The Devil's Excrement

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—Hugo Chavez orders one million computers from Portugal. Of
course, these are nothing more than modified Classmate PCs manufactured in Portugal under
license from Intel. The price was not revealed, but I do hope Chavez drove a
hard bargain, those PCs are
sold in Portugal
(without subsidy) for 285 Euros (US$ 391.6 at todays exchange rate). But you
can find it in Amazon for  US$ 359.1. Of course, I am
assuming there were no robolutionary intermediaries in the transaction.

—And Chavez called the US economic policies a sinking ship, criticizing
the printing of money and the easy mortgages. This from a man that has
increased the money supply in five years from US$ 14 billion to US$ 78 billion
and recently passed a Bill allowing people to get mortgages with no down
payment!

—And then Chavez praises
the Caracas Stock Exchange because it is now disconnected from the New York
Stock Exchange. That is like saying the dinosaurs are disconnected from the
Earth. Hugo Chavez and his policies destroyed the Caracas Stock Exchange. When
he got to power in 1998, daily volume in stocks was US$ 10-20 million, it is
down to half a million these days, as the market ahs become simply irrelevant.
Not one company has come public in recent years (5?) as the stock market
becomes an irrelevant business for local brokers.

—And in another
robolutionary tidbit, Podemos Deputy Juan Molina denounced
that Chavista Deputy Hiroshima Bravo collects two salaries every month, one
from the National Assembly ad the other form the tax office. I guess that is
the reason why they named her Head of the Finance Committee last year, she
certainly knows how to count her money.

—And investigations on
the suitcase case Maletagate are very advanced according
to the Prosecutor. Well, in the US they are already holding a trial
of crimes that took place after the suitcase and here things are very advanced
That is Venezuelan Justice, if it exists.
 

—Yesterday, I wrote
about the opposition President of the Universidad de Los Andes
Student Council, who asked for asylum at the Vaticans Embassy and his rights
and the laws are not being respected. Today the opposition President of the
student council of Universidad del Zulia was killed by twenty shots from a car that intercepted the
path of the vehicle transporting him. It may be coincidental, but it is
certainly very convenient for the Government!

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Nixon
Moreno was an opposition student leader who was ready to win the elections for
student council at the Universidad de Los Andes when the Government canceled the
elections saying they should be supervised by the Electoral Board.
Demonstrations followed the cancelation and then the Government charged Moreno
with raping a police women. Moreno
asked for asylum from the Vatican which he got after
the Vatican
investigated the case. So far, the Venezuelan Government has refused to grant
him asylum, the Electoral Board did not allow him to run for office in his own
State of Merida arguing he does not reside in that State (Neither do dozens of
Chavista candidates all over the country) and the busy Comptroller is trying to
invalidate his Bachelors degree by doing an exhaustive investigation on how
Moreno passed his last few courses remotely from the Vatican’s Embassy. This is
simply further harassment and violation of Moreno’s
rights. Today, Teodoro Petkoff addresses the issue of how the Chavez Government
ignores treaties and international law and acts like Dictators of the past and
present.

A Time of Rats by Teodoro Petkoff in Tal Cual

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What officialdom is doing with Nixon Moreno goes beyond the
limits of being a mean thing. But it gives you a good measure of the moral
fiber of the people of the Venezuelan Government. There are those that slander
Nixon and there are those who are silent, even if they now what a despicable
thing the whole thing is. But the worst one is the maximum leader. The one that
has no qualms in pointing out publicly that Nixon is a “rapist”. It
is the problem of not being named Daniel Ortega. They not only invented an
absurd accusation, about the supposed attempt of rape of a policewoman in the
middle of a student demonstration and with hundreds of witnesses that deny such
a fabrication, but now the Government is denying him safe passage to leave the
Vatican’s Embassy, where he has been under asylum and travel abroad. In other
words, the Government pretends to leave Nixon in jail at the Vatican’s Embassy,
This is the same thing the Dictator Odria did wit Haya de la Torre during five
and a bit years in the Colombian Embassy in Peru and the same as the brutal
military dictatorship of Burma maintains in prison in her house the daring
fighter for human rights that she denounces and fights. It is the same
attitude. It is the same disdain for legality and international agreements. The
same disdain for public opinion. Exactly the same contempt for human beings. We
are living in times of rats.

And another brilliant accomplishment of the robolution: Top spot in the list of murder capitals of the world. I am sure some PSF can find some silver lining or positive spin in this…Maybe they will say this is good, after all the opposition is now a majority in Caracas, in time they may kill enough of us to recover their former leadership….

Thanks AM

In a nonsensical decision the Venezuelan Government has just ordered all Venezuelan banks to reserve 50% of all and any investments held in Lehman Brothers and-or Merril Lynch.

