The Devil's Excrement

This video of one of the employees and residents of the El Peonio farm in the South of Lake Maracaibo should be seen by all Venezuelans. It reveals the farce that the revolution is.

For those that do not speak Spanish, the lady starts by saying that their farm was not flooded because the owner helped build the barriers that contained the water, while the “revolutionary” Major spent the money on something else (She suggests cosmetic surgery). But the water came close, they could have easily been homeless too.

She then says that the farm is a town, with more than 50 families living there. She says that some of those left homeless by the floods have been given refuge by the farm. She then asks: ‘Show me one revolutionary that is housing homeless in their farms or homes?”

She goes on to list some of the farms expropriated by the Government previously, and asks why don’t they take the homeless there, why do they have to take over the 47  productive farms with the excuse that they will take the homeless there.

She then says: “If Chavez loves the people so much, why doesn’t he kill some cattle from the Government farms and give it to the people? That cattle was saved thanks to the owner of our farm (Jesus Melean) who provided the trucks and helped, and this is the way they are paying him.

These are the “people” that Chavez claims to love and care for…

(Tyranny that respects itself will control the Internet)

It was an incredible week in Venezuela. While we have always expected the revolution  to step all over us, perhaps we were expecting Chavez and his comrades to continue a more slow motion take over and destruction of Venezuela, the same way that the Venezuelan President has moved in the last twelve years.

Instead, we got a the opposite, the nervous autocrat/dictator, trying to press on, move the revolution forward before it falls apart. And the speed and surprises were remarkable. The revolution simply never fails to amaze and surprise. From a Science and Technology Bill that basically defines science with the oxymoronic name of “useful science”, to a Social Responsibility Law that aims to shut down the Internet, or at least free speech on it, the Chavez destructive revolution moved at an incredible speed to control and intimidate the opposition and the people.

And perhaps, what was most surprising to even skeptics of Chavez’ democratic credentials like me, was the fact that there was no remorse or qualms about what they were doing. Perhaps the Bill for Political Parties was the most representative of the recent autocratic streak surfacing within Chavismo. Imagine that! a Bill basically saying that if you vote what you feel or think, you can be impeached for treason to the party slate you were elected on!

This Bill, simply questions the democratic mindset of Chavez’ PSUV members. After all, if everyone has to vote in the same way, why have a Parliament at all? Just calculate the percentage of Deputies for each party and for four years, say each Bill sent by Chavez down was approved by 61% to 39% or whatever the outcome of the election was. No discussion, no arguments, just have the party send the Bill, we will process it and we are done.. Why even pay the Deputies! They can build housing for example.

Thus, the “revolution” that rose as a possible alternative to decisions made in smoke filled rooms by the parties of the IVth. Republic, is ready to make an institution  out of them except that only Hugo Chavez and some Cubans hacks seem to be the only ones in that room room, and he does not smoke, so the smoke come apparently from the Cuban cigars.

But that’s what we have come to. Chavez’ leading supporters have never understood or bothered to understand democracy. Their game is power for its own sake. Preserve Hugo in his positions no matter what, even if he is doing a terrible job, which he is.

But from Escarra hanging up on CNN’s Patricia Jenot, to a bunch of Chavista Deputies trying to send a message to Hugo that something is not well in the revolution, you know that Chavez and his buddies are running scared. Nobody denies that Chavez is still popular, but even his own supporters can see that the failure of the revolution is hard to hide.

The problem is that besides the lack of funds, the revolution suffers from a lack of brains. Minister’s Giordani’s solution to the shortage of funds are simply measures to raise taxes only as a way of raising more funds for an increasingly incompetent Government. And as oil prices push higher and higher, there are more and more signs that the Chavez administration is incapable of dealing with the President’s ambitions. And more taxes will simply increase inflation and insure that the recession will remain with us another year, as Giordani’s economic ignorance continues to dominate decisions.

Things are likely to continue getting worse. Stagflation can’t be fought with tax increases, the feeble recovery expected for 2011 is now in jeopardy unless a bigger and better social program is implemented. But there is no money and Chavez’ supporters are getting antsy. There are no signs of recovery and the floods did not help.

And nothing can compete with the “bad” private sector which has built 70%-plus of all housing units built in Venezuela over the last four or five years. But under the recent threat of invasion and intervention, private developers are likely to stay away until the threat is clear. But no logic about prosperity or accomplishments works with Hugo and his cohorts. Power and ideology are the goals even if after tons of ideology and money have yielded very little over the last couple of years.

And with Chavez assuming enabling powers to continue in his search for a model that works, he fails to realize that it is not only the model that fails, but also the people that implement it and he is not ready to change that.

Thus, the solution is to press on, increase control, increase the threats, have the weapons ready, limit free speech and wait for things to improve and if they don’t by 2012, then simply gamble with the elections, there are only two outcomes, Chavez wins or Chavez loses, but he stays as President in both.

I wanted to write a post around this picture, but could not do it…

Would you ask them: Take me to your leader?

or

Would you ask them where is Larry (Fine)?

But, don’t you find it disturbing that these are the leaders of the PSUV and the revolution?

Just scary…

Through the wikileak cables we conform what we always suspected: Ramirez and Chavez were a total failure in the sale of the natural ags and heavy oil crude projects and in the end had their arms twisted by the bid bad oil companies. The Venezuelan oil Emperor has no clothes, in fact, he does not even have rags on.

