The Devil's Excrement

Here is Petkoff’s take on the Danilo Anderson case. The Prosecutor had
said that they had the complete movie of who killed Anderson and why,
step by step. Well, the whole things is so full of inconsistencies and
gaps, that it is very hard to take the thing seriously. Here are just
two facts:

-All of the “evidence’ is just the testimony of a single person, a
former member of the Colombian Auto defenses according to some, just a
Colombian Doctor according to the Prosecutor Isaias Rodriguez. Imagine
that the testimony of one person and some the fact that some
of the people talked to each other is the extent of the evidence. There
is nothing else in the case files according to the defense lawyers!

-The Attorney General/Prosecutor Isaias Rodriguez had said that the
“CIA was involved”. Then a warrant for the arrest of reporter Salvador
Romani was issued. Romani has been accused by the Cuban Government of
working for the CIA. The problem is that that Romani does not live in Venezuela. Thus, the intelligence police left empty handed, only to come back half an hour later with a different
arrest warrant to detain Romani’s son. Not even the Keystone cops
screwed up so badly! In fact, Romani’s wife still thinks they want her
husabnd and not the son. But the revolution does not care for such
petty details, what is important is that they have a Romani in jail,
even if it’s the wrong one. I wonder what hapened now to the CIA
connection?

That is the state of the judicial power in Venezuela. To those that are
pro-Chavez I just remind them that one day, they or their close
relatives, may have to face that same system of (In)Justice, they will
then join the opposition they so despise today.

Here is more in Petkoff’s usual clear words

Purple
Soup by Teodoro Petkoff in Tal Cual

The Government is turning the Venezuelan Judicial system into pieces. Last
week, for the nth. time, a judge, Maria Mercedes Prado, was removed because she
sentenced in a way that the Government had not authorized. That is the way it
is now: judges can only sentence, especially in cases of political connotation,
according to the instructions that officialdom gives them.

Yesterday, this judge tried to explain her case, in front of the media,
in the Press Hall of the Supreme Court. She was unable to do it. The
electricity was cut off and between the National Guard, the subpoena servers
and private guards she was kicked out of the room and the reporters and photographers
were kicked out violently. The Press Hall was shutdown indefinitely.

What was the judge going to say? That according to the Penal
Processing Code she had no other recourse that give one of the suspects
conditional freedom for the case of the bombs placed in the Spanish and
Colombian consulates, because the Prosecutor in charge of accusing him, Gilberto
Landaeta, had not done so? She would have pointed out, thus, the negligence of
the Prosecutor and by extension, of the Prosecutor�s office as a whole. With
violence, she was denied her right to express her criteria, using a procedure that
can only be explained by the thick and smelly atmosphere of authoritarism and
abuse to the rights of citizens that is enveloping the country. The Supreme
Court Justice that ordered that barbaric act did it because she feels like a
bully, but above all, because she knows she is supported. Because she knows
that this is the official style.

A typical style of bullies. Nobody in the Supreme Court was capable of
calling her to order because bullies, sometimes, manage to create a climate of
intimidation in their surroundings.

While that judge was being removed, another was put in charge of the Anderson case. Only three
hours later she issued the warrants for the arrests. Quite a prodigy of speed
reading, because the case has hundreds of files. Someone with a dirty mind
could speculate however, that the new judge knowing the fate of Doctor Prado
(and others before her, for the same reasons), �prudently� opted to preserve
her health, doing what was asked of her, without stopping to investigate too
much. In fact, when she was asked about the evidence to substantiate the case,
besides those pointed out by Isaias she �revealed� two more: that someone died;
a second one, that his name was Danilo Anderson. If the other eight are like
that (Isaias spoke of twelve), it looks uphill for the Prosecutor�s office to convince
us that they really have a case.

