The Devil's Excrement

–Venezuelan Foreign Minister rejects Mexico’s ultimatum as an aggression against Venezuela

–Venezuela blames Fox for this impasse

–It was Fox that began the aggression.

–Venezuela removes its Ambassador from México

After yesterday’s statement by President Chavez in his Sunday’s program Alo Presidente, the Mexican Foreign Minister essentially threatened to withdraw its Ambassador
tomorrow unless an apology is forthcoming in the next 24 hours.
Yesterday Chavez used a phrase from Florentino and the Devil, a
Venezuelan musical piece, in which a man argues with the Devil all
night. In this piece, one part says something like “if you start
trouble with me, I can prick you”.

For the last few days we have heard from the Venezuelan Foreign
Minister and Venezuela’s Ambassador to Mexico that the conflict between
the two countries had been ironed out, but the tone from Mexico was
still one of concern. Withdrawing its Ambassador is a de facto breaking
of relations between the two countries.

Somehow,
the Prosecutor General gets the best of me. I find the things he says
so outrageous, that I just react viscerally to them. The other day it
was his claim that he was being very “coherent” about the Anderson
case, today it is his claim that his only witness, the one that
Colombian intelligence police says was in jail, is a false
psychiatrist, member of the paramilitary and was in jail for identity
theft, is not a crook, according to our wonderful Prosecutor General.

Imagine, a guy capable of smuggling 12 kilos (26.45 pounds) of C4, according to his own testimony, of
the powerful, high velocity explosive, is considered to be by our own
Prosecutor General a stand up citizen, a “good” guy, but certainly not
a crook or a delinquent, in the words of the man anointed in by the
empty revolution to defend the law.

But
I guess that I am not the only one that gets irked by the Prosecutor
General, as Tal Cual Editor Teodoro Petkoff continues to blast him in
his Editorials. For Petkoff it is somewhat personal, as the Prosecutor
General Isaias Rodriguez was a friend and member of his party
Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) from its birth. Isaias took the time to
snipe back at Petkoff yesterday in terms that are to me quite
inappropriate for a man holding an office as important as his. Said Isaias:
“I want to tell Teodoro that I am not going to marry him, to please
stop all that love with me. I don’t like men. For a long time he has
been devoting an inordinate amount of Editorials to me”

Meanwhile, showing their utmost stupidity the leaders’ of Chavez’ party MVR, automatically disqualify the information coming from Colombian intelligence services about the star witness in the Anderson
case. For them “it is a plan by Colombian oligarchy against the
Venezuelan Government, directed by President Bush”. They fail to note
that the Prosecutor’s office failed to contact the Colombian
intelligence agency to check on the credentials or even existence of
their now star witness, but they provide instant solidarity to the
Prosecutor General, which by the way should be an office which is
independent of the Government, as its most important and basic mandate
is very simple to uphold the law. But this is the silly revolution.

Oh yes, I was almost forgetting that our esteemed Prosecutor General claims
the Colombian paramilitary are out to murder him. He never explains why
he is the target, but I guess we do not have the grandiose image of
himself that he clearly holds.

To
complete the post, Petkoff’s Editorial in Tal Cual. Even before I read
it I was quite sure I was not only going to translate, but how could I
miss posting the picture accompanying it of Agent Smart talking into
his shoe:

The Super Witness by Teodoro Petkoff in Tal Cual

Well,
now the cat has jumped into the sink! It so happens that according to
the Colombian DAS (Intelligence Agency), the man that “saw, heard,
touched, smelled and tasted it”, the super witness of Isaias is a guy
with “a penal record in the Colombian Prosecutor’s office for the
crimes of identity theft, swindle and use of false documents”

The
key man of Isaias, according to DAS, is thus, a charlatan, a swindler
and probably mitomanous. The guy, says the DAS, “was detained in 1999
for making believe he was a medical psychiatrist”. The same fib that he
told Isaias who swallowed it whole.

In all of this,
what amazes the most is the incredible ineptitude of the Prosecutor’s
Office. Not taking even the smallest precaution of finding out in Colombia
who the guy is, borders on mental retardation. People like Isaias are
the ones that always fall for the old trick of the “fake money swindle”.

Any
competent charlatan could have tricked the. That neither DAS nor the
Colombian Foreign Ministry have received “any requirement for the
Venezuelan authorities” is simply astonishing. All of the Venezuelan
media have been looking for , from the first moment, information in Colombia, but the Prosecutor’s office did not even think of doing it. My God, in whose hands are we!

