The Devil's Excrement

The
revolution can be truly amazing. None other than the Armed Forces University (UNEFA), gave
this week an Honorary Doctorate degree to Mikhail Kalashnikov for his
research in the area of weapons manufacturing and his contributions to the
defense of the sovereignty of Nations. To make the matter even more hilarious
supposedly Kalashnikov said that it was an honor to be part of “such a body of
well known scientists”. Well, he must known something we don’t, there are
hardly any scientists at UNEFA, let alone well known. Some General or other
even went as far as calling Kalashnikov a scientist, which goes to show that
these ignorants can be easily fooled. He is an inventor, not a scientist and
honoring him in the name of sovereignty and peace is in my own opinion
absolutely immoral and absurd.

Venezuelan
military officials seem to have trouble with certain concepts. Sovereignty is
not only the defense of our territory, but also the defense of what we have and
own and how we think. Where is sovereignty when Chavez gives away billions to other countries? When
ill prepared Cuban Doctors take the jobs of Venezuelan Doctors? (BTW check out
this, a former Minister of Health saying
4,000 Cuban Doctors have defected). Science is something they have yet to
understand as nutty scientific planners and theorists of science have taken over
science and the scientific bureaucracy in Venezuela.

Actually,
given the high consumption of hard liquor in Venezuela, mostly Scotch whisky, UNEFA
should have given the Honorary degree to Kalashnikov for inventing, owning and
selling his own brand of vodka,
another one of his “scientific” contributions.

I can
still remember some twenty years ago when a very humble 80 year old man came and visited Venezuela. Nobody
paid much attention, as he gave a couple of lectures, visited labs and friends
and was honored by the Venezuelan
Academy of Sciences. He was John
Bardeen two-time Physics Nobel Prize winner, the Government and UNEFA
ignored his visit, they could not recognize a true scientist if they saw one. They
still can’t!

—The Minister
of Justice called one day for the disarming of the population in order to
reduce the rampant wave of homicides which have almost tripled in the almost
eight years of the revolution. The next day, at a meeting with civilian groups,
where only the Heil Chavez! Were missing, Chavez called for giving the youth
group 15,000 Kalastchnikov rifles. Thus, it seems that they will get an
upgrade. BTW, these pseudo fascist meetings led by the tropical fuehrer himself
received little coverage by the press, but the spirit of Hitler, Franco, Peron
and Fidel was very much alive.

—The
Venezuelan Supreme Court rejected the consideration of the human rights case of
those assassinated on April 11 2002. against Government officials. The
argument? Individuals have no legal rights to defend themselves in front of the
Court system when it comes to “the sphere of collective or diffuse rights of a
society” such as human rights. Only the people’s ombudsman can assume that role
for them. Case closed. The Government controls the Ombudsman, thus, there are
no human rights directly but only “diffusively”. What a racket!

—The
Prosecutors office will investigate the origin of the wealth and properties of
former Justice Velasquez Alvaray. Amazing, for two years people had accused him
of accumulating wealth but nothing was done, now that he is in disgrace, the
investigation is opened without anyone even asking for it. Watch out those that
have accumulated similar wealth in the last seven plus years! You may be next
if you fall from grace.

—I will
talk about the “binational” bond later, but you have to hand it to Minister of
Finance Merentes who once again defended the purchase of Argentinean bonds by Venezuela
claiming the country has made a profit by selling them of US$ 200 million. This
profit only exists in the fertile mind of the Minister. Venezuela buys the
bonds let’s say at 77%, sells them to local banks in bolivars at 81%, but at the official rate of exchange,
these banks turn around sell them in New York for 77% in US dollars and bring
the money back at the parallel rate. These are the guys making the money; the
rest is just smoke and mirrors.

