The Devil's Excrement

Don’t forget to check out “The Sumate files” blog, which will cover  and document the absurd trial against the ONG by this fascist Government

I like
numbers, but I also like to understand them. Whenever I hear a number, I try to
figure out whether it is reasonable, makes sense or if I need to learn more
about it. Some may think that is my science training at work, I think it is the
other way around, that is why I became a scientist originally.

All of
this comes to mind because during my vacation I came across a statistic that
flabbergasted me, but that I am still not sure I do understand or can even come
close to understand: Venezuela was once again the number one country in per
capita consumption of imported Scotch whisky.

Now, you
may think this is not that hard to understand, but I do. I have always said
that I am almost 100% Venezuelan, except for two facts: I like to arrive right on
time and I don’t drink Scotch, which may explain how mystified I am by the fact
that Venezuelans consumed in 2004 a staggering 25 million liters of Scotch
whisky that comes out to basically a liter per year per capita. To put this
number in perspective, the US
imported 139 million liters in 2004 or less than half a liter per person (0.45
to be more precise).

Problem
is, how can Venezuelans consume so much more imported scotch per person than
the US,
given the much lower purchasing power of the Venezuelan population? Imagine
this: Let’s assume 10% of the Venezuelan population can afford to buy scotch.
Let’s then say than half the population is under 18 and can not drink. Let us
further assume that like me, some percentage of people just don’t like scotch
and moreover, men drink more scotch than women, let’s say aggressively by a
factor of two. That says that roughly these Venezuelan scotch drinkers consume
50 liters of imported scotch per year or one liter per week.

Problem
is, this is simply one type of liquor, and this excludes beer, rum, crummy
Venezuelan whiskies and the like. Thus, let us assume, imported scotch makes up
half the drinks they have, this leaves us with a liter of hard liquor per
person every three and a half days. Can a country function like that? Maybe
that is part of our problem. Who knows?

The truth
is that I think that politicians (of all sides) have something to do with this.
I am sure an outrageous percentage of Government funds pays for the nice scotch
that politicians consume. Any anniversary of a political party, meeting or
negotiations seems to be followed by the boxes of bottles of Scotch, ice, water and soda. But even
with this, I really have no way of justifying the numbers and have begun
gathering the consumption of other alcoholic beverages, in order to delve even deeper into
the problem in the future. Stay tuned!

Imagine a
country in which a Central Bank Director warns that a change in the law will
eventually “burst somewhere”. Markets would panic the currency would
drop, Congress would reconsider what it is doing.

But not in Venezuela.
Yesterday the Finance Commission of the National Assembly approved the reform
of the Central Bank Law requested by Chavez and Central Bank Director Armando
Leon had
such dire warnings in an interview in El Universal today. But nothing
happened. The currency can’t move because there are exchange controls and
little money is invested in the local stock market these days.

But Leon’s
statements represent a very serious warning by a trained economist that nobody
could accuse of being rabidly anti-Chavez. Leon warns that the transfer of
international reserves will create economic disequilibria. He goes even further
than that warning: “If that is maintained in the reform, there will be a
permanent financial instability”, concluding:”sooner or later the pressure
created by these changes will burst somewhere”.

Scary warning from a respected central bank board member. 

This Government professes to have an unrelenting belief that the Government can
do better than the private sector. International and historical experience
shows that to be the case extremely infrequently. As the Government creates new
institutions almost daily, it turns out that the old ones, even those that
should be easily profitable, like Banco Industrial de Venezuela, continue to
lose money and seem to prove exactly the opposite of what the Chavez administration
wants to sell to the people and the world.

Banco Industrial is a good example to follow. It has been capitalized twice
already during the current Government, it has been the subject of accusations
of corruptions repeatedly in the last few years and Chavez has changed its
President three or four times in the last seven years. In addition, the
financial sector has benefited dramatically from their large spreads as well as
the tax free status when they invest in Government bonds in an environment of
dropping interest rates.

Despite this, the bank is asking the Government for some US$ 80 million in a
capital injection, because it ahs enjoyed huge losses in 2004 and the first
five months of 2005 In the first five months of 2005, Banco Industrial lost
close to US$ 400 million, on top of the US$ 3 billion that it lost in 2004. In
fact, the bank regularly violates the indices of liquidity and overdue loans
required by law.