The judicial system and the Prosecutor�s office not only need to be
honest but have to appear to be honest. Up to now there are too many observed
inconsistencies and too many questions that are raised by what they have done.
If things continue to go like this, the respectability and credibility of the
Prosecutor�s Office, that the Prosecutor himself questioned in his ineffable
internal memoranda, are being put into question. The suspicion that we may be
facing a montage for political ends
is establishing itself in public opinion. And Isaias� interview in Channel 8
does nothing to dissipate that suspicion; on the contrary, it emphasizes it.

 

Continuing
in its attempt to intimidate and block the opposition just prior to the
upcoming elections for the National Assembly, a Judge decided tonight to
charge four of the Directors of Sumate for conspiracy against the Government.
The charge comes form receiving funds from the National Endowment for Democracy
for electoral education. Sumate has been a thorn in the Government’s shoe as it
activities allowed the opposition to gather the signatures to be able to call
for the recall of Hugo Chavez. Sumate has unveiled all of the problems with the
electoral process in Venezuela
and its leaders have been
going around the world presenting this document (in English here) about
the State of Democracy in Venezuela. In
contrast to the Government that uses State funds for party activities without accountability, Sumate
has provided all of its financial information on the web, including contracts with funding
agencies, as well as its
financials.

This is simply another fascist act by the Government: find a way to criminalize
the opposition activities in order to stop them and intimidate them. The
Prosecutor handling the case is Prosecutor Luisa Ortega, who has taken over
most of the responsibilities that Danilo Anderson used to have of handling
political cases. Meanwhile, all accusations against the Government, including
murders, abuse of power and corruption are simply shelved or
“decided” by a Judiciary that is totally controlled by the Government.

Did I forget to say some people claim this is still a democracy?

There is no question that this Government has no shame. It is no longer
a matter of whether you are pro-Chavez or not, you simply have to be
unconditional. Judge Maria Mercedes Prado, was handling the case of the
bombings of the Colombian and Spanish Embassies in February 2004.
According to the Government the case was “solved”, it was “clear cut”.
Despite this time went by and no evidence of any worth was presented to
the judge. Even President Chavez got involved in the case in his Sunday
variety show “Alo Presidente”, saying “we have the video that shows who
did it”. But the pro-Chavez judge disagreed. To her, there was little
evidence to charge anyone in the case. Thus, she told te Government
that she was going to rule on the case, saying there was no evidence to
convict any of the suspects.

Big mistake! Judge Prado was fired last week, precisely for not being
willing to rule as the Government and the Prosecutor’s office wanted.
She was mad, she was trying to hold a press conference
today to denounce in the press briefing room of the papalce of Justice
when Judge Belkis Cede�o ordered the electricity to be shut off and the
National Guard to expel the Judge from the Hall of Justice. In so doing
the guards assaulted reporters,
attempted to take their cameras away and kicked them out of the
building. As of today, the press room of the Hall Justice will be
eliminated and reporters will not be allowed in the Hall at al from now
on.

Oh yes, they claim this a democracy! Justice and freedom of speech are
non-existence as the ochlocracy controls everything and has no clue
about what democratic values are. 

I saw this table in a report from J.P. Morgan and I just had to post
it, judge for yourself the list which is separated into two groups: Oil
exporting countries and oil importing countries.Except for a couple of
exceptions, there seems to be an inverse relationshop between the
economic health of each country and the price of a gallon of gas

Oil Exporters	US$/gal
Venezuela	0.16
Iran	0.26
Nigeria	0.76
Qatar	0.78
Algeria	0.83
Saudi Arabia	0.91
Oman	1.17
Ecuador	1.45
Russia	2.27
Argentina	2.65
Mexico	2.65
Malaysia	2.76
Colombia	3.00
Oil Importers
Indonesia	1.73
China	2.04
Thailand	2.16
Philippines	2.23
Bulgaria	3.07
Brazil	3.57
South Africa	3.57
Peru	4.00
India	4.09
Chile	4.54
Korea	5.34
Turkey	7.95

I found this excellent article from Argentina so insightfull that I had to translate it for all.

Politically, a failure for all by Joaquin Morales Sola en La Nacion (Argentina).