Recall that many banks had structured notes in US banks and investment banks which were guaranteed with either dollars or securities and which were purchased with depositors money. Because the parallel swap rate had gone down these were worth much less than what appeared in the banks’ books, creating huge losses.  However some of these notes were at Lehman Brothers which went bankrupt ten days ago. What makes absolutely no sense is to force these banks to take the loss in Merril Lynch, which has agreed to merge with Bank of America. If the merger goes through, all of the investments in Merril Lynch will be honored, which is obviously not the case in Lehman Brothers.

I can think of at least four banks, and it could be more, that can not survive this unless the owners replace the capital. Basically, if they reserve both Lehman and Merril, they are technically bankrupt, not because of Lehman Brotehrs, but because of this resolution.

I am not sure the Government understands what it just did, but it coudl be the start of a financial crisis…

So much for being immune to the US credit crisis as Chavez claims…

In another step defining the increasing intolerance of the
Chavez administration, the
Venezuelan Government expelled the Director for the Americas for Human
Rights Watch (HRW), Jose Maria Vivancos, and one other HRW worker on direct
orders of President Hugo Chavez.

I. Executive Summary

Political Discrimination

The Courts

The Media

Organized Labor

Civil Society

The Future of Venezuelan Democracy

II. Political Discrimination

Political Discrimination under International Law

Political Discrimination under Venezuelan Law

Political Patronage and Discrimination Before Chávez

Blacklisting: The “Tascón List” and “Maisanta Program”

Discrimination in PDVSA

Discrimination in Other Areas

Recommendations

III. The Courts

International Norms on Judicial Independence

Background

The 2004 Court-Packing Law

A Compliant Court

Recommendations

IV. The Media

Venezuela’s Polarized Media

Toughening Speech Offenses

Regulating Media Content

Restricting Information

International Norms

Access to Information under Venezuelan Law

Failure to Respect the Right of Access to Information

Controlling the Airwaves

Community Radio and Television

Lack of Judicial Protection of Freedom of Expression

Recommendations

V. Organized Labor

Freedom of Association under International Law

Freedom of Association under Venezuelan Law

Organized Labor Before Chávez

Electoral Interference and the Denial of Collective Bargaining Rights

Government Favoritism and the Denial of Collective Bargaining Rights

Government Reprisals: The Oil Sector

New Workers’ Associations: Risks to Freedom of Association

Lack of Judicial Protection of Freedom of Association

Recommendations

VI. Civil Society

International Norms on Civil Society

Deteriorated Relations with Civil Society

Two Divergent Approaches to Rights Advocates

Prosecutorial Harassment

Public Condemnation

Attempts to Exclude NGOS from International Forums

Proposed Legal Restrictions

Judicial Rulings Affecting Civil Society

Recommendations

Acknowledgments

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Hugo
Chavez yesterday:

“{We have to take all
measures so that the (financial crisis) does not affect us and one of them is
to save both at the individual level, as well as state Governments, Ministries,
the National Government “(He also used the word wasteful, but I cant find
that link)

Wow! Where should I start
on this one? Or even can I even attempt to say anything about this statement?

Let’s start at a very
basic level: This from a man who maintains two homes, Miraflores and La Casona,
but has not been to La Casona in years.

Or, this from a man that
subsidizes gasoline to the tune of US$ 14 billion per year.

Someone that gives away,
each and every single day of the year US$ 129,000 barrels of oil, with two
years grace period and twenty years to pay at 2% interest.

Someone who keeps a
Caracas Teheran weekly flight that goes empty for ideological reasons.

Someone who gives away
power plants to Nicaragua, whyile Venezuela has blackouts.

Someone who has been
buying jet fighters, submarines, tanks, rifles, to the tune of US$ 10 billion
in the last three years, while people go hungry in Venezuela.

Someone who sends jet
planes filled with suitcases with cash to help his buddies.

Someone who buys
Argentina’s debt and sells it at a loss just to support his ideological
buddies.

Someone who sends
helicopters to help his buddy Evo.

Someone who travels one
third of the year visiting Heads of State, signing agreements that never come
to very much. (He is leaving tomorrow again)

Someone who spends money
that could be used elsewhere to buy perfectly functioning private companies,
rather than spend the money on new companies that would complement what the
private ones are doing.

Someone who allows
corruption to reach billion dollar levels in order to control those around him.

Someone who on his first
day on the job reduced the number of ministries from 18 to 14, only to expand
it to 28 ten years later.

Someone who stole the
countrys international reserves to create a development fund that spend 40% of
its budget on financial operations.