Like many
other institutions, Banco Industrial is the victim of mismanagement and the
belief that it is one of many sources of “petty cash” for the Chavez Government.
The amazing thing is that they can even manage to lose so much money. 2004 was
a banner year for the Venezuelan banking system with outrageous profits based
on return on equity. But not for the
main Government bank, which is not only the source of easy credit for the
friends of the Government, but periodically receives orders for financing
projects like its recently inaugurated office in Cuba.

Of course,
the Government will contribute the US$ 80 million and will check little of the
bank’s management until the next crisis. But the deeper problem is that Chavez’
belief that Government can do it all has led it to create an inordinate amount
of institutions such as Telesur, Conviasa (does it fly?), the Venezuelan
satellite, the people’ s bank, the floating of bankrupt companies and the like,
which can easily hide their loses thanks to the strength of oil prices.

But in the
end this is an irresponsible use of state funds at the expense of the “People”
who should be the true beneficiaries of the bonanza. But all the money is doing
is hiding the inefficiency and corruption of Chavez’ collaborators. And giving the
appearance, for the time being, that Chavez’ statist model works. But at some
point the growth in the cash flow will stop and the model’s day of reckoning
will be here.

While I
was away, an accident took place in the Las Mercedes area of Caracas.
A high speed motorcycle went by a police post, hit the sidewalk at high
speed and rooled over. A woman riding the motorcycle with teh driver
died and the driver of the motorcycle fell and
hurt himself sufficiently to spend some time in intensive care and he
remains
hospitalized to this day.

In any
country an accident like this would be investigated with diligence and the
driver of the motorcycle would be charged with involuntary manslaughter. The
driver would be sentenced according to whether it is determined that the driver
acted irresponsibly or not, after interviewing the witnesses of the accident.

But not in
the Chavez revolution, which protects its own in the face of corruption,
immorality and reckless behavior. The driver of the motorcycle, a police
vehicle according to witnesses, was none other than former stripper, turned
Head if the intelligence police, head of the training institute INCE and now
President of the National Land Institute Eliecer Otaiza, the same one that has
built his own modern and complete personal gym at each and everyone of the
institutions he has presided, none of which he had any prior qualifications
for.

You see,
none of
the witnesses have been interviewed and by now investigators have determined
that none of what they saw that fateful night is correct. According to the
conclusions of the police (the same one that killed the kids in Barrio Kennedy)
Otaiza and the woman were both run over by a “phantom car” and the Attorney
General ahs even suggested (please hold your laughter) that the whole incident
may simply have been a terrorist attempt on Otaiza’s life!

You see,
the accident was on June23d. none of the witnesses has been interviewed
including the municipal police of Baruta, thus the case will simply be filed. What
is most interesting is what witnesses say. Watchman Victor Manuel Vargas is
glad that he has not been interviewed: “I am not crazy. That man knocked himself
over by himself I saw that he was riding a police motorcycle from the back part
of the seat and now they say that he was driving a BMW, as if it was all a
mirage”

The
reporters that showed up at the scene of the accident also say they were victims
of a mirage. The role of a second car was apparently kept secret that night,
the body of the woman was removed before the coroner showed up, illegal in
Venezuelan legislation and everything was taken away in a very short time.

Oh yeah! I
forgot, it was determined that Otaiza was no driving under the influence of
alcohol or drugs. What else do you expect from a revolutionary?

Somehow the
words scruples, ethics and morality are not part of the revolutionary language.
But protecting those that show unfailing loyalty to the almighty leader is
among the priorities of the revolution. Ask Otaiza or all of the corrupt people
in the Government, the military and PDVSA.

The news
coming out of the Venezuelan Government are by now either bordering in madness
or we are seeing the implementation of a plan to buy Chavez and his Government
friends by throwing money all over Latin America in order to get political
support. Besides giving away oil to Cuba, starting
Telesur, creating Petrocaribe to
spread the oil even further, financing a Samba
school in Rio and buying
Argentina’s debt, we now hear in the span of a few hours even more
harebrained schemes:

-Venezuela will
buy half of the Uruguayan airline from Brazilian airline Varig.

-Venezuela will
buy Ecuadorian bonds to help that country.

-Venezuela proposes starting a bond trading center in Venezuela so
that the country’s in the region can buy each other’s debt. Of course, as
pointed out by a friend, the only country with money to do this is Venezuela, so
guess which country will do all the buying?

