The Devil's Excrement

A few years ago, Chavez would give the word and organizers would go out, buses would come in and a decent showing would be made to celebrate Ezequiel Zamora’s circumcision if that is what he wanted.

But no more.

On Saturday, Chavez decided to hold his rally in the El Valle area of Caracas, a popular lower middle class area that is the residence of many of his Cabinet Ministers. Unfortunately, not only was attendance poor to commemorate the people’s revolt at “The Caracazo” 21 years ago, as seen in the picture above, but while giving his speech, Chavez was given the biggest live “Cacerolazo” he has received since he held a parade in la Carlota in the summer of 2002. (This blog did not even exist then)

Chavez shortened his speech and promised that the next day in his Sunday program Alo Presidente he would announce further measures against those responsible for the “Caracazo“.

But the program was canceled, using as an excuse that Chavez was travelling, something he knew on Saturday when he spoke..

And while Chavez tried to steal the remembrance of the Caracazo, from ONG’s to FARC-related groups, we were reminded that the deaths from that day 21 years ago, reamin unpunished with not a single person convicted for a single one of the hundreds of deaths that day. Because Chavez only remembers the Caracazo when it serves his purposes. And after 10 years of the IVth. Republic and eleven of the Vth. Republic under his own personal supervision, impunity remains the order of the day, no matter what Chavistas may want to say.

And more Cacerolazos are on the way, as the 10% salary increase of today, will be accompanied by price increases in 19 basic foodstuffs (all needed)

(Image stolen from Jesus Salamanca)

Chavismo may dismiss the charges made by Judge Eloy Velasco today, accusing the Venezuelan Government of collaborating with the ETA and FARC to kill top Colombian personalities, but they have to say something more than “unacceptable” or “delays from a colonial past” as Chavez dixit.

Because serious charges require serious answers and so far that is not what we have had from this side. Because by now Prime Minister Zapatero wants an answer and he is not going to like what he has heard so far. Nor is former President Colombian President Pastrana going to accept the typical cry baby explanations of Chavez and his crew. This is a time for real leaders and “varones” to face the music of their mistakes.

Because Judge Velasco and the Spanish High Court can not be swept under the rug of Chavismo lies and deceit. Judge Velasco has been looking at this case for nine years. He finally found no one, but dozens of smoking guns. And arguing that Reyes’ computers were fixed holds no water, there are many leads that lead Velasco to his charges and Zapatero to give him the green light. Remember, this is the same High Court that everyone cheered when it indicted Pinochet, different Judge, same reputation.

Because the indictment does not mince words, it says that there was cooperation between the Venezuelan Government, the FARC and ETA. Period. And it clearly says and states, that an employee of the Venezuelan Government Arturo Cubillas, who coincidentally happened to be the Head of ETA in Venezuela, trained “ETA members in the Colombian jungle, in exchange for ETA’s help in Spain, locating terrorist targets sought by FARC”, which included Uribe, Pastrana and Chavez’ future Presidential buddy Santos.

How do you like them apples?

I could go on. In one of the training “exercises” Cubillas showed up with a Venezuelan military truck full of my compatriots, serving the cause, I guess.

So, accusing Carlos Andres Perez is no help, nor saying that Reyes’ computers were trumped. Mr. Cubillas and his wife were Venezuelan Government officials. Period. Cubillas was caught red handed. Period. Either you deny a connection to Cubillas or you shut up, but you are not dealing with the fluffy Venezuelan opposition, Uribe, Zapatero, Pastrana and now Santos, want answers. No wishy washy statements about hearsay and the like, real answers, like a “varon”. Which Chavez and his Government don’t seem ready to do.

Except that Zapatero believes the Judge more than he believes Chavez or his bus driver Maduro. And Pastrana knows what Spain’s High Court has done in the past in the face of incredible political odds. So, it has been a bad week for Hugo and his thugs. From the CIDH report, to the High Court sentence to the Cacerolazo in El Valle, Hugo is not hitting his stride. You can fool some of the people all the time, but Chavez wants to fool even his shadow, who sees and hears every irresponsible thing he does or says.

