The Devil's Excrement

This article appeared in El Nacional on Friday and I thought it was
cute and we need humor once in a while to survive, so I translate it. I
am sure Alek will enjoy it.

Intensive
course to hate gringos by Oscar Lucien

Yesterday
I really got blasted celebrating my graduation as a hate lancer. I graduated
from the “Gringo go home” cooperative of the “Mision knee on the ground”. We
received an intensive course to hate gringos within the strategy of asymmetric
war mandated by the commander in chief, maximum leader of the process, to
confront and liquidate the marines that “dobleve” Bush is planning to send to
destroy the pretty revolution. .

Classes
are simple, but one leaves hoarse from shouting so much. Shouting, says the
captain-instructor, is the best way to express hate, our first weapon against
the invading gringos. Even though this squalid newspaper does not give me much
space, I will summarize some of the training sessions to stimulate other fellow
countrymen that want to become hate lancers or become part of the asymmetric
Bolivarian militias and can continue training, endogenously, on their own.

1.
The
course begins with readings on the Liberators’ wisdom. The captain says that the
Liberator was so lucid that he even imagined Bush’s invasion. We fill a
notebook with the phrase “The US seems destined by providence to fill Latin America with hunger and misery in the name of freedom”
and then we stand up in front of a microphone for a few minutes, babbling the
largest amount of hate possible

2.
Endogenous
use of bubble gum. With some coupons that they give to us, we buy bags in the
cooperative filled with plenty of “Bazuka” gum at Mercal and we start
chewing to make huge balls of gum. We go out in a tour of lancers and we take
strategic positions, for example, in Valle Arriba, in the square in front of
the US Embassy, or at the exit of the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter
Saints. We ride the bus with the previously identified gringos and when they
are going to sit down we place the ball on the seat. In this action, which is
apparently contradictory because it expresses hate, we truly have a ball.

3.
Practicing
giving Condoleezza what she deserves. Some countrymen that are regenerating themselves
in jail, make real size dolls of that negrita that Chavez sent to Mision
Robinson. In groups of two, we put lancers in a dark room and we give the doll
what she deserves until it is destroyed. Female lancers get a picture of
Condoleezza. They stare at the picture and shout a number of times: “Alert! Alert!
Bolivar’s sword is walking around Latin America”
and they spit at the picture. Later they clean up the picture and save it
because they have to use it in more than one session.

4.
Firing
practice with Bush. Since the Kalasnikov’s that the maximum leader bought from
his soul brother Putin have not arrived, we train with shotguns borrowed by our
fellow countrymen at the Yare jail. They place a picture of the invading leader
smiling, to get rid of the hate we have been accumulating. The lancers shoot
the picture, but Bush’s smile is made out of a special shielded material and we
get even more pissed. When we empty out
the ammo, although we also end up quite empty of energy, we have to shout
twenty times: “Bush! you shall not pass”

5.
Exam
with the academic committee. The academic committee of our cooperative is a
civic-military one. That is, it is composed of the captain-instructor, two
lieutenants, four sergeants and the civilian that drives the Toyota for the captain and gets the coffees.
Every day they do a multiple choice test, but both male and female lancers are
obligated to pick answer C. I don’t recall all the questions, but some of them
were like this: 1) You are swimming at a beach and a gringo next to you starts
drowning and calling for help. You have to: a) Call the lifesaver b) Help him
out with a rope c) Shout at him “Dumb gringo why do you swim so deep if you can’t
swim. Then you walk along the shore and drink a beer. 2) You are piloting a
plane (imagine Chavez’ plane) and are carrying a Frenchman from Total, a
Spaniard from Repsol and a gringo from Chevron. There is a malfunction and
there are only two parachutes to be distributed among the passengers. Following
the instructions of the endogenous Bolivarian aeronautics a) give a parachute
to the Frenchman and another to the Spaniard b) You give one to the Spaniard
and the other to the Frenchman c) You give the gringo an icon of a saint.

Another thing we are taught is that gringos are stupid.
That is easy to cheat on them and that we should not allow them to cheat us,
because lancer that allows himself to be cheated by a gringo, will never be a
good cheater himself.