If democracy is  an arithmetic of
majorities and minorities even if, from the start, it is not only that, we have
to agree that the US took almost all of the Americas in Mar del Plata, that
Venezuela remains as an isolated �mono� block and that Mercosur has the size of
a small neighborhood party.

The extreme ideology of both sides (in favor and against
ALCA) and certain diplomatic ineptitude managed to give George W. Bush an international
victory, which he had not achieved in a long time, after a number of defeats in
Washington

Instead, if Mar del Plata is observed from a political point
of view, the failure belongs to all of us, including the White House, that was
absent for too long from the rest of America. A document split into two is
certainly a very poor result.

Kirchner had promised to be a kind and aseptic host of the
summit. He would carry with him the success or the failure of the meeting. There
was, in the end, more of the latter than the former, despite the effort to exhibit
a better result. But he changed course in the middle and lost his neutrality in
the opening speech. Like a textbook Argentinean (which is what he is), he
overdid the contemplation of his own navel. He wasted a large part of the
speech, as the owner of the home court, with talking about the urgencies of Argentina and
his misadventures with the FMI. He could have, instead, placed his eyes on the common
conflicts of Latin America. It is the zone of
the planet with the biggest social inequality. It registered, in the last few
years, advances and reversals, both in the economy as well as the quality of
its democracy. And there are different concepts and alternatives for the region
to change the state of things. A consensual piece is what was expected from a
warm host.

Perhaps he did not like that Bush avoided to frontally
commit his position with respect to the FMI; that backing was Kichner�s obsession
up to the point he shook Bush�s hand. Perhaps he liked less that the Chief of
the White House made his the proposals of others foreign leaders and of many
investors about the need for legal protection and clear rules of the game in
the country. And he was certainly petrified with stupor that Bush expressed to
reporters the need to fight against corruption. That word is just not mentioned
in Kirchner�s Argentina.

But even from before then, things were not looking good. There
were thirty countries, with differences in nuances and plans, in favor of a
free trade agreement for the hemisphere. Four others established intransigent positions
and one was keeping vigil over a corpse which is not dead. The addition and
subtraction pour off a correlation of forces that looks too much like a defeat
for the minority.

There was a lack of diplomacy, even if the argument that
conditions for integration have to be analyzed carefully is reasonable. There
are no identical situations in Latin America.
But watching over the content does not mean you withdraw from the indispensable
dialogue, which is what has not happened in the last few years. Mercosur fell
sleep with its convictions and Washington
with theirs. Despite all, efficient diplomacy always has a formula to dress up its
divergences. Those possible diagonals were what was missing in Mar del Plata. Brazil also suffered a serious
misstep; its efforts to create a South American community of Nations was reduced
to a bunch of photo opportunities. With Bush sitting at the table, that project
turned into air particles. Except the four nations of Mercosur, where the
natural leadership of Brazil
is present, the rest were all just closer to Washington.

Surely there was no political adhesion to Bush on the part of
the majority of the Latin American leaders, but a different vision to the
solution of their national problems. Why not respect them? Why not find the
words that would comprise the interest of some and the others?

Venezuela
is a case apart, from the beginning. But, what is left of the Bolivarian ambitions
of Hugo Chavez when his speech only penetrates a club of excited militants and
no other country in the region is ready to follow him? The only thing left is
his oil and his petrodollars. Without them, Chavez would be less insignificant from
what he already is in Latin America.

Kirchner and Lula will no longer be able to cover up for him
without conditions for much longer; they run the risk of catching the isolation
of the Venezuela
one. Containing Chavez, which was promised by Kirchner, did not work in Mar del Plata: the
populist Venezuelan leader shouted and offended without measure or limit, very
close to the correct and classical Presidents.

Is Mercosur one? Apparently it is. But appearances do not
show everything. There is in Uruguay
a sort of tiredness because of the eternal fights between Brazilians and Argentineans
within Mercosur. On top of that-one has to say it-Tabare Vazquez disappointed both
Brasilia and Buenos Aires with his airs of independence. And
Paraguay established its own
relationship with Washington,
especially in matter of Defense.

