The Devil's Excrement

Gustavo Coronel has his own blog, check it out!

In another arbitrary act by the Chavez administration, the Ministry of Tourism today took over the concession of the Avila Magica cable car system, operated under concession by a local consortium. That consortium had a 30 year contract with the Government which was unilaterally rescinded by the Government in violation of the contract itself. There was no due process, no right to defense, the autocratic Government of Hugo Chavez did what it wanted without regards for the rule of law. There was no decision by a judge, no audience, no chance for the operators to defend themselves.

The cable car concession was given out nine years ago. At the time the system did not work and was completely replaced and rebuilt thanks to a credit of US$ 90 million by the company that rebuilt the system. The cable car was built in the 50’s but by the late 60’s it began having difficulties because of the lack of maintenance. One of the companies in the consortium trades in the Caracas Stock Exchange. The Minister said that the Government will not compensate the operator of the concession and that the operators actually owed money to the Government.

Another step by the robolution to guarantee no investment in the country by the private sector.

On his Sunday program Alo Presidente, attempted to manipulate the truth using his customary convoluted logic he uses for everything to try to show that Venezuela’s terrible performance at the Panamerican games in Brazil was actually a victory. His Chavezian argument suggested that Venezuela did better than arch-enemy the US because the number of medals per inhabitant was higher for Venezuelan than for the gringoes. Today Simon Bocanegra in Tal Cual takes Chavez to task with this fake news item on the issue:

International Olympic Committee adopts Chaz method by Simon Bocanegra in Tal Cual

Geneva.-The International Olympic Committe, following the recommendation made by the President of Venezuela, decided to adopt the novel method proposed by hos excellency for the calculation of sports medals. It immediately recalculated the medals from the Panamerican Games. The new standings changed radically the overall view of the games. The small islands
in the Caribbean of Antigua and Barbuda took the top place for the first time with 12.08 medals per one million inhabitants, defeating other continental sports powerhouses like Bahamas (6.19) and the Netherland Antilles (5.47). Cuba occupied the fourth place (5.24). The biggest disappointment was Venezuela which from the eight place it occupied under the old calculation method, fell to tenth place with the one proposed by its President with 0.37 medals per million inhabitants. Countries considered up to now as sports powerhouses in the Continent, such as Brazil. Mexico and Argentina, to which one should add Colombia, came in the last places overall.

The United States, that had been usurping first place in 13 out of the 15 Panamerican Games that have taken place, occupied the 12th. place, showing its mediocre standing in sports, masked up to now by an imperialistic calculation, which originates in the Greek empire and perfected later by the Roman Empire.

I was hoping last night’s silly post would be my only mention of Sean Penn’s irrelevant visit to Venezuela. But I could not pass up the opportunity to note that maybe Penn’s visit has something to do with the fact that Chavez and Penn were forever linked and joined last January when Hannity inducted Penn into his enemy of the state’s list, joining Chavez, Castro and Kim Il Sung and other practitioners or sympathizers of fascism. (Thanks D.!)

Let’s see: Sean Penn, Danny Glover and Harry Belafonte…

Are men stupid or what?

Venezuela
may be the only country where the underlying inflation goes up the highest in
one month and the Minister of Finance holds a press conference to tell the world
that economic policies are working and this can be seen in the inflation rate

As the June inflation rate dropped
to 0.5%, Minister Cabezas claimed
today that this showed that the policies implemented by his Ministry in
combination with the Central bank were having an effect. But in fact the drop in
the CPI for July is an artificial effect of the combination of one-time events:
the cut in the value added tax (VAT) rate from 11% to 9% and the drop in the
rates of telecom company CANTV, which led to a drop of 5.5% in communications
prices for the month of July. Remove these two factors and the true structural
inflation would be between 2.3% and 2.4%, the highest of any month so far this
year when these adjustments are taken into account.

Thus, it is not clear whether the
Minister is trying to lie or is simply ignorant or a combination of both.

What’s next?

Destroying the country’s yield curve?