Mixing endogenous tactics and strategy what is important
is to surprise them. That is why, when one lancer crosses a gringo on the
street you have to say with a smile “Ay guan tu bi yor frien” and when he
replies “Mitu” the lancer hits his right fist against his left palm and shouts
at him: “Uh, ah Chavez no se va” (Uh, ah , Chavez is not leaving)

The only little problem with the course was when they
invited gringa Eva Golinger to promote her book Chavez’ code. Many lancers were
confused about why she was there and like a bunch of crazy wolves, wanted to
give her what she deserved in the middle of the class. Obviously the
anti-gringo course had had an effect. Despite hitting them repeatedly with the
butt of the rifles they could not stop that sparkling mass of hate until the
captain showed up, raised his briefcase and said they were going to make the
payment of the one hundred dollars that was due to all. The calm was heavenly.
While they distributed the dole, he clarified that there are gringos that on
top of that, are good people.

Hate lancer of the Ezequiel Zamora class Number Ak-47

The President of the National Center for Informatic Technology has some
really scary statements in today’s El Nacional (page B20, by
subscription only). He starts by saying that he considers that the
freedom and lack of control of the Internet is also a source of
domination. He then gives as an example a porno site that differs in
only one letter from the Disney site, as a way of attracting visitors.

He then asks “Do we have control so that each family knows what is good
or bad about the Internet? There is no governability in the web… we
have no conscience of what we have in our hands”. He states that a
country that does not create the tools and barriers, loses sovereignty.
Thus, he says, they are creating a Venezuelan Internet, a network that
will strengthen national sovereignty. They are creating Internet
centers in the barrios, but these will have access only to web pages
made in Venezuela or, if they are foreign webpages, they have to be
hosted in a local network that will control what is published.

Thus, in the name of protecting the kids and sovereignty, these
revolutionary innovators are simply imposing censorship on an unknowing
Venezuelan population. I guess they will call it the Local Narrow Web.
I call it censorship.

What would Kim Il Sung call it? Your leader knows best?

Chavez says:
“To be rich is bad” and those that “have richness” should donate
them…do charity work with them”. But note the Lanvin suit in the
picture, one of the dozens of  fancy brand name suits he has not
precisely paid by him, and it is a pity that his hand is up like that,
otherwise you would see one of the many fancy watches, like Cartier,
Chavez now has. Why doesn’t he donate them? He did not even work for
them. Such is the cynicism of our esteemed leader.

Not bad for a poor rich kid from Sabaneta, Barinas. Of course he wants it all for him, nobody else.

And speaking of poor rich kids from Barinas with huge egos, now that
PDVSA “belongs” to the people, the ID tags that workers carry on their
chests has been changed to this one promoting the cult to the esteemed
leader:

It says” As a worker of the new PDVSA and convinced of the
revolutionary process the nation of Bolivar is undergoing, I carry with
pride on my chest a President compromised with social struggles”.
“Until victory forever”

Shades of Kim Il Sung…

In one of the strangest cases in a while the Amabassador from Paraguay was beaten up severely
as she left the mass held by the Government in memory of the Pope. The
Ambassador was simply leaving the mass, well dressed and apparently was
harrased by Chavista groups that hang around Bolivar square where the
cathedral is. She started walking towards her car (the area is a
boulevard, so she had to walk four blocks) and these guys actually
started beating her up as she tried to get in the car, leaving her face
as in the picture above.

The story gets even stranger at this
point, when the injured Ambassador was taken to the Foreign Ministry
building, which is right at Bolivar Square, where absoluetly nobody was
willing to help her out. As if this were not enough, in the note of
protest by the Paraguayan Foreign Minsitry, which was sent to all local
embassies and international organizations, it is claimed that the
Paraguayan Embassy, the Ambassador and her residence do not even have
one single security person, despite repeated requests by the Paraguayan
Government to the Venezuelan Government to provide it as it is
customarily done. The Chavez Government apologized and said those
guilty of the agression will be punished.

Was this a case of
mistaken oligarchic identity? Is there something more to the story? It
seems unlikely for the Ambassador to have said anything anti-Chavez,
given her position and nationality, which is what is always claimed
whenever someone is injured by the Chavistas that took over Bolivar
Square since about three years ago. To those not familiar with this,
Bolivar Square has become “Chavista territory”, people simply don’t go
there anymore for fear of being harrased. Of course, forget about even
opening your mouth against the Government there. And what does the
Government say or do? Absolutely nothing, such is the state of
lawlessness and the lack of democracy in this empty revolution.

Reporter Patricia Poleo is sentenced to six months in jail
after she was found guilty of defamation of Minister of the Interior
and Justice Jesse Chacon. Chacon sued Poleo over her publication of a
picture of a soldier holding a gun over the dead body of a civilian at
the state’s TV channel.

Let’s examine the charges and the evidence:

Poleo published a picture of an armed soldier over a dead body the day of the November 1992 coup.