In Mar del Plata,
there was a deep fight, which did not compromise Kirchner or Bush. It was staged
by Mexico and Brazil, the two most powerful countries in Latin America. Mexico
had, it needs to be said, more echo than Brazil among Latin American
Presidents. Argentina did
not treat Mexico
well, a country with which it has important trade agreements, which are
essential for its economy. It is true that Kirchner could not offer to have bilateral
meetings with more than 30 Presidents, but Mexico
is not part of the bunch, it is the first economy of Latin
America. Kirchner found time to meet alone, once again, with Chavez,
why not to listen to Vicente Fox?

Fox asked more than a year ago, in the Argentinean city of Igua�u, its incorporation
to Mercosur. Nobody replied anything to him, ever. In that extended Mercosur
meeting, Fox saw first the incorporation of Venezuela to the commercial alliance,
proposed by Lula. Venezuela
will be, in December, a full member of Mercosur. Fox complained, from the
initial discussions of the Mar del
Plata meeting, about the need for regional attention
for the problem of migrations, which is a priority of his Government. They did
not even devote one minute to the matter.

It also happens to be a prejudice without foundation to
suppose that Fox and Chile�s
Lagos act as spokesmen for Washington. Fox and Lagos
gave Bush a notable defeat in the Security Council when Washington tried to give the Iraqi war international
coverage. They have been more firm, when push comes to shove, than the rhetoric
of Kirchner or than the verbal incontinence of Chavez.

The permanent equilibrium between ideology, history and
practice led the main leaders of Mar Del Plata
to ignore the gravest of all the things that have recently happened in Latin
America: the inexplicable decision by Peruvian President Toledo to extend its
sovereignty of his country over the sea, which directly affects the security of
Chile.
You don�t do that to Chile
without any consequences. Toledo, with his
popularity indices rubbing the bottom of measures, imitated Gaitieri when he
grabbed the Falkland Islands to give oxygen to
his already unpopular dictatorship. The crisis between Chile and Peru places at
risk peace in Spanish speaking America and block any solution of a way out to
the sea for Bolivia , which Jose Maria Insulza had been working on, first from
Chile and now from the OAS. Insulza could ask for help from another intelligent
head in Latin America, Enrique Iglesias, now executive
secretary of Iberoamerican summits.

Bolivia
could be the solution to many Latin American problems, because it has energy
reserves in a region starving for energy. But it could also show, if its destabilization
or its secession were to happen, the tragic specter of broken peace in the
southern part of America.
Argentinean diplomacy has lots to do, if it abandoned its comfortable position
of doing nothing, in Bolivia,
in Peru and in Chile

To do that, Argentinean foreign policy has to stop looking at its navel. The world
is neither a geographical error nor a geographical excess, and Latin America lacks solutions. It does lack indeed
leaders of the stature of Insulza and of Iglesias, ready to accept that it is
not the same thing to put things in their place than to recognize the place for
things.

One of the hallmarks of the Chavista revolution has been its ability to destroy institutions, traditions and methods in Venezuela, without implanting an alternative. Chavez may talk about revolution, third way, XXIst. Century socialism but in the end they are empty words as seven years after his election he still ahs not defined any of them as he switches from one to another in his apparent need to promise something new all the time. Even the Bolivarian Constitution which was specific, is overrun, bypassed, mutilated and spindled daily by its creators. As someone said, the Constitution was written with the frame of mind of being in the opposition, but they happen to be Government.

Case in point is the mural by Venezuelan kinetic artist Carlos Cruz Diez which surrounds the port of La Guaira near Caracas. Cruz Diez, one of the top Venezuelan artists of all times, designed in 1991 a mural which is 2 Km. in length to decorate the wall surrounding the port. He donated his time and supervised its implementation. While I could not find a picture of the original mural, below are three outdoor works by Cruz Diez from the same period and similar in design and spirit than the “Muro de Induccion Cromatica” in La Guaira:

With time the mural, below left, suffered the lack of maintenance by administration after administration as well as its use by most political parties to cover it with advertising. It would have been a simple matter to maintain and repair, the key was in the design, Cruz Diez did not actually paint all of it. It would have been an easy matter to fix it. Instead it is being torn down as shown in the picture below in the right. He has actually been quite gracious about the destruction of his work of art, saying it was a gift and as such people may or may not accept it.