Someone who allows his
Ministers, Justices and other high Government officials to earn more than 25-30
times the minimum salary, up from ten times when he got to power.

Someone that subsidizes
travel, cars, luxury items for well to do Venezuelans just to stay in power.

Someone who bought a US$
85 million plane so he could travel in comfort.

Someone who lends the
country’s jets so that his political buddies can travel around.

Someone who buys the
country’s debt and PDVSA’s debt at outrageously high prices so that he can
remove disclosure rules in front of international authorities.

Someone who spends as much
on advertising and media than on actual projects.

Someone who prefers to
give projects and money to foreign private and state companies than to
Venezuelans ones.

Add to the list, I will
move it into the post!!!

Things have been hectic for me this week, will try to post, but meanwhile Toby Bottome at Veneconomia says a lot of what I wanted to say:

A very heavy load from Veneconomy

In the decade with Hugo Chavez at the helm, the growth of a
non-productive State has been fostered at the expense of the
restriction of the private sector, which does generate income and
create jobs. This policy has generated a hypertrophy in the state
apparatus of such proportions that it has made the country totally
dependant on oil and placed it in a dangerously vulnerable position in
these times of low oil prices.

Last week, Hugo Chavez himself admitted this weakness and gave the
first official sign that he neither can nor does he want to cope with
this heavy load, when he stated, “We cannot continue incorporating an
additional 50,000 workers a year, that is not sustainable” the
squandering has to stop, “it is necessary to be efficient with
spending.” “We are given to squandering resources,  we ourselves
have increased the practice of political patronage.” Even though Chavez
is right and he had been warned of the danger, he spoke out too late.

One sign that the State is top heavy is the increase in the number of
ministries, 28 in all with the creation of the Ministry for Women’s
Affairs in June this year. That’s twelve more than in 1998 when Chavez
promised to put an end to Venezuela’s inflated bureaucracy.

Added to this is that, after the innumerable nationalizations, state
takeovers and/or confiscations that the government has been heading up,
more than a dozen private companies have become oil-dependant,
inefficient organizations. And that is quite apart from the creation of
hundreds of cooperatives and nearly a dozen missions, which are also
subsidized with oil dollars.

But the most revealing sign of this dangerous hypertrophy of the
government apparatus is the attendant excessive growth in the number of
workers employed by the State. According to data from the National
Statistics Institute, the government services’ payroll has grown by
72.1% in eight years, from 1,283,963 people in 2000 to 2,209,862 as at
July 30, 2008. Some analysts are even of the opinion that the
government payroll is underestimated, as, if the employees of a certain
type of State contractors that have a dependant relationship with
government agencies are added, the number could easily reach 4 million.
It is worth mentioning that one of the agencies that have most
increased their payroll is the Ministry of Defense, with the hiring of
more than 300,000 people for the National Command of the National
Reserve, followed by PDVSA, where the payroll went from 45,000 workers
in 2002 to more than 100,000 in 2008.

Meanwhile, the number of employees in the private sector has grown by only 15.5% since 2000, from 4,026,064 to 4,650,722.

Now, with the drop in oil prices, the VenezuelanState will find it even
less viable to continue financing this huge payroll; not even if the
barrel stays at $100.

What is worse, the collapse of the oil price bubble finds the private
sector diminished and without either the capacity or the flexibility to
absorb this number of workers. Unfortunately, the outlook for
Venezuelans includes higher unemployment, increased poverty, and more
hunger.

Last night I sat to write a post, but couldn’t. It was not
writer’s block; it was writer’s incredulity. Imagine the abstract problem of a
Head of State having three of his closest confidants accused of protecting
drug traffic and/or supporting a guerrilla movement. Sure the accusation came
from the “evil empire”, the same sworn enemy of that Head of State, but the
evidence backs the Empire. How else could drug shipments coming out of
Venezuela increase by a factor of 16 since Chavez came to power, if not for
collaboration at the highest levels? How can Ramon Rodriguez Chacin deny his
support and collaboration with the FARC?

For almost a week, since Hugo Chavez cut short his visit to
South Africa, reportedly because polls came out saying that his party�s
standing in the polls in the face of the November regional elections was
dropping fast, Chavez has been increasing the level of shrillness.

Using language improper for the time slot he was speaking on, President Chavez kicked out US Ambassador Duddy, telling him “Shitty Yankees, go 1,000 times to Hell”. (Yankees de mierda, vayanse mil veces al carajo)

It was the nth. time Chavez has invoked an attempt on his life to make noise when things look bad for him.

The tape played in the National Assembly today which came from the Government’s TV station had a date from 2005, making everyone wonder if the attempt on Chavez’ life had been cooked up two years ago, but was simply never used…