The Devil's Excrement

There is a family from Zulia State, last name Gonzalez, that
should be the subject of studies by Statisticians and the like for
their ability to give birth on the same day. You see, according to the
Electoral Registry, 2002 Gonzalez’ were born
on the same day and year March 15th. 1974. Even more amazing, 1887 of
them haver registered in the same state of Zulia under Chavez’ flash ID
campaign by the Government before the recall vote in 2004, instead of
doing it when they should have. But these guys are really, really good.
On top of that 409 are registered to vote TWICE. Isn’t that wonderful?

In
the Electoral Registry, as handed over by the CNE to the politocal
parties, 2.8 million people have no address, which is against the law,
this is the first thing you have to provide in order to know where you
vote. 476,800 have new ID cards and thirteen thousand or so are
registered to vote simultaneously in two different electoral centers.

And
then, of course, there is the mystery of the new Minister of
Information and Communications Yuri Pimentel. He is too old for his cedula (ID) number:

Moreover, Yuri did
not vote in the recall referendum last year. It is not necessary for a
person to be born in Venezuela to be a Minister, but did Yuri become
Venezuelan last year? Where is he from? Why hasn’t the Government
explained this? Go figure for a Government that claims to defend
sovereignty in every nook and cranny (but doesn’t!) !

Reporters without borders has published a Handbook for Bloggers and Cybersdissidents. I am trying to translate it into Spanish, but it is slow going, in the meantime you will have to do with the English version.

Thnaks Roger for the head up!

Well, somebody in Norwegian TV seems to get it accoridng to this video

Thanks Stig, my Norwegian is rusty!

–It is the largest budget in the country’s history both as a
percentage of GDP (35%) or in absolute terms in US$ at US$ 40.46
billion.

–It is six times larger in local currency than Chavez first budget in 1999.

–It assumes oil prices of US$ 26 with production of 3.4 million
barrels of oil a day (dream on!). In any case, the reason for
underestimating is simple, money to the regional Governments is given
out in terms of expected revenues. Thus, they will get less than what
the law says. (What else is new?)

–Funding for housing is budgeted at Bs. 205 billion (US$ 95 million),
while Presidential Expenses are budgeted at Bs. 243 billion (US$ 110
million), up 72%. I guess he has to pay too many $4800 a night suites
to go to useless summits,
like he did in Salamanca. Yes, it is bad being rich!

–Tax collection will come from Indirect Taxes 76.5% (US$ 12.6
billion), corporate taxes 21.8% (US$ 3.59 billion) and personal taxes
1.7% (US$ 283 million), which shows what a terrible tax system we have,
where most taxes are collected from everyone via the VAT tax, but
personal taxes are tiny. Is this fair? I don’t think so,
but it is easier to collect it thus way. Revolutionary!

–The Ministry of Defense will get Bs. 3.81 trillion (US$ 1.77 billion),
continuing a long tradition of buying expensive and useless toys for men
who have no idea how to use them and will likely not mantain them at
all. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

–US$ 6 billion will be spent via the newly created Development Fund
(Foden). None of it is specified in the budget. You could call it
Chavez’ petty cash fund.

A group from the Chavista ochlocracy attempted to assault
Editor Teodoro Petkoff as he was beginning to present his book “The Two
Lefts” in the Eastern city of Maturin. Petkoff has been going around
the country in what is clearly a tour to measure whether he should run
or not for President in 2006.

The mob of 30 Chavistas apparently sent by the Chavista Mayor of
Maturin entered the building where the presentation was to take place
with shouts and pushing people around. A radio announcer for a local
radio station was injured. The group was led by MVR councilman Eulogio
Santana. They accused Petkoff of playing a role in the April 11 2002
events.Petkoff said this is the first time in his tour around Venezuela
that this has happened. The police showed up, calm prevailed on the
part of those attending and the presentation was succesfully completed.

Once again, intolerant and fascist Chavista groups attempt to block
others from exercizing their rights for the only reason that they
disagree with them.

What else is new in this fake revolution?

And don’t forget to read Gustavo Coronel’s comments on PDVSA’s filing to the SEC either here or here. A
can of worms indeed, it reveals new lies as well as proving earlier
ones. Pay attention in particular to the comments about page 14 and the
Cuban refinery, page 20 on drilling activities and page 21 of the
report on the company’s oil production. Great job Gustavo, this
shows why Citgo announced they are repurchasing their debt this week,
so that they don’t have to file reports like this anymore!

A
while back I reported how someone had placed paper skeletons all over Caracas calling for
“Change” and saying the protest was by young people who were
protesting how the Government treats them. Well, yesterday the
investigative police summoned Alexandra Belandia Ruiz Pineda to
testify on the case (which case?). Alexandra is the granddaughter of Leonrado Ruiz
Pineda a Secretary General of the Accion Democratica party that was killed
by the security police of Dictator Marcos Perez Jimenez. Alexandra is heavily
involved in politics through the “Movimiento Cambio” and has yet to
say whether it was that movement that placed the skeletons.

