miraculously cured from cancer and will serve a full 6 year term. He isn’t, and he won’t. I’ve written all summer on these blogs that prior to the October elections the greatest danger to Venezuela was having Hugo’s name being replaced by Adan’s one week prior to the vote. It didn’t happen. The opposition should now concentrate all, and I mean all (!), of its energies to preparing for an illegal vote on changing the Venezuelan constitution to allow for a different succession mandate. It should be the highest topic of conversation among all the opposition candidates. They should be prepared for all possibilities thrown-up against them by the PSUV. You know it’s coming. You just know it.
If they stop this, then there will be another vote for President very shortly. With the right strategy, Maduro can be beaten. A new vote for the Presidency will be here within the next 6 to 12 months. Prepare for it! It’s not the time to despair. It’s the time to be vigilant. Study the constitutional angles,…now. Don’t wait. Another vote is coming. Chavez lied, and his days on this earth are numbered. He knows it too. Lies have consequences. A change in government for Venezuela is coming,…and soon! Stay cheerful. Stay optimistic.
November 6, 2012 at 11:38 am
One more time: Chavez will NEVER leave power via the ballot box. As long as he is alive, his name will be on the ballot. And he will “win”.
November 6, 2012 at 5:29 pm
There will never be another election in Venezuela with Hugo Chavez’s name on the ballot. The idea that a wholly unqualified, bumptious and ill-educated man should have risen to such power on the world stage could only have come about as a result of a pact with the devil. Just as in the last chapter of Goethe’s Faust, Mephistopheles will emerge from the depths in the very near future, take Hugo by the hand, and walk with him to one of the gates described in Dante’s Inferno. It’s doubtful that you’ll see his name on any more ballots,……..down there.
November 5, 2012 at 12:34 pm
All governments lie, it’s only a matter of degree. If a politicians lips are moving, he’s lying!