-Did Chacon participate in that November 1992 coup? YES

-Was Chacon present at the TV channel where the picture was taken? YES, he was part fo the attacking force.

-Was Chacon armed that day? YES, definitely.

-Did Chacon fire his gun that day at VTV, where innocent civilians were killed? Witnesses say YES!

-Did he kill anyone? Nobody knows, but we don’t know if the man in the picture killed anyone either.

So, the only thing you can accuse Poleo of is of misidentifying Chacon,
the rest is all true! So where is the act of defamation? Saying that
the picture is him, does not affect Chacon’s reputation (which is
what defamation is all about!), what damages his reputation is saying he
was there, he fired agaisnt innocent civilians and may have killed
them. But these are all true!

Of course, the Chavez administration just wants Poleo intimidated and jailed.

President Hugo Chavez continued playing the external enemy
threat card in his speeches, seeing ghosts everywhere in order to distract from
the failures of his Government. Like a modern poor version of Don Quijote, Chavez sees windmills everywhere. Besides the US
invasion, which he has focused on for the last few weeks, he started ranting
about the fact that NATO was using an invasion of Venezuela in its training exercises,
which
was quickly denied by NATO itself. As if this was not enough, he also responded
to supposed statements by Colombian President Uribe saying that unless Venezuela
changed, it would isolate itself. Chavez kept saying he would wait to reply to
see if the statements were true, but proceeded to answer to them anyway, not
once, not twice but three times. The Colombian Foreign Minister denied
that Uribe had even made reference to Venezuela while in Japan, but the
damage to Venezuelan diplomacy was done as Chavez proceeded to say this is all
part of the US plot against Venezuela.

This is all of course a textbook strategy for autocratic
regimes: since personality cults, fear and propaganda can only carry you so
far, you need to create the external enemy in order to reinforce the support of
the loyalist and keep on your side those that are doubters because of the lack
of accomplishments and progress by the Government. These strategies have been
clearly posed by Sakharov and recently presented in clear form in Sharansky’s
“The case for democracy”, a must read for anyone that believes in freedom,
democracy and human rights.

But Venezuela is becoming increasingly a militaristic
country, run by an autocrat who now controls all of the structures of the
state, including the military, who wants to merge the population with the Armed
Forces and who
finds glory in the bloody days of the beginning of the Republic, who talks
about “the civic military unit, forming citizen soldiers and soldiers who are
citizens…people and soldier, soldier and people, you are the most sublime
expression of the civic-military fusion which today becomes the strongest
column of the Bolivarian Venezuela”. Who talks about sovereignty or death, who
calls traitors those who do not understand the meaning of the newly created
reserves. Yes, Venezuela enters deeper into the territory of Chavez’ folly
today, that project that may irreversibly ruin this country for decades to
come, whose only objective is to preserve this madman in power.

And the madman is equally surrounded by
Generals, who not only believe in reincarnation and support his folly, but cry openly when people applaud him because he is a
patriot or justify the existence of the newly created two million men
reserve by
comparing Venezuela
to the State of Israel, “where every man is a soldier”. Meanwhile his Vice
President uses swear words to say that Chavez is great because he sent “el
Imperio al carajo”, an empire who in 1998 decided not to pay attention to
Chavez and let him be, but that Chavez tries to awaken at every step with his
continuous rape of democracy, democratic institutions and justice, in this
unfortunate country.

Meanwhile the death of 19 Venezuelans is celebrated three
years later as a day of “dignity” as there is total impunity in the
investigation of these deaths, let alone the over one hundred people injured
that day. Sadly, of the 19 deaths, people are jailed for only two cases,
because they may involve the Metropolitan Police controlled at the time by an
opposition Mayor. The other 17 cases are not even being investigated, as the
Prosecutor, the same man in charge of enforcing the law in Venezuela openly
says the National Guard refuses to turn over evidence to his office, which
simply proves what a joke he has made of that office which has simply become
another servile unit of the revolution and Chavez’ autocratic power.

In the end it is Chavez that has become the external enemy to all Venezuelans.
Driven by the bearded Cuban fool, he tries to introduce values that violate our
nature and sovereignty. Venezuelans are not militaristic, they do not hate,
they admire the US, and they
don’t want the country to become another Cuba. They just want a better
tomorrow, which has been constantly denied to them in the last thirty years.
But Chavez, the enemy within, just has grandiose plans for himself, not for his
people, which in the end can only have a sad ending for our poor country.

