The Devil's Excrement

Blogging is a funny activity, there are days that there is little to post about, so I just don’t post much. But at the same time there are days that are full of stuff, some of it so outrageous, that I don’t even dare sit down to blog, because I believe no matter how absurd, ridiculous or strange an item may be, I have to try to reason through it and explain it in detail, without being emotional about it. But reason is clearly not something that is being used too much or too often here in Venezuela. The actions of this so called Government appear at times to me to be simply erratic and others so outrageous, that I do not even know where to begin explaining things.

Thus, this long post will be what I would have posted about the last few days had I not been almost at the point of not having any words to express my outrage and amazement at these events.

Cuban ID Cards

You want outrage? Take for example the announcement that the Government will give the contract for the National ID card system to the Cuban Government. First of all, “Cuban technology” sounds to me as much of an oxymoron as “competent Venezuelan Government”.

Second, it is extremely scary, I would say amazingly scary, to be informed that the ID system will be manufactured and designed by what is, after North Korea, the most efficient police state on this planet, at this time. But the news appears in print and it is as if nothing had happened. As if it were not enough that now Cuban agents can act freely in Venezuela, take depositions and do investigations after the two countries signed a treaty of mutual penal assistance. It is as if the Cuban police state will be moved to Caracas to help control people like me or those around me. The human rights implications of the whole thing are so freaky that I am not sure I know even where to begin writing about it. 

I mean, this is the same Government who held a bidding process in 2001, in which three private companies competed for a contract to do the exactly same thing. A Korean company won the contract which later the Government tried to cancel due to charges made by one of the competitors who was theoretically very close to the Government. But it may have been just a rumor.

The Government not only cancelled the contract unilaterally, but it is being sued for the indemnization of US$ 68 million according to the contract. Of course, since the Supreme Court will decide the case, these silly and naive Koreans have the same chance of winning, that Carlos Ortega has of being found innocent of the charges against him.

So, in a country with strict laws that regulate how any Government contract has to be opened for bids, the Government argues that a treaty it signed with Cuba, approved by nobody, allows it to subscribe this contract without anyone having a say about it. I just wonder what the PC’s will be, old Russian 386’s?

Strange military movements

It all begins with rumors, then all of a sudden a reporter has been jailed for taking pictures and then everyone is saying that something funny was happening in the city of Maracay, South of Caracas, where there is a big Air force base. Of course, that “something funny” that was happening were real troop movements. A “coup” attempt aborted, something strange?

You disregard it as nothing much, but then you see the reporter who has been jailed saying that he took pictures of the troop movements that supposedly never took place. In fact, the first press release says the reporter was jailed for covering a demonstration in front of the Air Force base. Except the reporter says there was no demonstration, just troop movements.

So, you forget about it, obviously these are just rumors by overanxious people and just when you are happy you did not blog about it, none other than General Raul Baduel, who is overambitious and somewhat of a real crackpot (as if we did not have enough of them) comes out and says that the troop movement was routine. But while Baduell says everything is normal, the press secretary of Aragua states says: “The situation is normal now, the 3,000 people that surrounded the military headquarters have gone back home”

Hold it! Three thousand people surround the headquarters, nobody reports it and there are routine military movements? Come again? Of course, the press reports very little of it, given that famous article of the muzzle law that says you can not cause uncertainty or create instabilities in the population. Unless you want to go to jail. Do you?

But hey! It is still only rumors, even if spooky Baduel spoke.

Arrests

I make a post about Carlos Ortega being arrested; I try to remember that Enrique Mendoza was charged that day. Then I remember I forgot TV announcer Napoleon Bravo, who was also charged that same day. Or Banker (?) Ignacio Salvatierra who has now being charged twice! A record that I am certain will not last very long. So, ten bankers will be charged this week. How many next week?. And then I hear that the person charged for hiring the mysterious paramilitary force in the outside of Caracas last year, has yet to be identified by any of the more than 100 members of that force. But he is still in jail!

Hey! And I forgot and I apologize, former pro-Chavez private property invader “Commander Manuitt” who invaded buildings in Caracas in the name of the revolution, towing a cow and all, has been condemned to six years in jail for being more radical than Chavez. Will she be reivindicated in the future?

Chavez the trader: Presidential arbitrage

Hugo Chávez wanted to be President, baseball player, TV announcer and now…he is a trader! Huguito joined the ranks of the Wall Street traders yesterday, when in a moment of amphetaminic euphoria he announced that Venezuela will buy US$ 500 million of Argentinean bonds to “back” that country and express its confidence in it.

