The Devil's Excrement

The legal representatives of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez went to the Supreme Court to request the Court initiates a criminal investigation accusing the relatives of the victims of the April 11 massacre of treason. The reason: accusing Hugo Chavez in a foreign country. This is the type of justice in which this supposedly “humane” Government believes in. This Government has done absolutely nothing to determine who was responsible for the deaths of the April 11^th. Massacre. The shooters of Puente El Llaguno, caught live on camera shooting that day at the peaceful demonstration, are not only free in the streets, but some of them went back to their important positions as part of Chavez’ MVR party. The Chavez controlled National Assembly blocked the “Truth Commission” to determine what happened that day. The Attorney General has not brought charges against Chavez and those that were recorded on tape saying they would send the “Bolivarian Circles” against the peaceful marchers. He can’t, according to testimony by two Generals the Attorney General was part of a meetting on April 9th. in which Chavez and his cohorts discussed how to stop the demonstrations with force. Thus, this group of family members of the victims, who has received no justice in Venezuela, goes to international Courts, accusing Chavez of violating the Human Rights of their dead relatives and Chavez wants them to be tried for treason to the country! This is the true face of this fake revolution led by a man whose megalomania has made him renounce those same principles that he spoused so cynically in order to have people vote for him.

Two days ago, Teodoro Petkoff wrote an Editorial in Tal Cual praising Brazilian President Lula Da Silva, who was visiting Caracas, for the seriousness and fairness with which he was carrying out his Presidency. Yesterday he received this letter which eh published in today’s paper:

“Shit (Coño) Teodoro, you went overboard with Lula, it had been a while since I had read so much sucking up in so few lines: “This social fighter profoundly compromised with the cause of the humble”, which humble ones? The friends of Marco Aurelio? (Marco Aurelio Garcia is Lula’s foreign Ministry Advisor) All of this confirmed my suspicions about your weaknesses towards this “former metallurgical worker” perfect example of the men of left who die nowadays to please the oligarchs and the technocrats of neoliberalism.

What is fascinating about Lula is his talent for relegitimizing all of those summits like Davos or the G8 without forgetting that mummy which is Anthony Giddens. (Giddens is a Sociologist who is the Director of the London School of Economics) To tell you the truth he is a lot like you ‘Bon Sauvage”. Regards. Maximilien Arvelaiz

Petkoff’s comment:

 Maximilien Arvelaiz is an ink shitter who operates from Miraflores (the Presidential palace). His nice letter confirms our suspicions, those that led us to believe that in the territories of the “Bolivarian revolution” the moment Lula revealed himself as a serious man and not a crazy stone thrower, the initial sympathies went up in smoke. Obrigado (Thank you in Portuguese) Maximilien.

Two days ago, Teodoro Petkoff wrote an Editorial in Tal Cual praising Brazilian President Lula Da Silva, who was visiting Caracas, for the seriousness and fairness with which he was carrying out his Presidency. Yesterday he received this letter which eh published in today’s paper:

“Shit (Coño) Teodoro, you went overboard with Lula, it had been a while since I had read so much sucking up in so few lines: “This social fighter profoundly compromised with the cause of the humble”, which humble ones? The friends of Marco Aurelio? (Marco Aurelio Garcia is Lula’s foreign Ministry Advisor) All of this confirmed my suspicions about your weaknesses towards this “former metallurgical worker” perfect example of the men of left who die nowadays to please the oligarchs and the technocrats of neoliberalism.

What is fascinating about Lula is his talent for relegitimizing all of those summits like Davos or the G8 without forgetting that mummy which is Anthony Giddens. (Giddens is a Sociologist who is the Director of the London School of Economics) To tell you the truth he is a lot like you ‘Bon Sauvage”. Regards. Maximilien Arvelaiz

Petkoff’s comment:

 Maximilien Arvelaiz is an ink shitter who operates from Miraflores (the Presidential palace). His nice letter confirms our suspicions, those that led us to believe that in the territories of the “Bolivarian revolution” the moment Lula revealed himself as a serious man and not a crazy stone thrower, the initial sympathies went up in smoke. Obrigado (Thank you in Portuguese) Maximilien.

Last Saturday Hugo Chavez announced “his candidates” for Governors of a number of states and said they would immediately start campaining for elections that will take place next year in June. Well, all of Chavez’ candidates hold public office, Venezuelan law states that nobody can campaign for public office without resigning from public office first. Moreover, the law also states that nobody can announce his/her candidacy for a position until seven months before an scheduled election. Thus, Chavez is batting two for two on illegal candidacies!