Wait! He already did that!

Dictator by Michael Rowan in El Universal

Dear President Chavez, with all respect, you can’t dictate
that people can’t call you a dictator. The old saying goes:
if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck and looks like
a duck, it’s probably a duck. This is why people call you
a dictator. You have taken absolute control over Venezuela’s
institutions, which is the chief characteristic of a dictator.
You admit proudly to indoctrinating Venezuelans in the ideology
of your revolution, which is a dictionary definition of a
dictator. You have made media criticism that you deem to be
disrespectful of your authority a crime, which is exactly
what dictators do. So in all fairness to those who are free
to form their opinions of you from what they perceive in everyday
life, you should admit that it is not specious for a person
to call you a dictator.

While whether you are a dictator or not is a matter of opinion,
whether a person can say you are a dictator in Venezuela or
anywhere else is their fundamental human right. You do not
have the power nor should you seek it to prevent anyone who
believes you are a dictator from saying it. You say you are
going to expel people who call you a dictator from the country.
Sir, you have no right from God or man to do any such thing
and in your heart of hearts you know it. But if you do expel
a person for calling you a dictator, recognize that everyone
you face from that point thereafter may be thinking you are
a dictator and knowing you are a dictator but not saying it
to your face for fear of being punished.

Last week the Democratic candidates for US president were
asked in debate if they would meet with the world’s worst
dictators – you and four others were named. Barack Obama said
maybe he would. Hillary Clinton said maybe she would not.
But none of those candidates said: “Hugo Chavez is not a dictator
and does not belong in that group of dictators from Iran,
North Korea, Cuba, Syria and Venezuela.” Now if that debate
had been held in Venezuela, would you expel the YouTube person
who asked the question and all the candidates who answered
it? Venezuela will become the country with the smallest population
in the world if you continue with the fantasy that people
cannot say the truth — you are a dictator.

I actually thought that it was last night that RCTV International was supposed to shutdown its cable and TV signal, but it was tonight. Then this afternoon the Venezuelan Supreme Court admitted an injunction from the Chamber of cable TV services. The arguments are very simple:

i) The Chamber of Cable TV operators does not know which are the networks to be excluded or not.
ii) It does not know why RCTV International was given 5 days to comply why the others were given ten days.
iii) There is no definition of who is or not a “national operator”.
iv) It does not know the existence of any regulations on this matter and asks that the regulator be ordered to issue them.

The Court had to admit the case since it was so obvious that the whole thing was built to get RCTV International off the air, going as far as requiring it to go off the air earlier than the others. Funny that on the same day Chavez authorized the creation of a new Telesur Venezuela, that would register as a local network, something the “other” Telesur had never done or had never been required to do in the past.

Mision Ribas is th Chavez Government’s attempt to graduate as many people form high school as possible, without any regards for quality. The problem, much like Venezuela’s secondary school education, is the level of quality and the improvisation. It is the number of graduates that matter, not if they actually learned anything. The same way health “achievements” are measured by number of patients seeingand not by improvements in health indices.

Today Tal Cual had this picture which proves my point: If the teachers who educate in Mision Ribas, can’t even write a simple word like “inscripciones” correctly, calling for the students to register, not only replacing the “p” with a “c” in the banner, but hanging it outside, what can you even ask from the students? Didn’t anyone  notice?

What happens when they teach high school Physics or Chemistry?

What a mess!!

In a few minutes RCTV International will disappear from the air in another arbitrary decision and ruling by the Chavez administration. It is another decision without legal foundation designed to persecute and get ird of someone who disagrees with it. Nothing new here.

The ruling hurts RCTV, because if it followed it, it would not be able to expand its markets, which is necessary since its market share via cable and satellite will be much smaller than what it used to have using the free airwaves which the Government arbitrarily took away from it.

It ius another attempt to muzzle free speech and silence criticism of the Government. It is another proof that there is no rule of law or checks and balances in Venezuela and that everything is slowly falling into the hands and control of Dictator Hugo Chavez.

Who is next?