(As for Cubillas, Alek Boyd told us about him long time ago. Were you listening?)

From AP

A Spanish judge has accused Venezuela of collaborating with Basque separatists and Colombian rebels, and says these two groups plotted to assassinate Colombia’s president.

Judge Eloy Velasco made the allegation Monday in a 26-page indictment in which he charged six members of the Basque group ETA , most of them exiled in Latin America, and seven members of the Colombian leftist rebel group FARC with a variety of crimes including terrorism and conspiracy to commit murder.

(Ramiro Valdes gives speech at UCI’s graduation)

Today, there are a few articles in El Nacional (pages P-1-3) about the fact that databases of Venezuelans are controlled today by Cubans, as all identification systems, property systems (notaries)  and the like are more and more run by Cubans, as a Cuban company Albet has received contracts to manage them and its “Universidad de Ciencias Informaticas” has been hired to write and implement systems for all those databases. Note that Albet’s history is as short as that of the University.

I don’t know enough about the subject to write and article about the penetration of Cubans in Venezuela’s Ministries. But there is one article that really blew my mind, because it represents either an amazing attempt to deceive and lie, or it shows how ignorant these “revolutionaries” are about the country’s reality and capabilities. Or both.

The article is an interview with a Mr. Dante Rivas. who happens to be  the Head of Saime, the service that gives out ID’s and passports in Venezuela. In it, Mr. Rivas says:

“We did not have sufficient experience to create software that would integrate technology for passports and ID’s. While Cuba has a University for Informatic Sciences, we don’t have in Venezuela a university specialized in that area”

Say what?

This is as ignorant and disrespectful as can be to Venezuela and its professional. For a Government that claims to defend “sovereignty” and be concerned about it, this is the most despicable statement about the capability of Venezuela, for many reasons:

1) Venezuela has had extensive educational programs in “Informatic Sciences”, while it may not have a single university devoted to the area, the country’s best universities have had Bachelors, Master and Ph.D. programs for over three decades in Computer Sciences and Systems, with specialists in areas that Cuba would love to have had even a fraction of what Venezuela has enjoyed. Venezuela has (had?) been a leader in Latin America in networks, supercomputing and quite a number of “Informatics” companies have even been successful abroad, such as Galak, just to name one.

2) The “Universidad de Ciencias Informaticas” of Cuba, was created only in 2002, thus I would dare question its capabilities. Moreover, it originates in a military “escuela” and the “esbirro” Ramiro Valdes attends its graduations regularly and gave a speech in its first graduation.

3) Venezuela has more Ph.D. graduates, Ms.Sc. nad Bachelor graduates in the last five years that Cuba in all of its history.

Thus, we are either in the face of a gigantic lie and deceit and these people are selling out Venezuela in front of our own eyes, or these ideologists are dont seem to appreciate and/or understand the capabilities that Venezuela has (had?) in all of these fields.

Chavismo is given away the country’s sovereignty. The reason? It is not that Venezuela does not have the capability. It is not that we don’t have the universities or the programs. It is not that we don’t have the equipment. the problem is simple:

This revolution does not trust or admire Venezuelans. It is not willing to trust our capabilities and our people. They are so unaccomplished and ignorant that they have not been willing to look at the expertise and knowledge that Venezuela has.  The revolution is distrustful of anything and anyone that has not total allegiance to Chavez. Thus, it discriminates against the many talented Venezuelans, some of them underemployed that could design, create and implement systems like those Saime needs. (Much like it destroyed INTEVEP, the country’s former premier center for research and development in oil)

In the end, Chavismo is betraying Venezuela, channeling money that could be used to develop even more capabilities in Venezuela to Cuba, just because they are dazzled and enamored of the aging Dictator Fidel in the same way they are fanatic about Hugo Chavez, refusing to recognize how he is destroying Venezuela and wasting the resources of the “people” in hare brained projects that contribute nothing to our own country.

