The Devil's Excrement

Judge Jose Ramon Villanueva has just set a new Standard for corruption, stupidity and gutsyness in Venezuela. The judge, who happens to be the one considering the case against Primero Justicia Mayor Henrique Capriles, was caught red handed trying to blackmail none other than the Head of the investigative police (CIPC) Marcos Chavez. Reportedly the judge was handling a case in which Chavez (no relation to the President) was being accused of corruption and asked the Head of CIPC (the equivalent of the FBI) to give him Bs. 15 million (all of US$ 5,000 at the parallel exchange rate) to drop the case.

Judge Villanueva is famous (infamous?) for a number of cases, such as freeing Colombian hijacker Ballestas in 2000 or ordering the detention of the Altamira Square Generals without any accusation from the prosecutor’s office. Two weeks ago he came out and said he could not rule on the Capriles case because he had been sick and had not had time to look at the file for the case. The next day he ruled on it, granting all of the requests of Prosecutor Danilo Anderson. Capriles´ defense accused the judge that day of meeting that evening with three judges who told him how to rule. The judge went on TV to deny this ever happened.

Villanueva was in the initial list to be one of the new additional Supreme Court judges, but did not make the final list. Definitely a gutsy guy to blackmail Chavez, I guess for the good of Venezuelan Justice he will not be judging anyone anymore.

Ad in full color in today’s New York Times on the wonders of the new Venezuela

Lot’s of empty sentences. My favorite: the Government has increased spending from oil revenues from 40 million dollars to 1.7 billion. Makes you wonder on what and what happened before? Oil revenues were burned? Saved? Stolen?

The Coordinadora Democratica has obtained a copy of an amateur video in which a military truck carrying boxes with electoral ballots stops in an isolated area, reportedly in Zulia state and the sopldires begin opening the boxes, taking stuff out and replacing it. You can see them looking at the labels in each box, then opening some of them and taking stuff out and then replacing it. Below some not so high quality pictures of the video taken from the magazine Zeta. The video was supposedly made on Wednesday morning before the now infamous audit was made.

I am sure the sure the brain dead people who pollute and are not welcome in the comments section will say something about the CD cooking this up. I remind them that the truck has a number, there is date. Thsi means there is a military record of who, when, where and waht they were carrying. The CD will ask for them, the Government will refuse to give it, what will they say then?

Note added: beto has pointed that the speedy friends at urru have already posted the video online!!

http://www.urru.org/filmaciones_index.htm

Another note added: Just watched the video after waiting a long time  for it to dowload.Very interesting. It i a video off a TV showing the video. You can hear the people discussing what hey are seeing. Quality is pretty good you can recognize people’s faces and what they are doing. You see armedsoldiers aroundthe truck as people choose the right boxes to work on.

The Coordinadora Democratica has obtained a copy of an amateur video in which a military truck carrying boxes with electoral ballots stops in an isolated area, reportedly in Zulia state and the sopldires begin opening the boxes, taking stuff out and replacing it. You can see them looking at the labels in each box, then opening some of them and taking stuff out and then replacing it. Below some not so high quality pictures of the video taken from the magazine Zeta. The video was supposedly made on Wednesday morning before the now infamous audit was made.

I am sure the sure the brain dead people who pollute and are not welcome in the comments section will say something about the CD cooking this up. I remind them that the truck has a number, there is date. Thsi means there is a military record of who, when, where and waht they were carrying. The CD will ask for them, the Government will refuse to give it, what will they say then?

Note added: beto has pointed that the speedy friends at urru have already posted the video online!!

http://www.urru.org/filmaciones_index.htm

Another note added: Just watched the video after waiting a long time  for it to dowload.Very interesting. It i a video off a TV showing the video. You can hear the people discussing what hey are seeing. Quality is pretty good you can recognize people’s faces and what they are doing. You see armedsoldiers aroundthe truck as people choose the right boxes to work on.

The case of the so called elite guards of the President who were part of his first ring of security becomes apparently more clear with a home video of the forty soldiers made the day before the recall referendum.

In the video, the soldiers are shown in a room decorated by a picture of Chavez and one of Simon Bolivar. There is a table in the middle covered with ¨No¨ signs a flower arrangement and a symbol of the GRAT unit. Their leader speaks out. The speech expresses love for Chavez and what he stands for. However, they say that those in the Casa Militar (in charge of presidential security) are shielding Chavez from the truth. They make accusations of corruption and ask Chavez to do for the Casa Militar the type of cleansing he did at PDVSA. They tell Chavez that this was the reason why tried to get into his office, they wanted to explain to him what was going on. The tone is eerie, recrimination, love and fundamentalism all in one. They tell Chavez they are not paid by the opposition. All of the soldiers join each other by the forearms and sign what is supposed to be the chant of their unit which includes dying for their country, dying for their leader…

Scary stuff, these guys sound like extreme fundamentalists. Trying to get a copy of the video to post.

The case of the so called elite guards of the President who were part of his first ring of security becomes apparently more clear with a home video of the forty soldiers made the day before the recall referendum.

In the video, the soldiers are shown in a room decorated by a picture of Chavez and one of Simon Bolivar. There is a table in the middle covered with ¨No¨ signs a flower arrangement and a symbol of the GRAT unit. Their leader speaks out. The speech expresses love for Chavez and what he stands for. However, they say that those in the Casa Militar (in charge of presidential security) are shielding Chavez from the truth. They make accusations of corruption and ask Chavez to do for the Casa Militar the type of cleansing he did at PDVSA. They tell Chavez that this was the reason why tried to get into his office, they wanted to explain to him what was going on. The tone is eerie, recrimination, love and fundamentalism all in one. They tell Chavez they are not paid by the opposition. All of the soldiers join each other by the forearms and sign what is supposed to be the chant of their unit which includes dying for their country, dying for their leader…

Scary stuff, these guys sound like extreme fundamentalists. Trying to get a copy of the video to post.

Jose Huerta sends these two plots with the distributions of machines with Si and No votes. I have no clue if it means anything, but why arethey so different? Ideas welcome

Distribution of the number of machines with the same number of SI votes

Same for the NO Votes

The Government had proposed to the private sector that communications be improved and some form of dialogue be started between the two sides. Fedecamaras, the Federation of Chambers of Commerce, which groups the private sector met yesterday and issued a communiqué welcoming such a dialogue. This morning I read it and found it sufficiently bland to be considered as some form of progress.

Thus, imagine my surprise by the strong reaction on the part of Minister of Interiors and Justice Chacon who said the communiqué did not reflect the sentiment of the majority of the private sector and that the Government will not accept conditions on the part of anyone. Similar statements were made by Vice President Rangel who said that a dialogue can not impose conditions.

Surprised at the animosity of both statements, I went back to the communiqué and I simply don’t understand what the fuss is all about. The only ¨conditioning statement I see is its demand for the rights given to all Venezuelans in the Constitution. So I really don’t know what they are arguing about. In fact, the Vice-President of Fedecamaras made similar statements after hearing the Government’s reaction. Bad start for this dialogue.