It makes you wonder when you know that in a couple of weeks Venezuela will issue 500 million euros in debt to pay for an issue coming due. Instead of buying Argentina’s debt, why don’t we just pay part of Venezuela’s foreign debt, instead of playing Presidential arbitrage? Could he be thinking of defaulting in the future? Naw! Say the foreign analysts. Not be so sure says the Devil.

Mercal and endogenous development

And then, while the Government is supposedly promoting something called “endogenous” development, the country’s second biggest Government enterprise after PDVSA is Mercal. Mercal is the company that provides food for the poor at attractive and subsidized prices. But something is weird, Mercal does not buy local products, it imports them, in a perverted interpretation of endogenous development and the promotion of local agriculture. So the Head of Mercal, even before the devaluation today, said he had to increase prices because shipping is up, services are up and there has been a devaluation, which made everyone wonder what he was talking about. But see, Mercal by now is selling as many tons a year as the largest food company in the country, but is devoting very little of its efforts to promoting local development and employment. Problem is, it is more profitable (for them) to import and this revolution is capitalistic despite Chavez’ change in direction towards socialism last Saturday. And that in itself is another whole story I have been ignoring.

Universities

It used to be that if anyone attacked the concept of autonomy of universities, hooded students would jump to the streets riot and create havoc in Caracas. But I guess they were all pro-Chavze, because after six years of failure in trying to win an election at any of the public universities in Venezuela, the Government has decided that they prefer to go back to the system of Stalinist democracy, rather than the participatory democracy that Chavez promised to deliver. You see, participatory democracy has a tremendous flaw they had not considered: You may lose elections if the CNE does not organize the process and is fair, like it happens at every stupid University where all the oligarchic, left-wing Professors and students continue to oppose the Government.

So, the Government has decided to issue a decree that takes away most of the power from the elected University Presidents (called Rectors here), and create a council at the Ministry of Higher Education that will control everything. You just have to love the revolution and its corrupted ingenuity!

Thus, I read this post back and it all seems so unreal, so amazing that people are not our protesting, screaming and fighting for their rights. But I guess this is what totalitarian regime looks like after a while. Particularly if the psychological pressure on the government is so strong. Or the leaders are so weak.

(A friend points out I forgot the aircraft carrier in Curacao, sorry, I was not sure if they went there to play in the casino, buy Gouda cheese or they are attacking tonight)

The Government announced today that it had devalued the  currency by 10.7% from Bs. 1,920 per US$ tp Bs. 2,150 per US$ as was projected in the 2005 budget. It was uncclear if this percentage was given out of incompetence or simply another attempt to fool some of the people some of the time as the true percentage is 11.97%.

This devaluation had been expected for quite a while, ever since former Minister of Finance Nobrega had announced it for January 1st. The budget was calculated at this exchange rate, but the delay implies a deficit of 2% with respect to the original budget. The devaluation is effective immediately.

The parallel market fist jumped up to near 2900 per US$ to later drop to 2740, closing around 2790.

Chavez today in Uruguay, what’s your favorite?:

Quote 1: “The US is preparing the ground for my assassination”

Which ground, I thought he walked on water?

Quote 2: “Venezuela to stop oil exports to the US if I am killed.”

Will Venezuela care once he is dead?

Quote 3: “The US pressuring me to commit suicide.”

Did God revel this to him or is he feeling the pressure in his own deranged mind and he is thinking of doing it?

Quote 4:”The US using a communication war against me”.

I thought he was the one that talked all day.

I pick #3, it reveals sooo much!

Not to go back to the same topic because the previous post was so successful, but as pointed out by Tal Cual today, the revolution certainly loves to photoshop and as with so many things they do, they cut corners and forget about ethics and such things as property rights. The newest case in the revolution is being photoshopped comes from the Caracas Metropolitan Mayor who when he came into power chose to revamp, restructure, and relaunch his Office, as so many Venezuelan politicians, past and present, love to do as if that improved performance. For their new image they showed a lion, the symbol of Caracas, originally called Santiago de Leon de Caracas. And they “designed” this symbol:

Problem is it looks a lot like that of a US broker, bank, and company called Harris, which looks something like this:

(I took this one from a subsidiary called Harrisinsight) But if you crop and flip the one from the mayor’s office, add a few lines and smooth out, you can clearly see they are one and the same:

As someone pointed out, the revolution certainly has learned to Photoshop, even if they don’t appear to have learned very much else and that my friends, is some progress!