Besides the fact that a single testimony does not constitute proof, that an accusation of the gravity
like the ones he made, can be faked-if the DAS is correct- on the bases
of a charlatan, of a swindler, whose personality was never verified, it
practically leaves the case hanging fromm a string.

The only thing missing is for the Prosecutor’s Office to present Super Agent 86 as a witness to the Court.

Alter a ridicule of this magnitude, Isaias Rodríguez will have to seriously consider his resignation. It is a matter of decorum.

Unless
he prefers to resort to, to analyze his case, the professional services
of Doctor Giovanni Vasquez De Armas (the name of the super witness),
the famous Colombian psychiatrist.

Abuse of Power, Corruption, Misuse of Funds, Mismanagement, Wasting
Public Funds, Misapropiation of Funds, Violation of Electoral Laws,
Lack of Transparency, Absence of Ethical Values, Dishonesty…In any
other country this would cause an outrage, this money could be used for
better purposes, rather than this self-serving, self-promoting, misuse of public property..

Only the empty revolution can show so much in a single picture!

(Thanks Tupa for the picture in ND)

Tonight as described blow by blow
by Daniel, who happened to be blogging live Chavez’ “cadena”
(Nationwide obligatory TV and radio transmission) , Hugo Chavez had less than kind words for Mexican President Vicente Fox, telling him among other things:

–“It saddens me to see you give yourself up like that to the US”
–“The Mexican President left bleeding thrugh his wounds”
–“How can the President of such brave people become a puppy of the empire”

Curious how Chavez’ words were posted immediately
in the MINCI site, suggesting this was not as improvised as it may
seem at first sight. You could say that Chavez’ verbal diarrea hit the Fox, as the
Mexican Foreign Minister took only minutes to call the Venezuelan Ambassador tot “explain”o his Government the statements by President Chavez against President Fox.

This will likely create a crisis between the two countries, which will
not be as easy for Chavez to get out of as others in the past. Only
last week he had a bitter exchange with Peruvian President Toledo who
told Chavez not tyo try to teach him about economics, because he was an
economist himslef and not to try to teach him about poverty, because he
grew up poor too. As usual, our President knows how to destroy for the
sake of destroying, in this case relations with the most important
Latin American economy and one of the most important Venezuelan tarding
partners.

Note added: To add insult to injury the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry today justified
Chavez’s insults against President Fox, saying that Fox was very
agressive against Chavez in Mar del Plata. Of course, Fox never
mentioned Chavez directly when he criticized the anti-Free Trade treaty
Group, but Chavez simply insulted Fox directly. This looks like the first chapter in
what could be a long and unnecessary fight!

A few days ago I wrote about the strange
case of the structured notes which remarkably has received little attention
from the local press, but today Tal Cual Editor Teodoro Petkoff tells the same
story I did, which I will not repeat. He estimates the profit in the “transaction” at
only some US$ 120 million. It is worth translating the last part of this
article with his conclusion about this strange transaction, which to me simply proves
the depth of corruption, putrefaction and dishonesty at the highest levels of this
“revolutionary” Government and at the highest levels in this country’s history.

What is the excuse this time? That Chavez does not know
about it? If he did, he should be impeached for corruption, if he didn’t, he is
too incompetent to be President. But we know that! Here are Petkoff’s conclusions :

Thus,
without an auction, without the needed advertising, in
a fingercratic transaction, the Minister of Finance, The National
Treasury (the
Head of which, coincidentally is the wife of the Minister of Defense)
and the
Director of Public Credit held the sale of bonds for US$662 million,
leaving in
the air a number of questions about which neither Clodosbaldo (the
Comptroller)
nor Isaias (the Prosecutor General so keen on political cases involving
his enemies) have done anything about it: How were the buyers selected?
Who were
they? Why some and not others? What was the method used to establish
the price?
Who pocketed the difference?

In any case, within the regime of Exchange controls, some
financial institutions received securities for US$ 662 million, that happily
left the country singing along, for them, there was no prohibition to leave the
country.

From the New York Times by paid subscription, full text courtesy of Under the Broom Tree

The Idiots Abroad by John Tierney in the NYT

If President Bush wants to know what went wrong on his trip south, I recommend
a book by three Latin American journalists. Their “Guide to the Perfect
Latin American Idiot,” a best seller when it was published nine years ago,
remains indispensable for understanding phenomena like Diego Maradona.