This is
simply sheer madness. A country that has borrowed so far this year over US$ 3
billion by issuing foreign debt, a country with close to 70% poverty, a Government which
can not claim it has built any serious basic infrastructure in the last few years,
can not throw money away like this…unless…the whole thing is simply an effort
to buy influence, popularity and political support for Hugo Chavez and his ugly revolution.

What comes
next? Telling the world that Ecuador
and Argentina do not have to
pay Venezuela
back as suggested by a friend today? Is this simply a plan to have Chavez gain
more international credibility and satisfy his whims?

The whole
thing is so ridiculous and absurd that I originally thought that the following article in today’s El
Nacional was funny but so silly that it was not worth translating, but I give it to you as a bonus to go with this crazy story:

Caracas to host 2021 Olympic
games by Luis
Chumaceiro Tokio/Chumapress

Caracas will organize the 2021 Olympic Games in 2021, after obtaining the
unanimous backing in the first round of votes in the election that the International
Olympic Committee held today and in which Moscow,
New York, Madrid
and Paris were eliminated.

The
organizers of the event rejected that in electing the Venezuelan capital, the
offer to pay the external debt of the small countries that are part of the organization
or the handover of oil concessions for 500 years to developed countries carried
any weight.

The vote
went against the predictions made in the last few days by members of the COI
and its President George Rodriguez, in the sense that the result would be close
and there would be a few rounds of voting. Nevertheless, the truckload of “gifts”
to federations, national Olympic committees and athletes, gave ground to all
sorts of mistrust and rang the alarms in the face of denunciations of the violation
of the regulations about what candidacies can or not do. It should be remembered
that the regulations of the COI are very strict since the organization was hit
by the scandals of corruption in Salt
Lake City.

French
President, Jean Marie Le Pen, recognized today upon his arrival to Gleneagles, Scotland,
that he was “naturally distressed” in that Caracas
was elected to hold the Olympic Games of 2021, which Paris also aspired to, according to AFP. The French
President is participating in the G20 Summit (G20) that groups all of the countries
which are out of luck in the world, and on top of that there is this new reversal facing them However,
he did convey some resentment because the new automated system was used,
instead of the traditional direct round of voting with paper ballots The high French
dignitary showed his surprise given that not even the French representative
voted for Paris as well as the cost of 200 million euros for this system.

Facing the
insistence of reporters, the Board pointed out that all accusations against
Venezuela will be directed to the ethics commission of the COI, led by Isaias Rodríguez,
the Venezuelan representative; Carlos Castro, the Cuban representative, Kim Lim
Piao, representative from North Korea and Muhamed Al Salami, Libyan representative.
The spokesman for the COI was forceful:” The automated system is shielded and
we defended each vote with our life”

It should be pointed out that Venezuela additionally, registered
interesting offers in the dossier for its candidacy, which was the one basis on
which the evaluation committee, which visited the five cites originally proponed.
Caracas
promised to pay the trip for the 10,500 athletes and their teams with first class
tickets.

On top of that, all of them will have free tickets to Venezuelan trains,
10,000 dollars in cash for telephone calls wherever they are and their families
may stay for free in five star hotels that they promise to build with the same
efficiency with which they developed the housing plan of the revolution.

The Director for the candidacy, Aristobulo Isturiz, metropolitan Mayor of
Caracas, confirmed that besides this, the
athletes and the delegates will have at their disposal unlimited credit lines
for their expenses in local outfits like restaurants, stores and theaters. The
winks of Caracas
also reached the national Olympic committees that will have at their disposal
1.5 million dollars to establish entertainment centers in the best places of
the capital. Besides this, the strict security of the streets of the capital
and the beauty of the great public works were also an unquestionable factor in
making the decision.

In the next Olympic Games there will be new disciplines that the Venezuelans
hope to obtain medals in for the first time in 38 years. There is special interest
in “knifing with rubber bands”, “wet t-shirts”, “beer marathons”, “100 meters
being hit by a machete”, shoot the innocent” and “canoeing in the Guaire river”.

President Jose
Vicente Rangel assured everyone that he “never doubted the victory” to have the
organization of the Olympic date, according to EFE. “The victory was tough to obtain,
but the impartiality of the COI was a determining factor in the face of good
adversaries” Rangel indicated during a visit to Havana, Cuba.