Coincidentally, today is the anniversary of Ruiz Pineda’s death and what better
tribute to her grandfather’s death than what she said as she left the
investigative police headquarters’: “the regime is bothered by dissidence,
but they will not succeed . But they will not succeed. Here I am confronting
them. The best homage I can pay to my grandfather is this, facing them“

And indeed it is, this brave woman is confronting the fascism and intimidation
of a Government that has its investigative police spend time figuring out who
placed some harmless paper skeletons in public places as a form of protest.
This is a clear violation of Article 57 of the Venezuelan
Constitution which says:” All persons have the rights to express
their thoughts, ideas and opinions in live voice, in writing or through
any other form of expression…“

But the true incompetence of the Government comes through when one realizes the
fact that the many cases of people killed or injured in dozens of demonstrations
by the opposition are not being investigated. That a year ago, one of the largest
buildings in the city where most of the Government ministries functioned burned
down and to this day we have not heard an explanation as to what happened and that
the death of murdered prosecutor Danilo Anderson is being
blamed on the CIA by the Attorney
General/Prosecutor himself. Of course, they reach such silly conclusions or are
unable to figure out why people died, because they are wasting their times performing hatchet jobs for the all powerful
leaders of this fake revolution, who tremble when they see a paper skeleton
that might have a chance of undermining their fascist and abusive power.

I have to take exception with the statements today by CNE
President Jorge Rodriguez when he said that the
CNE Board had backtracked on his earlier decision and in the elections to the
National Assembly 34% of all votes would be “audited”, a term which
has become a euphemism in Venezuela for manually counted. And then Rodriguez
added: “Nowhere in the world with automated voting is one third of the
vote audited”:

And I take exception to it for a number of reasons:

–First of all, that nowhere in the world includes Venezuela, where that
percentage has never been “audited” since Mr. Rodriguez has been
involved with the electoral process. In fact, during the recall referendum of
2004, 1% of the votes were supposed to be audited at the end of the voting day and they were not counted.
Anywhere else in the world Electoral Authorities would have been fired or resigned for not
doing their job and failing to follow the procedures that they put in place.

–In that same voting process, which was highly suspect, full of irregularities
and created a lot of suspicions, the cynical Mr. Rodriguez could have
dissipated all of the tensions and doubts by opening all of the ballot boxes or
even one-third of them, but he refused, counting instead only 1% of a
“new” set of boxes chosen with a very peculiar pseudorandomness by the CNE itself.

–But at the end of the day, what matters is what Venezuelan law says. And
Venezuelan Electoral Law is very clear on that matter: All votes are
supposed to be counted manually, which has not been done in any of the
elections presided by Mr. Rodriguez as a member of the Electoral Board or its
Presidency. And apparently the law will not be followed once again.

–But it helps very little to count and audit if the act is not public as
stated by law and all sectors can watch over it. Sorry to be so full of legalities Mr. Rodriguez, but
Venezuelan law says that the act of manually counting the votes is open to
the public, something which did not happen in the 2004 referendum, the 2004
regional elections and the 2005 regional elections, where the military took it
upon itself to bar the entrance of the public in most polling stations
across the country.
Will we be allowed in this tiem around? Who guarantees it? And please
don’t say you do, because you did not fulfill your promises before.

Thus, Mr. Rodriguez has no moral authority whatsoever to say he is doing
anything well or right or better than anyone, because he has never either
followed the law or fulfilled the agreements or regulations that his own Board
approved. In fact, with his cynical arrogance he has always been a factor
against transparency and shown a level of partisanship which is uncalled for
and unethical for someone in his position.

So please, don’t give us a global refrenece to something which you have
yet to do, which two weeks ago you had denied the possibility of doing
because “1% of the ballots was sufficient”. You have yet to hand over
the electoral registry with the addresses of all voters, you have
shifted districts at will and accepted the “morochas” all to the
benefit of Chavez and his MVR party.

But I understand that international pressure is being felt by you and
your organization. The only question is where and how will you try to cheat us
this time around?

Yesterday I talked about the Refco bankruptcy having an effect in
Venezuela, today I got the bankruptcy filing where the creditors above
US$10 million are listed and these are the ones from Venezuelan:

Banco Hipotecario Inv. Turisticas (Federal)       US$ 85.8 million
Banesco                                                           
US$ 39.5 million
Inversiones Concambi           
              
            US$ 12.9 milllion
Miura Financial Services        
              
            US$ 12.1 million
Total
Bank                                                     
  US$ 10.7 million

remarkably the list has not appeared anywhere in the Venezuelan media, self-censorship?