And so we have come full circle and the man who led the first demonstration against the Chavez regime has been detained, after going into exile, coming back, and deciding to live a full life, stupidly going to a night club, with dyed hair and a full mustache. He will now be charged with treason and rebellion, for the simple fact that he led a strike against the Chavez Government, a right guaranteed under the Bolivarian Constitution of Venezuela under article 97. But of course, this autocratic Government only recalls the rights that are convenient to its objectives and forgets those that are a nuisance to its goals. You see, after all, Ortega is the only man to have clearly and validly won an election during the last six years, a victory which Chavez obviously did not recognize, calling it fraudulent, despite the trouncing Chavez’ candidate got.

But you see, fraudulent is a one way word in Venezuela, where so many words and roads have now become one way: the way of Chavez. It is the one way of this lawless Government where opposition leaders are being charged for simply being at the Presidential Palace in April 2002, but not a single Government official is being charged for those that were ambushed and killed the day before. Where those that did not go that day to the Presidential Palace are being charged for corruption, while the man responsible for the missing US$ 3 billion when he was Minister of Finance in 2002, is rewarded with his second tour in the same position that he is not qualified to hold. And if an opposition leader can not be charged for either, then he can be charged for supposedly shutting down a TV channel. Meanwhile, US$ 1.5 billion was squandered in Vargas state and the man who presided over the waste and the deaths that followed is not even being investigated. Yes, a one way road of corrupt morals and incompetence.

And as poverty continues to rise, the Venezuelan Government gives Cuba 50,000 barrels of oil a day, which does not get paid, under a treaty never approved by the National Assembly as required by law, but the President does not get charged for that either, that would be the wrong road. Meanwhile, 18,000 oil workers who were fired in 2003, have not seen their severance pay, pension fund contributions and savings returned to them and now the same oil company is planning to accuse all 18,000 of them, from humble workers to executives, for damages and simply retain their savings. And this was supposed to be a Government with a human face. All of this, while a corrupt man who presided over the most unethical managing of any electoral process in our history, is named to the Venezuelan Supreme Court, where he replaces a servile Justice who received an outrageous pension seventy times the minimum salary for services rendered to the revolution. Not happy with this, this same man acts like a mafia Godfather before leaving his old position, acting like a true gangster without morals and principles.

Meanwhile, opposition reporters are charged with crimes committed weekly by the President himself, like defamation. Or they are fired by the owners oif the emdia who feel threatened. Other reporters are threatened by the President’s supporters, but they become heroes of the one way revolution. And yes, billions of dollars are also missing from the country’s accounts: US$ 2 billion given to the Development Bank are apparently just unaccounted for. Videos of Government officials unloading guns get no action from the Prosecutor’s office, but hearsay is sufficient to open any investigation against opposition members if it’s supreme leaders whims it.

This week, it also has become the banker’s turn. They are being charged for usury for awarding indexed loans approved by the Central Bank and the Superintendence of Banks, of this same revolutionary Government. Just find an excuse said the leader, and his lackeys and collaborators without scruples found a way and they will continue to do so whenever it is required. But the roads built under the Bolivar 2000 program, which no longer exist because they were washed away by the rains, remain a tribute to the levels of corruption of the Venezuelan military, which remains ignored by the otherwise efficient one way prosecutors. 

But not one Government official of the last six years has yet to be charged with anything in a country where ethics, on both sides, are by now almost non-existent. The phantom People’s Ombudsman shows up only to defend the Government, while the Attorney General/Prosecutor acts only on direct orders from the Presidential Palace and the assassinated star Prosecutor, hero of the revolution awarded the greatest honor in the country, turns out to have been involved in a cesspool of corruption right under the nose of the Prosecutor, while thousands in cash and unexplainable property are found in his hands.

Thus, this autocratic and incompetent regime instead of fulfilling the promises of its leader has simply magnified and taken to new levels all of the ills, crimes, distortions, intimidations and disregard for others of the previous administrations. And despite the right wing character of the regime, world opinion lives under the delusion that the poor are doing better under the empty revolution. They are not only doing worse than six years ago, but they fail to ask what this inefficient Government is doing when oil prices are four times higher than when Chavez reached power six years ago. Populism obviously sells. Six long years under a charismatic leader and some people still have hopes, despite the lack of any accomplishments other than the belief that something will be delivered. But as someone said, those promises were good six years ago, but not only have become stale, they are by now simply bullshit. But this is a Government of politics and bullshit, sustained by high oil prices and the corrupt powers that are supposed to defend the people and the law. The same ones that will twist the law to send Ortega to jail, rob the fired PDVSA workers and imprison the opposition, until we turn around that one way streett and fight to win.