—And how
about the candidates from the opposition! One, Teodoro Petkoff blames Sumate
for assuming what nobody wants to assume and giving a deadline because they
just have not agreed on anything since they started talking about primaries in
mid-April. Another, Manuel Rosales, registers for a primary, but he has yet to
announce he is a candidate. Weird politicians we have been blessed with in Venezuela. Somehow
I get the feeling that I have many decades left in the opposition, even if we
can get rid of Chavez.

—And how
about Alek
Boyd getting word straight out of UNESCO that it ahs never certified or declared
officially Venezuela
as an illiteracy-free territory! So, we have a couple of Education Ministers
and Vice-Ministers who are simply liars, a President who was either told a lie
or collaborated with it, but the interesting question is whether they will
remove the banner with the claim that is outside the Education Ministry. (Or
was last time I looked!)

—And how
about the Electoral Board proposing that all Government workers can openly campaign
for Chavez and Chavez can openly use all of the resources of the state to
campaign! I love how they can just ignore the law olympically!

—O yeah,
I almost forgot a Government audit recognized the irregularities in the handling
of the cooperative Invepal, something I have covered regularly here. The money
is missing, as simple as that.

—Has
anyone told Chavez that Mercosur is more neoliberal than the Andean Community?
What will he do when the flood of Brazilian products come in?

—And how
about the Central Bank reporting it is the Government that generates the
largest amount of capital flight?

—And we
have a new Minister of Housing; the last one did as badly as the previous ones
in the last eight years and worse than all the Housing Ministers between 1990
and 1998.

—IB tells me that if you look at PDVSA’s website under business plan in English it says the company now is inyto “refinement”. I guess thye will turn out some fine people with that program. About time. Sloppy is, sloppy does…

—Italy won the World futbol Cup by
penalties, somehow a very unfitting ending to the whole thing. Time to change the rules!

I will be away all of next week, coming back in the middle of the final for the World Cup a week from Sunday, hope plane is on time. If anything important happnes I will update by email, since I can’t get remote updating to work again. Jorge Arena will also keep an eye open for me.

Venezuela needs investment to create jobs and education. Investment is not going well, there is very little of it by the Government or the private sector. Well, if what follows in this article from Ultimas Noticias is the path for education, things are truly bleak for our beleagueared country.

Minister Istúriz: “I am politicizing education, so?”
(Últimas
Noticias, 6/28/2206)

Caracas. In the framework of the III national Pedagogical Congress: Towards the
consolidation of the Bolivarian Educational System,, building the national
Pedagogical theory”, the Minister of education Aristóbulo Isturiz pointed out
that in order to change the current educational model “it is necessary to have
an ideological and political floor, because without politics there is no
pedagogy and without them education”

The
Minister proposed an educational system based on pedagogical theory: “The state
is in charge of forming citizens according to its political theory, according
to its vision for the Republic.

He pointed out that for the implementation of the new Bolivarian
educational system which is based in equality, social democracy and a state of Justice;
this is only possible through the teachers.

The Venezuelan teacher now more than ever needs politics and ideology.
All teachers have to be politicians compromised with a dream for the country in
order to turn it into a reality. Without teachers there is no revolution,
education has to be at the service of the liberation of the people.

He informed that education is in a reversion process, because the
Government is implementing a process of renewal of public education which will
only be possible if the privatization of education is eliminated.

Each teacher has to be married with the model of the Republic and our
political ideology has as its objective to build the socialist ideology of the
XXIst. Century, the Minister pointed out.

End of article

Note the following:

–No mention of excellence

–No mention of merit

–No mention of content, knowledge, culture, learning

–It says public education can only work if you eliminate private
education. Shouldn’t it be the other way around, you make public education so
good you wipe out private education?

–It is clearly discriminatory, to be a science teacher you must have
the right politics, otherwise you are out no matter how good you may be as a
teacher. The mediocre will rise to the top on the back of fake ideological
grounds! Well, after all Mr. Isturiz is the same man who said Chavez had “smoked
an egg roll” because of his nutty ideas, but then he got the job of Minister of
Education and he apparently shared it with the autocrat!