And indirectly, the revolution is giving away our sovereignty, our data, our information. Cuban intelligence knows more about what is happening in Venezuela than our own. Chavez does not trust Venezuelans to guard him. Cubans are always present in immigration departments in Venezuela’s airports. A Cuban company runs our customs in all major ports. (and did the Cubans tell Chavez to get rid of Luis Correa of intelligence office DISIP and formerly of ONA? More on that tomorrow, he was detained today)

And science and technology, where Venezuela was always ahead of Cuba, is allowed to flounder, as money is funneled to Government controlled universities in that island.

Another remarkable fraud by the Chavez revolution.

The death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo has been a terrible reminder of the backseat that human rights have taken in Latin America in the last few years. As the region’s Heads of State laughed and joked with Raul Castro in Cancun this man was dying in Cuba in his own personal fight for dignity. It is my hope that one day, history will judge Lula, Bachelet, Chavez and the rest under the proper light. They are guilty by their silence, by their diplomatic effort to ignore this terrible tragedy in the interest of good personal relations with the killers of Cuba. Hopefully, the next generation of the region’s leaders will be forced to respect human rights. It is hard to be optimistic, it appears as if we have learned very little about the ability of human beings to treat other human beings as animals when it suits their political purposes.

Dying with dignity by Teodoro Petkoff in Tal Cual
Horror, shock and a deep sense of rejection and condemnation is all that can be expressed at the death of Orlando Zapata Tamayo, a Cuban, bricklayer, black, political prisoner of a system to which the sacrifice of Zapata Tamayo undresses in all its infinite cruelty and inhumanity. The man died defending a single duty: to recognize his status as a political prisoner rather than infamy of being a common criminal. The appalling and outrageous adventures of his arrest and hunger strike are worthy of the universal history of infamy. Detained in the great raid of 2003 against 75 dissidents, he was initially sentenced to three years in prison, but then, due to his unwavering demand for respect for his human and political convictions additional convictions were accumulated against him, to take them to 32 years of prison. For anyone who finds this monstrosity hard to believe, I will remember an episode that I experienced personally. By the time Hubert Matos would have served his sentence to twenty years imprisonment, the Cuban ambassador in Venezuela then, Norberto Hernandez, told me that his government was considering an additional condemnation to give him an additional twenty years in jail. Given the anger that I expressed, about this barbarism, he went off the topic with what he thought was a witty comment. But now I see he was not joking. In the light of what has happened with Zapata Tamayo, I have no doubt that the Cuban government had in mind the idea of aberrantly condemning Hubert Matos twice for the same cause. Just as Thatcher, the Iron Lady implacable British conservative known for his fanaticism, who left two activists of the Irish IRA to die of hunger strikes, the regime of Fidel let Zapata Tamayo to die simply for not recognizing his right to be treated as a minimum like a human being. He was not even demanding his freedom; he just wanted to have his rights recognized as political prisoners.

Because under that brutal dictatorship, anyone who dares to challenge the unlimited authority of the senile satrap is treated as either being insane if not as a common criminal and condemned to brutal sentences.

And by the way, what’s happening with Franklin Brito?

A few months ago Juan from Caracas Chronicles wrote a post questioning the cost of the power plant to be built by Iberdrola in Venezuela. Basically, Juan noted, the plant hired out by Diosdado Cabello to be built in Sucre State was costing too much compared to world standards at Euros 1,400 per KW.

Well, the Ministers in Chavez’ Cabinet are so disorganized that they don’t even check for the consistency of their numbers. While Diosaddo builds power plants with 1 KW fcosting roughly $2,000, Rafael Ramirez says PDVSA is buying plants from somewhere between US$ 1,333 and US$ 1,500 per 1 KW, while Ali Rodriguez, Minister for Electricity, says he is buying 4,000 MW for US$ 4 billion, that is, US$ 1,000 per KW. These guys can’t shoot straight or figure out who is on first base, that is why Venezuela is in such sorry state.