I guess Mision Robinson teaches reading, but not writing

And Petkoff agrees with me in today’s Tal Cual that someone should start thinking about removing Carrasquero from the Supreme Court.

Attention Maduro: We have to review Don Francisco by Teodoro Petkoff

This microreporter believes it is necessary to insist before the National Assembly on the need to review the designation of Francisco Carrasquero as a Justice of the Venezuelan Supreme Court. This is not simply zeal to perturb the patience of the accused, but it is simply proposed as a matter of public morals and health. Between last December 13^th., when he was named to the Court, and January 17^th. of this year, when he assumed his new position, Don Francisco hired 354 new workers for the CNE, ten a day! The last day he hired a total of 34 new bread winners. Of those 354, some 40 were either his relatives, or relatives of his wife, or relatives of his assistants and one relative of his bodyguard. But the indefatigable Carrasquero, during the same period, also made 732 movements of personnel: promoting friends, higher salaries for the better friends, new positions and new responsibilities for the best friends. Imagine how pharaonic this abuse was that the current Electoral Board had to void the moves. Now, an individual capable of such irresponsibility, that plays that way with the budget, with the Government to which it serves and with the country, a guy without the minimal rational capability to correctly appreciate the abuse he was committing, does he have the needed qualification to exercise the condition of supreme judge of the republic? Can he be trusted? I say it with total seriousness: The National Assembly has to look at this with a magnifying glass.

And I (TDE) remind everyone that this is the same man that rushed to announce at 3 AM on August 17^th. that the No had won the recall vote, without audits, witnesses and all of the results being available. He also refused to open all of the ballot boxes to count. Why? Easy: as immoral then as he is now. 

I was going to write about this, but hey, Petkoff can say it so much better!

Misiòn Bullshit  by Teodoro Petkoff – Tal Cual

In a new episode of delirium tremens (even if we know the man does not drink, because in his case that becomes un aggravating circumstance, because everyone knows that if you are drunk “it does not count”), Chávez promised that his Government will build between this year and 2006 , 200 hundred thousand housing units. In other words, the goal is to build twice as many housing units than those that have been built in the previous six years. How much we wish that this would be true, but given the background, there are not many reasons for optimism. Between 1999 and August 2004, the Government of the human revolution, concerned about the status of the poor, with Chavez ashamed of having to live in La Casona, while millions of his fellow countrymen who are poor had to live in shacks, built a meager 100,569 houses, which gives you an average of 16,000 per year. That number, more than squalid, miserable, contrasts with what the Governments prior to Chavez accomplished. In the five years of CAP-2-Velasquez, a total of 313 thousand housing units were built by the Government: an average of 62,000 a year. In the Government of Caldera, the Government built 341,666: 68 thousand per year. Thus, these Governments that Chavez has launched thousand of insults against them, built in five years each, three times more housing units than Chavez has in his six years.

Perhaps nothing undresses more eloquently the marathon of bullshit that we have been forced to listen to during these six years, that the sorry failure of the housing policies of the”revolution.” Obviously, with bullshit you can’t even built shacks made of mud. Now, once again the promise rises again: 80 thousand houses this year and 120 thousand the next one. It would really be a miracle.

The same way it would have been a miracle that unemployment had dropped from the 19% that the Instituto Nacional de Estadística (INE) registered for January 2004 to the 5% predicted by “Merlin Chavez” for December of last year. That was going to be the magic result of the Misiòn Vuelvan Caras. Well, the INE has just given out the unemployment numbers for January 2005: 15.3%, less than the same month a year earlier but the same as the average for all of 2004. The faces of the poor continue to be turned towards the pole of hopelessness and poverty.

Of course, it would have been impossible to have a different result. Each year some 400 thousand Venezuelans go into the labor markets. A productive system like ours, where both private and public investment are reduced to its lowest historical levels, does not have the capacity to absorb the hungry mass of young people that reaches working age. The economic policy of Chavismo “ni lava ni presta la batea” (neither washes nor lends the washbasin). If there is no investment, there will be no creation of new jobs-to say it with that expression, which is not used much today, but very graphical. If there is no investment to create jobs, unemployment can not go down. But since people have to live, the only option is to make do with the streets, informality and crime. That is, a social deterioration that does not cease and which can not be hidden.