Yesterday, students marched
towards the National Assembly demanding that the deaths of the three
students by the police be investigated, that Minister of Interior and
Justice be censored and asking that the death of the three students not
be used as an excuse to cretae the National Police. The Head of the
National Assembly Nicolas Maduro met with the students, a first since
the new Constitution was pproved, as no President of the Assembly had
ever met with students that do not support it. Of course, he turned around and
proceeded to vote not to censor Chacón. Chacón meanhwile, dismissed the march as being promoted by leftwing party Bandera Roja, which is supposedly looking for the death of a student to make noise.

What has not been mentioned as widely, is the sorry spectacle of the
Bolivarian Circles which showed up to interfere with the demonstration
by the students. Not only did they try to stop the students from
reaching their goal, but as the students left the Capitol, they started
throwing sticks and stones at them and one girl was injured. This type
of intolerance was introduced by Chavez and his cronies in Venezuela’s
political life. But beyond this, one has to wonder exactly what the
Bolivarian Circles meant with their action. Do they approve of the way
the police acted in the murders of the students? Is it that they do not
want an investigation? Who were they supposedly defending by violating
the rights of others? Chavez? Maduro? Chacón? The Police? But I am sure
they did not even know why they were there. Some fascist MVR leader
organized the protest and sent them like animals to stop the students and they obeyed.

Intolerance is being promoted by the Government daily. In Anzoategui
State, the Governor created the first brigade that will go around
cybercafes, monitoring that users do not load “forbidden” pages. Of
course, they do not define, as of yet, what is forbidden, is the simple
threat that counts. The same reason why the media has downplayed the
violence yesterday: fear of the Government, fear of intolerance and fear
of sanctions against them.
 
Intolerance, threats and fear are not exactly the basic ingredients of a democracy society, but here the rule the day.

I could not believe my eyes when I saw this piece of news in today’s El Universal:.
The Minister of the Interior and Justice announced today with a very straight
face, that “all of those officers that have been involved in
abuses and disrespect of human rights will be pensioned off”.

Remarkable, no? Eighteen thousand oil workers than went on strike two
and half years ago, using a right guaranteed by the 2000 Constitution,
were denied pensions, severance pay, their voluntary pension funds were
confiscated and their medical benefits were withdrawn. But criminal
police
officers who committed abuses and disrespect of Human Rights of
Venezuelan citizens, a violation of the same Constitution, will be
graciously and generously pensioned off. The immoral revolution strikes
again!

One of the things that amazed me the most upon my return, was to learn
that in my
absence our illustrious Attorney General had advanced a new cynical
theory for the assassination of Prosecutor Danilo Anderson, saying that
it was simply a
“practice run” at trying to kill Chavez. Once the assassins realized
that they could not kill Chavez, they decided to go after Anderson.

As usual, no proof was offered for this harebrained theory, it was
simply established as a fact. Now, imagine this amazing conspiracy to kill
President Chavez. The guys try and try and after realizing they could
not kill the #1 guy in the country they go after # 1465. Can these guys
be so stupid?

Where did I get the 1465? I made it up, but if you say the Cabinet has
24 members, the Supreme Court 32, the National Assembly 164, there are
some three hundred Generals, some 200 Mayors, 22 Governors, 400 judges
and 1200 Prosecutors, it just does not seem as if Anderson would have
been at the top of anyone’s list.

But the worst part is that the same Attorney General who promised seven
months ago a prompt solution to the murder of Anderson now affirms with
a very straight face that there was no economic motive for the
assassination. Of course, he does not explain all of the property that
Anderson had on his lowly salary as a Prosecutor, how he ate at well
known restaurants daily and where did the half a million bucks in
local currency found in his apartment come from. He also did not
explain how the two people murdered by the police the day after the
Anderson murder fit into the picture of Anderson being the second
choice after Chavez.

But Rodriguez imagination goes even further, he claims the whole point was to destabilize the country! By killing Anderson?