Just think, the defender of the sovereignty, the revolutionary, being blackmailed by the bad ass imperialistic oil companies and abandoned by his buddies from Russia and China when he needed them. Of course, nothing new here, we had always suspected all of this, after all, the Russians and the Chinese did not even bother bidding for the Carabobo oil field:

“That Russian and Chinese national oil companies did not submit bids in Carabobo suggests the Minister’s travel is to ensure support from “like-minded” countries and to avoid new public setbacks”

This forced Chavez and his combo to give the concession to none other than Chevron. Throughout it all, Ramirez and Chavez keep a straight face, kept lying through their teeth and hailed the success of their failure. What cynics!

The cables are a treasure trove of all the lies we have heard in the last two years as well as the ability of Chavez and friends to lie, for example, on natural gas:

“Senior PDVSA officials are reportedly upset over the failure to solicit bids from international companies for the Mariscal Sucre offshore natural gas project; PDVSA announced it would develop the resources on its own”

No way PDVSA will be able to do that on its own, it has no money to do it.And no matter how upset they were:

“In Beijing, XXXXXXXXXXXX expected Ramirez to focus on “bringing CNPC” back in line and advancing the various Chinese heavy oil projects in the Faja. XXXXXXXXXXXX believed Ramirez’s stop in Tokyo would be designed to seek additional financing for PDVSA, to advance the Junin 11 reserve certification study (Ref B), and to reprimand the Japanese companies for not submitting bids in the Mariscal Sucre bid round”

Well, CNPC never came back in the fold and the Japanese did not advance financing upset over the nationalization of briquette companies.

But the best part is how Italy’s ENI simply backmailed Chavez and Ramirez by threatening to leave thirty minutes before teh documents were to be signed:

“Thirty minutes before the ceremony was tto begin , the CEO of the Italian company Paolo Scaroni, told Ramirez: Take it or leave it, I can get on my plane and move on. Ramirez took thirty minutes to convince President Chavez to accept all of the terms proposed by ENI or rsik losing the deal, according to the cable, the italians said they would not pay the signing bonus, because PDVSA owed ot US# 1 billion”

There you have it, the empty and naked revolution is a bluff and an empty shell, not even its “buddies” like the Russians and Chinese participate in their projects because the terms are not attractive and they yield then to the “imperialistic” companies of Italy and the United States.

The Chavez revolution is simply a farce.

Today we learn that Russia sold our almighty leader 100 sophisticated air missile systems. It had been known that Venezuela had made the purchase, what was not known is that so many of them had been acquired. Thus, Chavez continues to arm the country for an unknown war with someone. The enemy used to be Colombia, now I gathered it must be back to the US and Obama, since Bush is no longer around.

There are two interesting questions. The first one is that according to Chavez’ original announcement, the purchase was made on credit from the Russians. Amazing no? A Government that is incapable of satisfying the most basic needs of the population, spends wildly on useless toys to satisfy the ego of our Dictator and keep the military men surrounding him happy with these expensive Xboxes.

But the second and more dramatic question is that the financing was for US$ 2.2 billion for some tanks and the 100 missile systems. I have no clue how much of these systems costs, but we go back to the example of a couple of days ago, For US$ 2.2 billion you could have built over 80,000 housing units, or 800 housing units for each missile system.

Which only goes to show that Hugo Chavez cares little for the “people” that he claims to love and that he has become the most irresponsible and insensitive President Venezuela has ever had by far. And we thought it would be hard for anyone to achieve this, but Chavez had done it by orders of magnitude. He finances Cuba’s invasion of Venezuela, guarantees that China will own the Heavy Oil tar sands by signing agreements impossible for PDVSA to comply with and borrows money to purchase absolutely useless weapons systems, while the people have water up to their necks…

I do hope Hugo Chavez rots in a jail cell in The Hague…

(Very appropriate to this post, given Chavez’ mouth:”The revolution is carried in the heart, not in the mouth to live off it! Che Guevara)

As I travel, I can’t help but find it hilarious how Chavez talks too much and his Vice-President denies less than a couple of hours later what he said. I mean, these guys still think nobody is watching them as they try to pull this silly doublespeak. I don’t think even hardcore Chavistas don’t see through this farce.

Because Chavez clearly said that he would take the hotels and the empty buildings of the rich, who would not go to Higuerote or Rio Chico right now. Even worse, Chavez gave the wrong diagnose. He claimed that the rich live in the upper parts and the poor in the lower parts because the rich could afford it. Nothing close the truth. Most of this coastal towns have been inhabited for long before the “rich” tourists came. And the locals always preferred to be in the low areas near the water, where their main livelihood, fishing, was. Thus as usual, Chavez is twisting the truth to fit his distorted ideas. In fact, in many of these coastal areas the farms were in the upper part and the workers still lived in the lowe lying areas where the towns have always been.

But no sooner had Hugo said this, that people started going towards Higuerote to defend their property and the Vice-President Elias Jaua, came out and denied that Chavez had said anything of the sort.Said the VP:

“We want to stop speculations…President Chavez did not order that apartments or houses be occupied”

No, Elias, he did not say that he said:

“We are going totake over the abandoned buildings of the rich, we are going to take them over”. Because, said Chavez, while those affected by the floods are in “smelly and dirty water, the buildings of the “rich” are in the best areas, where there is not even a puddle”

And to make sure nobody misunderstands what he meant by “abandoned”, he had said right before that statement: “Right now, I am sure the rich, because they see the “people” flooded” are not going to come here, they are going to go to Europe, or they are going to go to Miami, who knows where they are going to spend Christmas”

So, this was just another chapter of the Chavez and Jaua show, Jaua cleaning up the mess behind the brilliant ideas of the President. That’s all he really does in the end, clean up after the mess left by the big boss.

The floods began one month ago and today, the Chavez Government seems as unprepared to deal with them as the first day.