These guys are so incompetent that they don’t even listen or pay attention to one another. In any seriously run country, this would be a scandal to determine the 100% difference in prices claimed by the different Government officials.

The problem is, that the only plant that has been really contracted out is the Iberdrola one. The rest is fluff, the type of announcements that the Government makes Sunday after Sunday in Chavez’ program to appease the Dicator and make him believe that they are doing something.But these plants are virtual and will remain so for quote a while.

Because there is no doubt in my mind that the Iberdrola plant is full of overcharges and commissions, at $2,000 per KW it will be (If it ever gets built) the most expensive thermoelectric power plant in world’s history. (Has it even been started yet?) But there is also no doubt in my mind that Ramirez’ and Rodriguez’ announcements are just that: announcements and nothing concrete has been signed.

In fact, both of them are lying when they said that most of these power plants will come on line in 2010, Ali Rodriguez said it on ABN and Ramirez in Sunday’ Alo Presidente.

Because even if these plants were built by companies like Bechtel, Fluor and the like, it would take much more than 12 months to have them running, even if construction were to start tomorrow. Which it isn’t. So, imagine with the well-known Chavista inefficiency, everyone trying to get a commission out and the teams in charge being changed every six months or so, how long this will all take. Remember, for example, that in October Corpoelec says that Planta Centro would be back up by the end of February and the turbines in Guri would be online also by February. I hear Planta Centro is not even close to being ready and the turbines, oh well, eight of the twenty are still offline. (Yes!, one additional turbine has gone online since October when the crisis began, way to go Hugo and the revolution!)

This is simply no way to run a country and while Chavistas believe rain will save them, this is not the case. The electric crisis will last at least until 2012 and with these people in charge, maybe forever. And forever is a long time, like the song says.

Because most of these guys prefer to go on shows like the picture above, rather than wait for the work to be finished before they have the show. Problem is, they are so incompetent that they would never ahve much to show off anyway.  But if rather than spend so much time talking and on TV, they worked hard, maybe they could get a little more done that they do.

Some revolution!

Of course, according to Chavez there was no blackout. Yeah! sure, and the sky is not blue and crime has not soared in Venezuela.

This picture almost needs no explanation. The red line is the number of homicides in Venezuela each year since 1998, the year Chavez became President. The data was compiled from official statistics by the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence. The blue line is the number of detentions associated with homicides. As you can see in 1998, the year Chavez was elected, there were more than one person on average detained for each homicide. In 2009 that number was barely 1,491 for 16,047 homicides, about 9%.

The people’s Ombudsman Gabriela Ramirez said she would not recognize the CIDH report because it failed to note the decrease in extra-judicial homicides (included in the numbers above). Is this lady really proud of the above record of neglect and incompetence? Does she really care for the inhabitants of Venezuela? Can’t she see something is truly wrong with the above graph?

This is another farce of the revolution.

(In Spanish here)

After seeing how easily Latin American leaders skirt democratic principles and look the other way at the systematic violations of human rights in the region, it is somewhat comforting to see that at least one leader and rule in the region still “gets it”. In contrast with the Lula’s, Bachelet’s, Kirchner’s, Insulza’s and the rest, it is clear that this man is a true statesman who understands the follies and foibles of the pitiful leaders that the inhabitants of our region have to endure. By now, democarcy in Latin America seems to have been reduced to having elections and damn the people, their rights and their future. It is always somebody else’s fault, these empty and fake leaders never take responsibility for their gigantic failures.

Kudos to Oscar Arias in the hope that the end of his term, will not be the end of what seems to be the lonely voice of the last democrat standing in Latin America.