While the Government prosecutes people for simply going to the
Presidential Palace on April 12th. 2002, prohibiting them from leaving
the country and harassing them, the man who started it all, General
Lucas Rincón is exempt from even testifying, least of all being accused
of anything. Last Sunday the Prosecutor said Rincón had been threatened
into saying Chávez had resigned. Today it is the Minister of Defense
Garcia Carneiro who says
that Rincón showed braveness and was under pressure that day.
Meanwhile, the other cynic, that modern version of Perez Jimenez’ Pedro
Estrada called Isaias Rodriguez, gives a speech
describing how he had to break the “information circle” to tell the
world that Chavez had not resigned. Neither of them notes the
“slight” inconsistency that it was only their hero and buddy Lucas Rincón who told Venezuela and the world that Chavez had
resigned. The rest is simply rewriting history the chavista way.

Thus, under the outlaw revolutionary justice and logic, Rincón is
declared innocent by all his buddies, without testifying or even
telling the Venezuelan public why he acted the way he did. Everyone
else is similarly guilty, tried and sentenced by the same legal code of
the revolution even before they testify. Such is the travesty of
Justice in Venezuela under the Chávez revolution.

Whenever people talk about whether there was or not a coup on April
2002, they tend to simplify the events of those April days. To me, what
is important is that April 11th. was a day for decency. Hugo Chavez did
not leave the Presidency because this group or that one decided to
stage a coup. He left, because for days he had been preparing to stop a
peaceful march using violent means and there was part of the
Venezuelan military that was not willing to allow this, in what was
then still a civilized country. Chavez left the Presidency, out of the
sense of outrage by many Generals, some of which had been with him
until hours earlier, over the killing of Venezuelans who peacefully
went that day to the Presidential Palace to protest.

General Manuel Rosendo, up to then a symbol of loyalty to Chavez was
present at a meeting a few days earlier when Chavez talked about using
violence agaisnt his fellow citizens. Not only that, but on the 11th.
Chavez activated the Plan Avila a military plan to repress the
Venezuelan population. It was out of a sense of decency that all of
these Generals decided to ask Chavez to leave. It was also out of a
sense of decency that nothing happened to Chavez that day. He asked to
be taken to Cuba, which some of these same Generals refused to, because
they thought there should be justice for those that had died that day.
Not one person threatened Chavez those days, despite the fantasies that
he has now told so many times that he appears to belive them himself..

The rest, as they say, is history. After that, there may have been
three or four coups and counter coups, as ambition and greed made
friends of enemies and enemies of friends. The same Generals that
thought that Chavez should leave, felt that the solution was worse than
the problem. Mediocre Pedro Carmona somehow took over and showed that
he was as much of an autocrat as Chavez is. Some important current
figures of the Chavez administration, barely protested at the time. The
President of the Venezuelan Supreme Court Ivan Rincon even offered his
name as a possible temporary President. Jose Vicente Rangel, today the
VP, went home and said that he would go back to being a newspaper
reporter. Infamous “three sun” General Rincon tried to arrange for
Chavez’ flight to Cuba from the La Carlota airport in Caracas after
which he also went home quietly. The word coup was not used for a
couple of months after the fateful events of April 2002. The formation
of a truth commission to investigate the events was called by all
sides, but blocked by the current Government. It would have revealed
the lack of scruples of Chavez and his cohorts. The same lack of
scruples that they use daily to express their love for the poor while
they buy weapons, get rich and throw away the country’s money.

But, yes, that day, April 11th. 2002 a group of Venezuelans, who were
then considered to be both pro and against Chavez prevailed out of
their sense of decency for their fellow countrymen and out of outrage
for an immoral President. Unfortunately, since then, decency is
defeated daily in Venezuela. And the President has not changed. .

Venezuela: From April 11 to today’s dictatorship by Veneconomy

The third anniversary of the historical events of April
11-13, 2002, is approaching, events that can be given two different
readings, depending on which side of the street you are on: the
government’s or the opposition’s.
Those who agree with the government’s doctrine will enjoy a week given
over to a full-blown propaganda offensive. The owners of the
revolutionary process will spare no efforts (or money) to continue
selling their concocted version of what happened, and there will be
many who, naively, will continue to buy it. After all, propaganda is
something that the Bolivarians have proved to be very good at.

In its determination to rewrite history –something that all victors
do-, the government has tried to erase what truly happened from
people’s memories and has invented a fairy tale of a coup d’état for
public consumption at home and abroad.