The reasons? A multitude of them from the fact that it block the horrible view of the docks to what lies behind the whole idea as expressed by the President of the Cultural Foundation of Vargas state: “(It) does not identify itself with the idiosyncracy of those that live in Vargas state”. Of course, he makes no definition of what those idiosyncracies are and makes no alternative proposal, as the mural is being replaced by a wire fence. Such is the ways of the revolution

This is simply a barbaric act of ideological revenge and stupidity, where we are seeing wholesale destruction of everything as a way of simply erasing the past. Fixing it would have been rather simple, I am sure art students from all over the Central region of the country would have been delighted to donate their time to fix it. Relocating it with the same dimensions would have been rather easy in Vargas state, which continues to suffer from the devastation of the 1999 floods, as reconstruction has been limited and vast empty spaces with destroyed houses and building remain there for everyone to see as a tribute to the Government’s incompetence. But the easy and symbolic destruction of the mural fits the character and spirit of this soulless revolution. Destroy, destroy and destroy, maybe one day they will realize there is nothing left.

Hugo “Daddy Warbucks” Chavez went to Mar del Plata to preside over the anti-summit, bury ALCA the free trade agreement of the Americas and become leader of the Third World.
With another one of his magnanimous offers, Hugo Warbucks offered a
“modest” US$ 10 billion of our money to promote the anti-Alca, a sort
of trade agreement, not-for profit and without the US.

But
while Chavez relished his triumph in presiding over the marchers, the
fact was that there was little of Summit at the anti-Summit with Chavez
being the only one of the Presidents that participated in it, sitting
next to former soccer star and more recent drug addict Diego Maradona
(below left) and many of the usual suspects,

The
question was where were the rest, the Ortega’s and all of the other
leftwing leaders and aspiring leaders of the Continent? In hiding? What
where they afraid of? Argentina’s
President Kirchner failed to show up, Fidel was not invited and sent
eternal leftwing music icon Silvio Rodriguez to represent him and Lula
Da Silva knows better than risk the well being of his people.

But
Chavez could care less, shouting “Homeland or death”, praising Che
Guevara, using swear words generously and trying to charm the 38,000
present with his enfant terrible attitude. Simultaneously, they staged their own march in Caracas, using the same signs exported to Argentina,
as the dummy below has the same sign as the dummy above did.
Today the local Chavista paper called Vea noted the march and called
Alca “dead” as shown below:

Unfortunately, Chavez may pay the price for all of this. The world was actually watching this time around (Venezuelans were forced to watch as all radio and TV stations were forced to show the whole event) as CNN showed the end of the event and the subsequent riots,
US flag burnings and violent confrontations by over a thousand
protesters, leaving the implied image that Chavez was the leader that
brought them there to riot. This, together with Chavez’ insults towards
the US president clearly did not sit well with the same Western press
that Chavez and his media consultants and spinners have been carefully
cultivating and manipulating for the last few years. Even his “friend”
Jimmy Carter expressed his dismay
at Chavez’ actions, saying it was “completely unjustified” for Chavez
to do this and saying he knew that Chavez was a difficult person from
his own experience. (Spanish version here)

The Chavez bashing had actually started a day earlier
when Ted Koppel in Nightline decided to set the record straight and
said that Chavez had used his program as a launch pad for the
propagation of lies. Two months ago Chavez made the charges that the US had a plan called “Balboa” to invade Venezuela in Koppel’s program and promised to send partial proof of the documents that Venezuela had “discovered” on the issue. Koppel concluded “After many requests over the last two months, we have received nothing”. Koppel also clarified that there was a “Balboa” in military war games between the US and Spain.