Here, his speech at the cancun summit, no more comments are necessary, it has no waste (Hat tip PMB!):

Speech by Óscar Arias Sánchez, President of Costa Rica

Excellencies, Heads of State and Government from Latin America and the Caribbean, friends:

This is my last participation at an international summit. I do not expect to say goodbye to Latin America nor to the Caribbean. I keep the dreams of this region bound to the center of my life. But I do have to say farewell to all of you, my colleagues, brothers and sisters, fellow travelers. I must say goodbye to this audience that summarizes, in a cluster of voices, the hopes of 600 million people, nearly a tenth of humanity. It is on behalf of that Latin American lineage that I want to share with you some thoughts. It is on behalf of the generation that dwells beyond these doors, and demands from us the boldness to build a more dignified place under the sun.

Despite the speeches and the applause, the truth of the matter is our region has made little progress in recent decades. In certain areas, it has stepped back resolutely. Many want to climb aboard a rusted out railroad car headed toward the past, to the ideological trenches that divided the world during the Cold War. Latin America runs the risk of adding to its unprecedented collection of lost generations. It runs the risk of wasting, once again, its opportunity on Earth. It is up to us, and those who come after us, to prevent that from happening. It is up to us to honor the debt we owe to democracy, to development and to peace for our peoples, a debt, whose deadline expired centuries ago.

Honoring the debt to democracy means more than enacting political constitutions, signing democratic charters or celebrating periodic elections. It means building a reliable set of institutions, beyond the anemic structures that currently sustain our state apparatuses. It means guaranteeing the supremacy of the law and the effectiveness of the Rule of Law, one which some insist on vaulting with a pole.

It means strengthening the system of checks and balances, deeply threatened by the presence of tentacular governments who have erased the boundaries between ruler, party and State. It means ensuring the enjoyment of a solid core of fundamental rights and guarantees, chronically impinged upon in much of the Latin American region. And it means, above all, the use of political power for achieving a greater human development, the improvement of our people’s living conditions and the expansion of our citizens’ freedoms.

One must not confuse the democratic origin of a régime with the democratic operation of the State. There are governments in our region that avail themselves of election results so as to justify their desire to restrict individual freedoms and persecute their opponents. They make use of a democratic mechanism in order to subvert the foundations of democracy. For a true democrat, if he has no opposition, then he must create one. He shows his success in the fruits of his labor, but not in the product of his retaliations. He demonstrates his power by opening hospitals, roads and universities and not by curtailing freedom of opinion and expression. A true democrat demonstrates his power by fighting poverty, ignorance and rampant crime, and not foreign empires and imaginary conspiracies. This region, tired of hollow promises and empty words, needs a legion of increasingly tolerant statesmen and not a legion of increasingly authoritarian rulers. It is easy to defend the rights of those who think like we do. Defending the rights of those who think differently: that is the challenge for the true democrat. Let us hope that our peoples have the wisdom to elect rulers for whom the democratic shirt is not too large a fit.

And may they also resist the temptation of those who promise rose gardens behind the participatory democracy that can be a dangerous weapon in the hands of populism and demagoguery. Latin America’s problems are not solved by replacing a dysfunctional representative democracy with a chaotic participatory democracy.

Paraphrasing Octavio Paz, I dare say that democracy in our region does not need to take on wings; what it needs is to take root.  Before selling tickets to paradise, let us worry first about consolidating our feeble institutions, safeguarding the fundamental guarantees, ensuring equal opportunities for our citizens, increasing the transparency of our governments, and above all, improving the effectiveness of our bureaucracies . My experience as a head of state has shown me that what we have are sclerotic and hypertrophied States, unable to meet the needs of our people and to provide the benefits that democracy is obliged to deliver.

This has serious consequences for our capacity to honor the second debt that I wanted to mention to you, the debt owed to development. A debt which, I repeat, we must honor. Neither Spanish colonialism, nor the lack of natural resources, nor the hegemony of the United States, nor any other theory resulting from the eternal victimization of Latin America, explains the fact that we refuse to increase our spending on innovation, to tax the rich, to graduate professionals in engineering and the hard sciences, to promote competition, to build infrastructure or to provide legal certainty to businesses. It is time for each mast to endure the sails of its own own progress.