In order to successfully accomplish this mission, the Hugo Chávez
administration has resorted to media and resources of all kinds, from
making use of its iron control of the branches of government and the
abundant petrodollars to taking advantage of a rigged system of
justice. It has twisted the facts in a trumped up documentary entitled
“The revolution will not be televised,” and, as though that were not
enough, it has persecuted and cornered countless people who exercised
their legitimate right to protest, one way or another, against a system
they opposed, as well as those who, doing their job, defended them
against the barbarities committed by supporters of the government.

The sad fact of the matter is that three years after April 11-13 no
one knows with any certainty what really happened, largely because the
government itself has not allowed objective investigations to be
conducted and because it has deliberately manipulated the facts. This
is due, in part, to the regime’s desire to hide the fact that a
multitude of 600,000 to 800,000 unarmed people who tried to reach
Miraflores Palace to demonstrate their opposition to the political
project that the government wanted to implement in the country was
repelled by force.

The truth is that, in these past three years, the historical
distortion of the facts and the absolute power accumulated by means of
legal stratagems have turned a democratically elected government into
the strongest dictatorship that Venezuela has known since the times of
Juan Vicente Gómez.

One of the
biggest mysteries of what happened on April 11^th. 2002, was the role
played by General Lucas Rincon. Rincon was not only the Chief of Staff, but was
also the highest ranking General in the Venezuelan Armed Forces, the only one
to receive three stars in decades. Rincon was also the man the set in motion
the so called “coup” against Hugo Chavez by appearing on a nationwide telecast
that evening, surrounded by the Chiefs of Staff and said: “ We asked the
President for his resignation, which he accepted”.

The rest
is of course history. Chavez claims he never resigned, Carmona came along, Chavez
came back in what was probably a sequence of coups rather than a single one as
Chavez likes to make believe. To compound the mystery even further, Rincon
showed up again only months later in Chavez’ Cabinet where he occupied
important positions for a couple of years.

The final
mystery is how come, despite the incredibly significant role he played, the
Prosecutor’s office has never called Rincon to testify or even charged him with
anything. After all, it was Rincon who set in motion everything that happened
that night. Had he not shown up on TV that night history would have been much
different. Despite this, Rincon has never been called and his role remains a
mystery

Today (El
Nacional, page A-2), the Prosecutor himself, Isaias Rodriguez attempts to shed
light on it and his explanation is so laughable, implausible and improbable
that nobody will ever believe it. Moreover, it is not the Prosecutor’s role to
decide whether Rincon was or not involved or not, his role is to have him
testify and let others decide.

According
to Rodriguez, Chavez sent Rincon that day to negotiate with the Generals that
wanted Chavez out. When Rincon gets there, he is surprised that absolutely all
of them are against the President and they “forced” him.

Now, I
find it hard to believe that they would force him take their side! Even more, I
just can’t believe that if all of the Generals were on the opposite side, that
he would be forced to speak to the nation and announce Chavez resignation.

Even more
laughable is that Rodriguez then says: “I have information that a Colonel had the
intention of assassinating Lucas (Rincon) of shooting him up close”. When asked
who he was, the Attorney General says: “I can’t remember, but he must have been
identified because I am talking about something that happened. Lucas found himself
in a very complex situation, difficult, because he finds a de facto situation. At
that moment he called the President and tells him there is no possibility of negotiations.
Te President tells him: You know what we have talked handle the situation in the
terms that we have talked about…Rincon decides on his own in terms of what the
President said…he tried to gain time”

I see,
very logical, in order to gain time Lucas Rincon decided to announce to the
country that Chavez had resigned!

Rodriguez
then proceeds to talk about Rincon as having to deal with a situation he was
not accustomed to. He then toots his won horn, saying that he was, because he
has been a politician all his life. I see, a mediocre politician who only rose
in power because he rode Chavez’ coattails has more abilities than a guy who
became the only three star General in decades and Chief of Staff! This guy
really thinks the world is truly stupid.

But in the
end the Prosecutor/Attorney General fails to explain why Lucas Rincon’s role has
never been investigated, why he has never been called to testify. As the
Attorney General, it is unacceptable for him to first say that someone almost
killed Rincon, but he has failed in these last three years to even look into
that. This is the same man that is in charge of upholding the law in Venezuela! He
has had his people look at videos to charge the people seeing in them for just
going to the Presidential Palace on April 12^th., but has not bothered
to look into who forced Rincon to say he was against Chávez?

Everything
Rodriguez says is so implausible and inconsistent that anywhere else, he would
be forced to resign because his statements simply show he has not performed his
duties and has instead devoted his time to persecute the opposition.

This guy
must really take us for fools, but in the end, maybe we are anyway.