And
it continued last night as one TV station after another referred to the
Venezuelan President in negative terms. In fact, none of them was even
careful enough to note that Chavez only participated in the peaceful
part of the protest rally, but blurred over the distinction. It went
even further today when a group of Republican Congressmen called Chavez a clown, leaving aside the usual respect that US Congressmen and Senators have shown for our President.

The
question is whether this sequence of events from Koppel, through Carter
to the US Congressmen was spontaneous or not. We are sure it wasn’t, we
think this was all carefully orchestrated by the US spin doctors to begin putting Chavez in a bad light. And I think they won this round.

And then there is ALCA, the free trade treaty that the US is proposing for the Americas
to compete with the European Union. ALCA was a non-issue for the
Argentinean summit, because its success depends on the success of the
upcoming WTO talks, as pointed out by the Brazilian Foreign Minister
even before the Summit began and reiterated by the OAS Secretary
Insulza, who kept giving interviews saying progress would be difficult
without the WTO talks first.

Chavez and his advisers knew this and Vice-President Rangel called ALCA a corpse in an advanced state of decomposition. Meanwhile Chavez kept saying
he had to come to bury ALCA and promote ALBA for which he offered US$
10 billion as Venezuela’s contribution, money that could certainly be
used to reduce poverty in his own land, but Chavez is certainly too
busy giving it away elsewhere, spending it in foolish state ventures
and wasting it subsidies where corruption takes big chinks of the
money. He no longer seems to relish the role of leader of Venezuela he wants something bigger and he appears to want it now.

Reaction was swift by the US and its partners (part of the same strategy?) as Mexican President Fox quickly went on the offensive and called for the members of Mercosur (Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Venezuela)
to stop blocking the free trade agreement and threatening to leave them
out of the pact if they continued their strategy. In fact, Fox called
for a resolution on the issue before the end of the summit and that
ALCA be included in the declaration, basically creating a standoff in the declaration being completed. The President of El Salvador also defended
ALCA saying they had not come to bury it and he was sure 80% of it
would be functioning within two years.  In the end 29 countries
signed for Alca and the Mercosur and Venezuela said  the
conditions are not there for it. But they will be. As the other 29
countries press for it, the mercosur countries will join the fray.

And while Chavez tried to spin it
as a victory, the truth is that ALCA may not be in the form that even
Chavez’s partners in Mercosur want it, but they all want it and want to
be part of it. Few countries have the luxury of Venezuela
which sells mostly basic commodities and few finished products. Most of
those countries want to diversify exports and need better access to the
US market and that is why they will join ALCA eventually no matter what Chávez says or wants. If Venezuela does not, it will be another step for our country to be closer to being Africa than America.

Thus,
there was no burial of the free trade agreement, but we did see the
beginning of a definite media offensive against the Venezuelan
President led by the US.
Bush did not expect much from the Mar de Plata meeting, but Chavez
thought he would score a victory, but he didn’t. Chavez belived the
final declaration will not have the word ALCA in it, but the it did
with the majority of the countries favoring it. By making it an issue,
he may have lost the battle and
lost part of the large effort he has made in making the international
media love him.

Next year the WTO meeting will take place and that will lead to ALCA being joined by most Latin American countries.

Where Venezuela will be in all of this, is anybody’s guess.

With the excuse that they were looking for reporter Patricia Poleo, 50 members of the intelligence police (DISIP) raided a local hotel where a political act by opposition groups that are calling for people to invoke Art. 350 of the Venzuelan Constitution
was taking place. Art. 350 calls for the people not to recognize any
regime which goes agaisnt the country’s values, democratic rights or
violates human rights. This was simply harrasment, you can find the
pictures in Noticiero Digital. Below two of them, one with a view of
the room as the intelligence police rushed in the room when Antonio
Ledezma was speaking, the other a close-up of the jacket of one of the
cops where someone had stuck a “350” sticker. Way to go!