What right does Latin America have to complain about the inequalities that divide its peoples, if it collects almost half of its fiscal revenues in indirect taxes, and the tax burden in some nations in the region hardly reaches 10% of the Gross Domestic Product? What right does Latin America have to complain about its underdevelopment, if it is the one that has demonstrated a proverbial resistance to change every time there is talk of innovation and adaptation to new circumstances? What right does Latin America have to complain about the lack of quality jobs, when it is the one that allows the average schooling to be around 8 years? And above all, what right does  Latin America have to complain about its poverty if it spends, each year, nearly 60 billion dollars in weapons and soldiers?

The debt to peace is the most shameful of all, because it demonstrates the amnesia of a region that feeds the return of an arms race, in many cases aimed at fighting ghosts and mirages. It also shows the complete inability to set priorities in Latin America, a practice that prevents the realization of a true agenda for development. There are countries suffering internal conflicts who may justify an increase in national defense expenditures. But in the vast majority of our nations, increased military spending is inexcusable in view of the needs of a people whose real enemies are hunger, disease, illiteracy, inequality, crime and environmental degradation. It is regrettable that there are gathered at this Summit of Unity countries that are arming against each other. It is also regrettable that one finds absent from this Summit of Unity the Government of Honduras, whose people are victims of militarism and do not deserve punishment, but rather help instead.

If I had been told twenty years ago that in the year 2010 I would still be condemning the increase in military spending in Latin America, I probably would have been surprised.

How, after having seen the mangled bodies of young people and children wounded in war, could this region long for a return to arms? How could one allow the horrific parade of rockets, missiles and guns that passes by in view of rickety school desks, empty lunch boxes and clinics without medicines? Some might say that I was mistaken to trust in a peaceful future. I think not. Hope is never a mistake, no matter how many times it is short-changed.

I still hope for a new day for Latin America and the Caribbean. I hope for a future of greatness for our peoples. The day will come when democracy, development and peace will fill the saddlebags of the region. The day will come when the recount of the lost generations will cease. It may be tomorrow, if we dare to make it so. It may be next year, in the next decade or in the next century. As for me, I will keep fighting. Regardless of the shadows, I will continue to wait for the light at the end of the rainbow. I will continue to fight until such day arrives.

Dear friends. It has been a high honor and a true privilege to partake in this forum with you, just as it has been at many others. This is my last summit and in saying goodbye I want all of you to know that Óscar Arias will always be your true friend.

Thank you very much.

Óscar Arias Sánchez

The Venezuelan Supreme Court reached this week another one of its bizarre and revolutionary decisions, when it ruled that the vote for Mayor of the Sucre municipality of Zulia State had to be redone, because the elected Mayor owed the municipality money (about $300 dollars at Bs. 4.3 per $) at the time of the election.  And in its infinite wisdom, the Supreme Court decided to name as interim Mayor, the loser in the election, who coincidentally happens to be a member of Chavez PSUV party.

The Mayor, the brother of Omar Barboza of Un Nuevo Tiempo, had rented his home and the owner of the house had failed to pay municipal taxes. Thus, the elected mayor was supposedly not solvent with the municipality as required by law to be a candidate, despite the fact that he did present a certification when he registered to run that HE did not personally owe any taxes.

Thus, in all of its wisdom the Supreme Court not only removes Barboza and names the losing party to the position, but bans Barboza from running for the next four years (Convenient, no?). The argument was that the loser was Mayor before the election, but it was not his party that won, thus reason, logic and common sense would say that to satisfy the wishes of the voters, the Mayor should have come from the winning party and not from the Chavista losing party.

Thus, as usual, even when the opposition wins, it loses, when the Chavez-controlled-dominated-intimidated Venezuela Supreme Court rules according to his wishes and not the law.

There is no rule of law, just the rule of Chavez as the OAS report clearly states.