What I wrote about last night was confirmed this week when Central Bank Director Domingo Maza Zavala, said in a statement to the press that the flow of foreign currency from PDVSA is below normal. This is a source of concern since the price of the Venezuelan oil basket is at very high levels at this time. According to Maza Zavala in local daily El Universal, the Central Bank should be receiving US$ 1.3-1.4 billion a month, but only US$ 1.0 billion is actually being received. In fact, if one were to believe the current production numbers, as announced by the Government, the flow would be US$ 1.8 billion per month.

What I wrote about last night was confirmed this week when Central Bank Director Domingo Maza Zavala, said in a statement to the press that the flow of foreign currency from PDVSA is below normal. This is a source of concern since the price of the Venezuelan oil basket is at very high levels at this time. According to Maza Zavala in local daily El Universal, the Central Bank should be receiving US$ 1.3-1.4 billion a month, but only US$ 1.0 billion is actually being received. In fact, if one were to believe the current production numbers, as announced by the Government, the flow would be US$ 1.8 billion per month.

Good article by Gustavo Coronel: The revolution of those that felt included, taken from petroleumworld:

Between 1940 and 1999, for almost sixty years, Venezuela underwent a significant social transformation. In spite of the high levels of government inefficiency and corruption prevailing during several democratic presidencies and, in spite of a ten-year military dictatorship, which created much physical infrastructure but also killed and tortured hundreds of Venezuelans, the country surged forward in almost all fields.

The most glorious and respected civic leaders emerged and became fully active during this period: Uslar Pietri, Picon Salas, Briceno Iragorry, Diaz Sanchez, Otero Silva, Pizani, Garcia Maldonado, Egana, Gabaldon, Tejera, Betancourt, Leoni, Machado, Villalba, Gallegos, Larrazabal, Soto, Otero, Carreno…

Only us Venezuelans … or those who made Venezuela their homeland … can remember these names with awe and add many others to the list.
Venezuela still had a relatively small population, considerable oil income and a critical mass of illustrious men and women who created a Venezuelan school of decency, frugality and hard work. In turn, this group influenced thousands, even millions of younger Venezuelans who read their works and listened to their words.

Even allowing for the conservative fashions of the day in dress, manners and speech, which made everybody look better than today, the Venezuela that grew during those decades looked, behaved and sounded more articulate, purposeful and elegant than the country we have now.

Especially, it was a much cleaner Venezuela … Sabana Grande, in Caracas, became a grand boulevard where people could stroll at leisure, sit at the open air cafes or shop in an atmosphere which rivaled Buenos Aires’ Florida or Rome’s Via Veneto.

The roads connecting cities were impressive, the bridge over Maracaibo Lake had been inaugurated, shacks had been replaced by apartment buildings, hospitals were well managed and properly equipped, universities were less crowded and were turning out decent professionals.

Vicente Emilio Sojo and Pedro Antonio Rios Reyna were conducting the Venezuelan Symphony Orchestra … which was excellent, except in the wind section. Celibidache was a frequent guest conductor. Jose Antonio Abreu was starting on his extraordinary project to form symphony orchestras with children and adolescents.

There was good theater and opera. Books were written and printed. The younger generations produced extraordinary intellectuals like Antonio Pasquali, Guillermo Sucre and Ernesto Mayz Vallenilla. The program of “Mariscal de Ayacucho” scholarships sent thousands of Venezuelan students to Europe and the USA and brought most of them back converted into biologists, engineers, playwrights, medical practitioners or architects.

The petroleum industry was now managed by sophisticated Venezuelan executives, trained all over the world.

Venezuela was clearly taking off into the first world.

During the 1960s and most of the 1970s the country was a showcase of relative prosperity … a strong middle class was on the move. This was a middle class … which received the benefits of good government strategies in education … and also benefited from the open Venezuelan social atmosphere, which welcomed talent, no matter what their social background might be. This native middle class was strongly reinforced by hundreds of youngsters who had arrived from Europe as immigrants and were now incorporated into the social stream as young professionals.

Antonio Pasquali comes to my mind … he arrived in Venezuela, as a 10-year-old or so, from Robato (Italy). He studied primary and high school in Venezuela, went to France and Italy for philosophical studies, and came back to Venezuela … where he has for decades become our leading expert in mass communications. He has written extremely authoritative studies on this subject as well as environment and, above all, is a passionate Venezuelan who has influenced the career of thousands of his pupils at the University of Caracas.