Maradona, born in a shantytown near Buenos Aires,
became the world’s most famous soccer player in the 1980’s after he left Argentina to play for teams in Spain and Italy. Besides collecting his $5
million salary in Europe, he played exhibition
games in Arab countries at $325,000 per appearance and made $10 million
annually in endorsement contracts with corporations based in at least four
continents, companies like Puma, Fuji-Xerox and Coca-Cola.

And what did he learn from this international rags-to-riches tale? During
Bush’s visit to Argentina,
Maradona took time out from his busy schedule (he now has a television show) to
help rally tens of thousands of people against that horrible modern scourge:
free trade.

He was one of the headliners at the rally along with Hugo Chávez, the socialist
president of Venezuela, who
is determined to prevent a free trade agreement among Latin American countries
and the United States.

“We are going to stand against the human trash known as Bush,”
Maradona told the crowd, between puffs on a cigar given to him by one of his
heroes, Fidel Castro.

To be fair, this sort of thinker exists on other continents, too. But what
distinguishes the Perfect Latin American Idiot is his persistence. No matter
how far the continent falls behind the rest of the world, its populists cling
to the same beliefs in socialism and big government, the same distrust of
capitalism and free trade, the same conviction that Latin American poverty is
the fault of the United
States.

“Maradona embodies the wonderful possibilities of globalization, yet he
does everything in his power to deny people poorer than himself to participate
in that world,” said one of the “Perfect Idiot” authors, Alvaro
Vargas Llosa, the Peruvian journalist (and son of the novelist Mario Vargas
Llosa). “Everything Maradona and Chavez stand for has been tried before.
These populists are repeating the mistakes of the Mexican Revolution, of Brazil in the 30’s, of Argentina in the 50’s, of Peru in the
80’s.”

The new wave of populists is led by Chávez, who’s been using the recent
windfall in oil revenues to expand government and solidify his hold on power.
But even while $100 million in oil money pours into Venezuela
every day ($60 million of that from those terrible gringos north of the Rio Grande), the poverty
rate has risen above 50 percent.

Meanwhile, the poverty rate has declined sharply in Chile, to about 20 percent
(compared with about 50 percent in the rest of the continent). Chile has become South America’s economic
success story by embracing capitalism and making its own free trade agreements
with the United States and
other countries, most recently China.

Bush went to the Latin America summit meeting hoping to persuade the rest of
the continent to follow Chile’s
example – the right message but the wrong messenger and the wrong place. Any
American president, especially one as unpopular as Bush, makes too easy a
target for the populists and rioters who turned the meeting into their own
photo opportunity.

“Nothing has ever emerged from a Latin summit,” said José Piñera, the
Chilean reformer who started the first private-account social-security system,
and then helped introduce similar systems in two dozen other countries.
“Real change blossoms from good internal public policies. President Bush
should not attend and dignify these weapons of mass distraction.”

The best American strategy, as Alvaro Vargas Llosa says, would be to do less in
Latin America. Instead of publicly pressuring
the whole continent to sign a free trade agreement, quietly make deals with the
countries that want one. Instead of denouncing and plotting against Chávez,
ignore him.

And instead of fighting a drug war in South America,
surrender. The war has been utterly ineffectual at stopping the flow of
cocaine, which has actually gotten cheaper on American streets. But by
infuriating communities in the Andes, the war
has created a political base for populists running on anti-American platforms.
They may be economic dunces, but in this case the perfect idiots are the drug
warriors in Washington
helping to elect them.

Here is Petkoff’s take on the Danilo Anderson case. The Prosecutor had
said that they had the complete movie of who killed Anderson and why,
step by step. Well, the whole things is so full of inconsistencies and
gaps, that it is very hard to take the thing seriously. Here are just
two facts:

-All of the “evidence’ is just the testimony of a single person, a
former member of the Colombian Auto defenses according to some, just a
Colombian Doctor according to the Prosecutor Isaias Rodriguez. Imagine
that the testimony of one person and some the fact that some
of the people talked to each other is the extent of the evidence. There
is nothing else in the case files according to the defense lawyers!

-The Attorney General/Prosecutor Isaias Rodriguez had said that the
“CIA was involved”. Then a warrant for the arrest of reporter Salvador
Romani was issued. Romani has been accused by the Cuban Government of
working for the CIA. The problem is that that Romani does not live in Venezuela. Thus, the intelligence police left empty handed, only to come back half an hour later with a different
arrest warrant to detain Romani’s son. Not even the Keystone cops
screwed up so badly! In fact, Romani’s wife still thinks they want her
husabnd and not the son. But the revolution does not care for such
petty details, what is important is that they have a Romani in jail,
even if it’s the wrong one. I wonder what hapened now to the CIA
connection?