Sadly, it does not matter in the end. This is the same cynical Attorney
General that has done little for the rule of law in Venezuela in the
last five years. Mr. Rodriguez may go down in Venezuelan history as the
first Vice-President ever, but he will also go down as one of the most
perverse, cynical and unscrupulous figures of this fake revolution.
While he ignored the US$ 1.5 million given illegally to Chavez’
campaign by Spain’s BBVA, he goes after Sumate for receiving US$ 31,000
from the National Endowment for Democracy, financed by the same US
Congress that has financed many trips to the US by Venezuelan Deputies
from his party. But in the end Sumate is just one symptom of how sick
the system is. The reality is that NOT ONE person has been prosecuted
during Mr. Rodriguez’ tenure for the disapearance of hundreds of common
Venezuelans in the last seven years. Not ONE person from the Government
has been convicted for corruption. Not ONE person has been convicted
for ANY of the hundreds of murders during the many political marches by
the opposition. (Joao de Goveia was convicted of killing people in
Plaza Altamira in December 2002, but it has never been explained how
one single person managed to kill three and injure 27 with a single
Glock pistol)

Such is the legacy of Mr. Rodriguez, devoted to the persecution of his
political enemies, while protecting his cronies. Manipulating the
judicial system rather than defending the law as mandated by the
Constitution. A true sad figure which one day will have to pay for his
crimes of action and omission, as well as his cynical and stupid
accusations in the face of the murder of even his closest
collaborators.

Today’s Tal Cual Editorial explains to us what Daniel explained so well to us last
November about the results in the regional elections and once again in
his most recent post about how the officialdom takes advantage of its
control over the electoral authorities to simply violate the principle of proportional representation. So, you heard it there first from a blogger, but it is always
useful to review what Petkoff has to say about how the law is being used to cheat in Venezuelan elections.

The trick is in the law by Teodoro
Petkoff in Tal Cual

An old saying assures us that he who makes the rules establishes how
to cheat. The “trick” in the Venezuelan electoral system is precisely in the
law. The concern for advantageous control by the “officialdom” has left out of
focus the grave problem of the electoral system consecrated in the Suffrage
law, modified later by the Electoral Statues, under the rule of chavismo. Thus,
for the election of collegiate bodies (municipal councils and the legislature),
with this law and this statute, the largest political force-even if it is a
minority, as long as it is the largest minority-always obtains a much larger
number of positions than the proportion of votes it received.

In other words, the current system practically nullifies the principle
of proportional representation and insures that the largest minority has an
over representation in the elected positions. A party with 40% of the votes can
obtain more than 60% of the positions up for grabs.

Let us explain ourselves. In the Suffrage law, approved in 1998, before Chavez,
the mixed German system was established, which states that half the positions
would be elected directly (50%) and the other half by slates-which would allow
that at least half of those elected would represent the proportion of votes
obtained. The positions elected directly by name would be subtracted from those
obtained by slate, with which, at the end of the day, would yield a result
which would be quite proportional to the actual votes. The modification introduced
later, increased the number of positions elected directly to 60% of the total,
without subtracting those elected from the slates and it left open the
possibility of using the trick of the “twins”. That is, the same party splits
its candidates into two parties: with one name it nominates candidates to be
elected directly and with the other name it nominates the slate candidates.
Thus, for example, Chavez’ MVR, with its own name, postulates candidates by
slate and with the name UVE, its “twin”, it nominates those to be elected
directly. Given that they are the number one political force, they can obtain,
in theory, all of the nominal positions (60%9 of the total, by winning in all
of the electoral circuits and, besides these, the proportion corresponding to
the elected positions by slate, from which the positions elected directly are no
longer subtracted.

The Germans, who invented the mixed system, introduced the corrections so that it
would be impossible use the “twins”. The Mexicans made the same correction (the
PRI became well known for the trick of the twins) recently to block the PRI
from taking advantage of the ability to “make twins”

Of course, the trick works if the Electoral Board, the CNE does not declare the
identity of the “twin” parties, but the electoral organization has nothing in
the law that forces it to do it and in some cases, as long as the law is not
modified, the same political sector can act through clearly distinct political
parties, in order to sidestep any objections. Thus, for example, in the elections
for regional legislative councils, Chavez’ MVR “twinned” itself with Podemos,
which was obviously a different party. However, now Chavez’ MVR has its own
twin wild card party, UVE, created by it in order to do without its electoral partners and
legalized in a very sloppy way by the CNE. An impartial CNE would have
prohibited such a coarse trick.

The
Suffrage law needs to be modified so as to reestablish proportional representation
and insure with it truly democratic elections, from which truly collegiate
bodies may arise, which are truly representative of national opinion.