Moises Naim, the current editor of Foreign Policy, is another one of those bright youngsters who found his niche, received the proper opportunities and encouragement and became an outstanding university professor and an intellectual of world rank.

Alberto Quiros is one more example of a person coming from modest social origins, starting as a roust about in the oil industry and crowning his career as president of three petroleum companies and editor of two main national newspapers.

The common denominator these native or imported Venezuelans had was the clear and strong sense of being socially included, of belonging to a society where merit, perseverance and hard work were the main ingredients for success. If we talked to each one of them separately, we would surely find out that they shared two main feelings: one, the feeling of being socially accepted and helped along by their family, teachers, friends and work colleagues; and, two, the immense feeling of gratitude they have developed for the society that made possible their self- realization.

This feeling of gratitude is something that will accompany them to the end of their lives … no matter what they have done and still do for their country, for the society which has given them the opportunities, they always feel the need to do more. In this manner they have become constant builders.

What these generations of Venezuelans have accomplished in my country during the last 60 years can only be called a revolution.

Due to their collective effort, they have transformed Venezuela from a very backward and predominantly rural society into a much more modern, predominantly urban and better-informed society. They have done it out of love, in happiness, being good citizens of a country that seemed to be headed in the direction of a first world country.

The abrupt reversal we are witnessing today … a barbaric assault on modernity conducted by a tribe of those who have felt excluded … will only be a short lived process of involution, a couple of steps back, so that the country can gain more momentum for the strong and clear surge forward.

And … in this new surge forward … we should now make sure that most Venezuelans, without exception, receive the opportunities that only the most determined and the most perseverant members of our society received during the last 60 years. Because in those who, rightly or wrongly, have felt excluded there is a lot of talent to be put to good use.

For months we have been hearing about how the country was producing over 3 million barrels of oil a day under the revolutionary PDVSA and how those 18,000 fired workers were not needed and how international reserves were recovering. Any doubters were always criticized as sore losers who did not know better. Whenever any international agency suggested Venezuela or PDVSA were producing less than the 3 million barrel figure, the Vice-President or the Minister of Energy or the President of PDVSA would give a press conference and say that there was obviously a political motivation in the announcements and that Venezuela had indeed been producing 3.2 million barrels of oil a day ever since late March of this year. The former workers of PDVSA under their umbrella organization “Gente del Petroleo” have been saying all along that this was not true. But then, peculiar things began happening, the Central Bank said it could not publish numbers until PDVSA gave it numbers, that the numbers did not add up, then Chavez said that the country was producing 2.3 million barrels of oil in a Freudian slip or excess talking by him. Finally, the Wall Street Journal wrote an article confirming that production indeed was at best 2.5 millions barrels of oil a day.

To put things in perspective, before the December strike, the country was producing roughly 2.8 million barrels of oil a day. Now here in this link you will find the smoking gun of the big lie by the Chavez administration, the presentation by PDVSA Western Manager Felix Rodriguez to the Board of Directors of the company on the real status of production in the west. Among other pearls it says:

-A continuous decline in crude oil production due to the absence of generation/rehabilitation of wells/optimization and maintenance of the installations (loss of 560 million barrels of oil a day). Now, let’s stop right here. If the country was producing 2.8 million and your remove 560 million barrels it will be difficult to produce 3 million barrels of oil a day, no? What liars!

-The process of extracting LNG continuous to be limited due to the unstable operation of 2 of the six plants….

-The volume and quality of gas to the internal market remains limited to the lack of gas (50%)

-The Olefin II plant continues to operate at between 50-60% of its capacity since there is no ethane.

Wow! This is the “Revolutionary PDVSA” that was working normally according to all the big liars!!! This is a revolution? This is the destruction of PDVSA for the pseudo revolution’s sake. What a shame!

The rest of the presentation simply quantifies the first slide, until, you get to the last slide where it says that 2 of the 23 drills are down, but 21 of the 22 subsurface machines were not working.

The question is: Should we then believe the fiscal numbers?