That is the state of the judicial power in Venezuela. To those that are
pro-Chavez I just remind them that one day, they or their close
relatives, may have to face that same system of (In)Justice, they will
then join the opposition they so despise today.

Here is more in Petkoff’s usual clear words

Purple
Soup by Teodoro Petkoff in Tal Cual

The Government is turning the Venezuelan Judicial system into pieces. Last
week, for the nth. time, a judge, Maria Mercedes Prado, was removed because she
sentenced in a way that the Government had not authorized. That is the way it
is now: judges can only sentence, especially in cases of political connotation,
according to the instructions that officialdom gives them.

Yesterday, this judge tried to explain her case, in front of the media,
in the Press Hall of the Supreme Court. She was unable to do it. The
electricity was cut off and between the National Guard, the subpoena servers
and private guards she was kicked out of the room and the reporters and photographers
were kicked out violently. The Press Hall was shutdown indefinitely.

What was the judge going to say? That according to the Penal
Processing Code she had no other recourse that give one of the suspects
conditional freedom for the case of the bombs placed in the Spanish and
Colombian consulates, because the Prosecutor in charge of accusing him, Gilberto
Landaeta, had not done so? She would have pointed out, thus, the negligence of
the Prosecutor and by extension, of the Prosecutor’s office as a whole. With
violence, she was denied her right to express her criteria, using a procedure that
can only be explained by the thick and smelly atmosphere of authoritarism and
abuse to the rights of citizens that is enveloping the country. The Supreme
Court Justice that ordered that barbaric act did it because she feels like a
bully, but above all, because she knows she is supported. Because she knows
that this is the official style.

A typical style of bullies. Nobody in the Supreme Court was capable of
calling her to order because bullies, sometimes, manage to create a climate of
intimidation in their surroundings.

While that judge was being removed, another was put in charge of the Anderson case. Only three
hours later she issued the warrants for the arrests. Quite a prodigy of speed
reading, because the case has hundreds of files. Someone with a dirty mind
could speculate however, that the new judge knowing the fate of Doctor Prado
(and others before her, for the same reasons), “prudently” opted to preserve
her health, doing what was asked of her, without stopping to investigate too
much. In fact, when she was asked about the evidence to substantiate the case,
besides those pointed out by Isaias she “revealed” two more: that someone died;
a second one, that his name was Danilo Anderson. If the other eight are like
that (Isaias spoke of twelve), it looks uphill for the Prosecutor’s office to convince
us that they really have a case.

The judicial system and the Prosecutor’s office not only need to be
honest but have to appear to be honest. Up to now there are too many observed
inconsistencies and too many questions that are raised by what they have done.
If things continue to go like this, the respectability and credibility of the
Prosecutor’s Office, that the Prosecutor himself questioned in his ineffable
internal memoranda, are being put into question. The suspicion that we may be
facing a montage for political ends
is establishing itself in public opinion. And Isaias’ interview in Channel 8
does nothing to dissipate that suspicion; on the contrary, it emphasizes it.

Continuing
in its attempt to intimidate and block the opposition just prior to the
upcoming elections for the National Assembly, a Judge decided tonight to
charge four of the Directors of Sumate for conspiracy against the Government.
The charge comes form receiving funds from the National Endowment for Democracy
for electoral education. Sumate has been a thorn in the Government’s shoe as it
activities allowed the opposition to gather the signatures to be able to call
for the recall of Hugo Chavez. Sumate has unveiled all of the problems with the
electoral process in Venezuela
and its leaders have been
going around the world presenting this document (in English here) about
the State of Democracy in Venezuela. In
contrast to the Government that uses State funds for party activities without accountability, Sumate
has provided all of its financial information on the web, including contracts with funding
agencies, as well as its
financials.

This is simply another fascist act by the Government: find a way to criminalize
the opposition activities in order to stop them and intimidate them. The
Prosecutor handling the case is Prosecutor Luisa Ortega, who has taken over
most of the responsibilities that Danilo Anderson used to have of handling
political cases. Meanwhile, all accusations against the Government, including
murders, abuse of power and corruption are simply shelved or
“decided” by a Judiciary that is totally controlled by the Government.

Did I forget to say some people claim this is still a democracy?