–Note that there is still no ideology behind XXIst. Century Socialism,
it remains “to be built”

God help Venezuela
if this is the who and how their children will be “educated”!

Today you get a break from the tough world of politics and conflicts. Below a picture of one of the weirdest Venezuelan orchid, Coryanthes Speciosa. I just posted about it in my orchid section if you are interested why this strange shape helps reproduction and pollination. Have a good one!

And here is the campaign ad against Lopez Obrador using Chavez’ image that the Venezuelan Government complained about and the Mexican Electoral Board pulled off the air.

I usually
don’t use swear words in my blog, but a while back when I heard
Hugo Chavez say that the success of Invepal will determine the future of
corporate coops in Venezuela I said, literally
and precisely:

Oh shit! That program is in real
trouble!

Last Saturday
more problems in the Invepal coop began to
surface and the more people speak or say something the clearer it gets that
the whole things is a failure. Workers now refuse to even talk to management
(mostly Government personalities including the Minister pf Labor), the Minister says things are
not as bad, but there are serious accusations of irregularities, no audited
financial statements and while the Government claims Invepal is making money,
the workers say otherwise.

It was
very difficult to imagine a different ending for such a harebrained scheme as
Invepal. Take a company in trouble that could not survive under knowledgeable management
and give it to the workers, running it with a Board made up of political hacks
and union leaders and try that balancing act! Of course, workers, as happens
everywhere, want more, except that it is not easy to restart a company that
already had problems competing, in a cyclical and very competitive business
under an environment of let’s be goody, goody to each other. Add to that nepotism,
perks and financial irregularities and what you had was simply a time bomb, as
the last few days have shown.

In fact, the
unions never broke conversations with the previous “mean” and “oligarchic” management
the way they have done with the Government, which is simply rejecting the statements
by union leaders and saying that everything is simply peachy.

But things
are bad. Invepal not only lacks audited financials, but there are
accusations of graft, nepotism and the Government nor respecting labor union
regulations. Thus, Invepal’s workers are fired, when there is a nationwide
firing freeze and union leaders are not given the free time established by law
to attend to union problems.

What is
really happening is what you would expect. In a paper company in trouble like
Invepal, you have to make very tough unbiased decisions, when you are both
owner and manager and union, that is very difficult to do, if not impossible without creating to much friction. Add
to that lack of know how, an ignorant and political Board and anyone would have
realized this was another crazy scheme.

Thus, we
are seeing the same thing that happened during the last oil bonanza of the 70’s,
the state assuming a role that it should have and wasting huge amounts of money on it. It used to be called “La Gran Venezuela”, now it is called a revolution. Same thing, different decade. Expected,
yes, you could read it here,
here or here months
ago in this blog.

The sad
part is that the workers were told they owned the company and now they discover
that they owe the Government the funds for their share of the equity, but on
top of that they have little say in how the company is being run, by whom and
what is done with the cash flow it generates. In the end they own nothing, they have seen no improvement in their salaries, lives or working conditions.

Not
exactly a worker’s paradise.

In a few
months you will hear similar problems coming out of Inveval (Valve coop) or
Invetex (textile coop). The Government chose as pilots for their infamous “congestion”
or shared management three companies that were closed by their rightful owners
(Inveval and Invetex) because they simply had no future or a third one
(Invepal) that began shutting down facilities in order to try to rescue the
remainder of the company. Unfortunately, the rightful owners never thought politics
would get in the way so much as to force the shutdown of the company, the illegal
expropriation of the company and the rest as they say is simply history.

You can’t
improvise and ignore the basic rules of economics and human behavior (Which may be the same in the end!). This is simply Chavez’ invention of a workers corporate paradise which only exists in his imagination. But hey!
Now we are doing the same with failed companies in Uruguay and trying in Brazil, exporting both the the crummy model and the silly revolution!