For months we have been hearing about how the country was producing over 3 million barrels of oil a day under the revolutionary PDVSA and how those 18,000 fired workers were not needed and how international reserves were recovering. Any doubters were always criticized as sore losers who did not know better. Whenever any international agency suggested Venezuela or PDVSA were producing less than the 3 million barrel figure, the Vice-President or the Minister of Energy or the President of PDVSA would give a press conference and say that there was obviously a political motivation in the announcements and that Venezuela had indeed been producing 3.2 million barrels of oil a day ever since late March of this year. The former workers of PDVSA under their umbrella organization “Gente del Petroleo” have been saying all along that this was not true. But then, peculiar things began happening, the Central Bank said it could not publish numbers until PDVSA gave it numbers, that the numbers did not add up, then Chavez said that the country was producing 2.3 million barrels of oil in a Freudian slip or excess talking by him. Finally, the Wall Street Journal wrote an article confirming that production indeed was at best 2.5 millions barrels of oil a day.

To put things in perspective, before the December strike, the country was producing roughly 2.8 million barrels of oil a day. Now here in this link you will find the smoking gun of the big lie by the Chavez administration, the presentation by PDVSA Western Manager Felix Rodriguez to the Board of Directors of the company on the real status of production in the west. Among other pearls it says:

-A continuous decline in crude oil production due to the absence of generation/rehabilitation of wells/optimization and maintenance of the installations (loss of 560 million barrels of oil a day). Now, let’s stop right here. If the country was producing 2.8 million and your remove 560 million barrels it will be difficult to produce 3 million barrels of oil a day, no? What liars!

-The process of extracting LNG continuous to be limited due to the unstable operation of 2 of the six plants….

-The volume and quality of gas to the internal market remains limited to the lack of gas (50%)

-The Olefin II plant continues to operate at between 50-60% of its capacity since there is no ethane.

Wow! This is the “Revolutionary PDVSA” that was working normally according to all the big liars!!! This is a revolution? This is the destruction of PDVSA for the pseudo revolution’s sake. What a shame!

The rest of the presentation simply quantifies the first slide, until, you get to the last slide where it says that 2 of the 23 drills are down, but 21 of the 22 subsurface machines were not working.

The question is: Should we then believe the fiscal numbers?

Hugo Chavez can’t run a country, but he has usually been pretty shrewd about politics and political strategy. Thus, it was somewhat of a surprise when on Saturday he announced that he had already chosen his candidates for Governors in the 2004 regional elections. It appears as if Chavez simply improvised, thinking that third would be a good strategy to distract attention away from the recall referendum. But the strategy or improvisation appears to have backfired. To begin with Chavez proposed the Mayor of Maracaibo Martino, to run against current Governor Rosales. However, Martino declined the next day, saying that he was happy where he was. The truth is that while Rosales’ popularity has been soaring and is currently at a 69% approval rating, Martino’s has declined mainly due to his association with Chavez. Chavez MVR even had to send a delegation to Maracaibo to talk to Martino and Chavez said on TV that Martino had changed his mind at the same time Martino himself was reiterating, once again, that he was not interested in being Governor. But perhaps it was worse in other regions. Chavez announced the candidacies of some of his closest associates in some cases to the Governorships of states that they are not even from. This has actually created a feeling of uncertainty in the regions, where others who have been loyal to Chavez had been planning to run next year. Meanwhile, Chavez thought that the opposition would pick up the ball and start talking elections, but it is clear that the opposition has realized that it gains nothing by replying to everything Chavez says. Thus, Chavez issue has become a non-issue in a scant three days. A different take is that of Tal Cual Editor Teodoro Petkoff, who focuses more on the fact that, once again, Chavez has forgotten about the promises and beliefs that took him to the Presidency and made him so popular. This is Petkoff’s take:

Participatory Democracy by Simon Bocanegra a.k.a Teodoro Petkoff

It is not even worth wondering about those candidacies that Chavez launched at his rally on Saturday. It is just bullshit, directed at artificially creating an electoral climate, different from the recall referendum

But this mini-reporter is going to look at it form a different point of  view. That of the singular “democratic” criteria of the President. In none of the states for which Chavez announced candidacies was the opinion of the members of MVR even polled, nor that of the allied parties. He even said it “This is MY cock”, “This is MY candidate”. This is called “participative democracy”.

I participate that I do what I want. In MVR there is no group of insiders, what there is, is the will of a single person that imposes, without any discussion, without even the fiction of a democratic debate, over a submissive collective (and perhaps a collective ashamed of the role it is playing) which everyone expects will obey. However, if in the National Directorate of MVR the majority are robots; we only have to wait a little bit to see the reaction of the militants in the regional states. That those candidates that Chavez proposed are accepted just like that will be more difficult that climbing a palm tree on your back,
 

You will see the messy fights they will have.