The President says, referring to the prior 40 years of democracy that with poverty there could not be democracy. Said in 1999, it was a complete program for hope.. Six years later, it is simply pure bullshit.

Well, it used to be that the Carter Center would arrive in Venezuela and everyone would try to meet with them. It wasn’t that way this time as reported by Daniel in his blog. But it seems to have been worse than that. As reported by Descifrado today, the visit by Ms. McCoy did not go very well, she was shunned by many actors, including opposition parties (except Primero Justicia), Chavez own party MVR. But even worse, according to Descifrado, there was supposed to be a breakfast on Friday between the Carter Center and representatives of the media. Unfortunately for the CC Directors, only one Board member form one TV channels showed up at the meeting. Thus, the supervision of Venezuelan elections and attempts by the Carter Center to mediate in the Venezuelan crisis, end with a whimper, rather than with the bang they expected.

Meanwhile, another scandal was banging at the Carter family elsewhere, as wife Rosalynn is now being linked by the N.Y Post to the oil for food program and donations to Iraq, via her Foundation Friendship Force. I guess that is the problem with all these activities, you need money to run them and in searching for funding you are either careless or compromise your principles in order to get them. 

This will be a night of translations, a few interesting articles that I thought I should bring to people’s attentions. Pedro Leon Zapata is an artist and cartoonist that has now published his daily cartoon for forty years, usually with political undertones. His friends have been celebrating his 40 year anniversary with tributes and testimonials to both his paintings and his cartoons. Today, humorist Claudio Nazoa paid his tribute with this piece in today’s El Nacional, in which he writes as a Chavista cartoonist paying tribute to Zapata. It is funny, but it is also very serious at the same time.

Letter from a pro-Government humorist to Zapata by Claudio Nazoa

Sr. Zapata:

If this Government were from COPEI or AD, these testimonials on your 40^th.anniversary of your cartoons would be well deserved.

Sr. Zapata, let’s agree that you paint and draw well, but that gives you no right to not recognize that this is also a pretty revolution.

Sr. Zapata, our Commander in Chief, our dear leader, our unique an unquestionable guide, our almost God, was right when he showed one of your drawing saying “Zapata, how much were you paid for this?”

Unfortunately Sr. Zapata, we have learned that you get paid by the daily El Nacional to criticize the Government. What a foolish thing to do! Do what we do, we also get paid, but only by the Government.

Do you remember Sr. Zapata when at the auditorium at Central University all of the humorists and intellectuals would criticize the people from AD and COPEI? Those were the good times Sr. Zapata! Particularly because the people from AD and COPEI would later hire us without asking why we were criticizing them; moreover, they were so dumb that they had no AD circles or COPEI circles, to go kick our butt after the events or to go around the city destroying murals, sculptures, historical monuments, religious images and any work of art of the kind that rich people like.

Do you remember Sr. Zapata, when we were all left-wing? In that I belive we continue to agree. We both continue to be left-wing, with the only difference being that I, being left-wing, back this rightwing Government that looks leftwing from abroad.

Sr. Zapata, you now paint us with frog faces pulling a rope (Pulling a rope means sucking up to someone in Spanish). Yes, you are right, let’s recognize we suck up to them and tell all. But we are part of the revolution! That is the difference Sr. Zapata, you have not realized that we are in a revolution and that those things that we did not like about the AD or COPEI people, are now considered good. Look around you.

Little kids no longer drink milk, but they drink gasoline at traffic lights so that you give them a tip; poverty is higher every day. The indians, like hungry automata, invade the cities. Corruption can be seen in the RV’s  of Government leaders and officials. Never have human rights been abused so much in the prisons and hospitals of Venezuela. To get an ID card or a passport is no longer like it was in the previous ominous 40 years. It is now impossible for everyone!

Sr. Zapata., wake up! What good is the love your friends claim they have for you? Come with us, join us in sucking up to the Government and we promise that we will give you plastic surgery, so that so that when you support what can’t be supported, not even a single wrinkle will be visible in your face.

Come on Mr. Zapata! Forget about poetry. You have to recognize that, as a man, you feel vindicated in that a true macho man, capable of giving any women what they deserve now is now our leader.

In closing, I have to confess I envy you Sr. Zapata, that extraordinary brain that during 40 years, while many of us lived off scholarships, donations, cultural attaches of embassies, heads of the Cultural Office, “consulting” to Ministries, cultural representations to any world Congress that was held, you, like now, worked night and day, to reveal that the king was naked.

The king has been naked for 46 years Sr. Zapata, but now we are accomplices and we are afraid to say it.