Los Culpables de la dictadura: Carlos Escarrá

Entre las diferentes categorías de los que participan en la creación de regímenes totalitarios hay los vividores, y usted claramente pertenece a estos.

Si, es verdad, usted ha ofrecido muchas de las leyes que han cuartado la libertad en Venezuela, pero usted no ha sido muy original en ello, usted se limitó solamente a darles un barniz legal.  Eso si, con toda la vileza que sea posible insinuar.  Pocos se han arrastrado tanto para ser aceptados por la cúpula del régimen.  Y todavía, con todo lo que usted a hecho para ganar favores, a penas lo dejan sentarse en la Asamblea Nacional. 

Pero eso no le importa mucho a usted porque al fin y al cabo lo que le importa al acomplejado que usted es, es el roce con el poder, la gloria, y la prepotencia impune.  No mas tenemos que oír de su viaje reciente a Washington donde usted se rehusó a quitarse los zapatos en en la seguridad del aeropuerto.  Lo hacemos todos, TODOS, incluyendo los diputados del Congreso Norteamericano, cuando viajamos en los EE.UU.  Pero usted no lo quiso hacer porque usted es un malcriado, acostumbrado a nuestro aeropuerto nacional donde hay una rampa especial para los cubanos y la gente de su calaña que ni enseñan el pasaporte, ni se les registra el equipaje.  Menos lo harán con sus zapatos.

Es por eso que usted colabora activamente con la dictadura, por vividor, para tener privilegios, para poder insultar a quien quiera impunemente, dentro y fuera del país.  Usted tiene su puesto bien merecido en esta lista por grosero y abusador, como ejemplar de nota de la basura que nos gobierna, de la basura que quiere nos volvamos.

Cuaima, 80% of the time not lethal

The Lachesis muta is a venomous viper you can find in many areas of Venezuela, particularly  in the East and South. It can be up to 3 metres long and is, as Wikipedia says, "the longest venomous snake on the Western hemisphere". The good part is that it is 80% of the time it is not lethal for humans. There are more lethal snakes in Venezuela.


In Venezuela the most common name for this viper is cuaima, from Chaima, an extinct Carib language formerly spoken in the Northeast, in what is now Sucre, Monagas and part of Anzoátegui*. Cuaima is also a word Venezuelans use the word to refer to a very agressive, clever and cruel woman or just to talk about their beloved wives.

*there are some attempts to revitalise the language

El discurso orwelliano soberano

Chávez llego a Argentina porque mas nadie lo quiere recibir.  De hecho, ni en Argentina lo quieren recibir porque el que lo esperaba en el aeropuerto no fue la Presidenta, no fue el canciller, no fue un ministro, no fue un vice-ministro, fue el jefe de protocolo de la cancillería que se la tuvo que calar.

Allí Chavez llega y dice: "Nosotros seguiremos enviando para acá petróleo para garantizar la soberanía energética de Argentina" y agrega que comprará "miles de tractores, sembradoras y cosechadoras, que ya están construyéndose", allá, no aquí en Venezuela. Ademas va a pasar por el supermercado a comprarse 600 mil toneladas de alimentos de los cuales quien sabe cuantos se irán a pudrir.

Dos naciones soberanas en verdad, una que depende del padrote para su gasolina y otra que depende del chulo para poder comer. ¡Ni Orwell podía inventar una soberanía tan brava!

Bolívar's bones revisited



The Venezuelan military regime announced some details about a new maosoleum that is going to hold Bolívar's bones "for eternity". This construction has taken almost 20 million euros from the national treasury at the official rate and is going to cost more, much more. This is going to be an extension to the already existing National Pantheon of Venezuela, now against all kinds of earthquakes. I suppose it is going to be against tsunamis as well.

Meanwhile the regime ordered all scientists working in the analysis of what is pressumed to be Bolívar's bones to be completely hermetic about the findings. This is top secret. Those scientists are trying to find out if some of the conspiracy theories Chávez has in mind about Bolívar's death are true. 

Fat chance you get any news if you ask at the IVIC or to the US and Spanish specialists in charge. Why? Because Chávez is using the whole issue for political purposes and he wants to be the one to reveal an interpretation of the findings when it suits him.

Remember: Chávez is Bolívar's Sibyl. One of the things he loves the most about his job, apart from the possibility of traveling around for free for months and forcing millions of Venezuelans to listen to him every week is to play as Bolívar's medium on Earth, specially while holding Bolívar's gold sword, which is now under his special custody while it was in a museum before.

It would be nice if the democratic forces publicly asked Chávez to stop using bones for political purposes and let scientists say whatever they have to say now and go to work on something else.

So far we have heard those bones do seem to come from the Venezuelan XIX century caudillo and greatest self-promoter of all times and that the original owner of those bones had mostly European ancestors but was of mixed raced (male Y chromosome haplogroup and - I guess- native American mDNA as most Venezuelans, perhaps with some African background). This is just what you would expect from anyone whose ancestors had been living in Venezuela for several generations.

Of course, Chávez will be trying to interpret this last part in the ways he needs. I wonder if he is also trying to see who the closest common ancestor between himself and Bolívar was.

From Kabul to Tripoli, It is the same war

Tonight I am in Caracas and watching the news with my old Dad.  TVE of Spain translates live the Obama speech about why the US had to get into the Libya potential mess.  I am trying to explain him that Republicans are unfairly attacking Obama, and that many in the US think that two wars are enough.  My Dad easily and convincingly dismiss the whole thing with a handful of words: "They shouldn't.  It is the same war".

Indeed, I cannot argue with him even if it is not politically correct to suggest such an opinion, redolent of "clash of civilization".  But truly, is there any major difference between Al Qaeda, The Taliban, and Qaddafi?  Without bringing in Shia Islam.....

Are they not all the product of complacent dictatorships from Saudi Arabia to Egypt, only too happy to force the West into accepting their nasty rule because they were a barrier of sorts to further fundamentalism while guaranteeing oil supply?

Well, it was not......

Whether we like it is irrelevant: we are confronted with the necessary fight for freedom and democracy against obscurantism.  True, in Benghazi they might be ready to burn US flag as soon as they are done with the French ones, but what other options do we have?  Keep Qaddafi in office?

We have been complaining in the West that secular Islam was not taking a stand against Al Qaeda and assorted creeps, and thus indirectly (unwillingly?) allowed for them to survive and even prosper.  Now it is time to support their primal efforts while demanding some type of accounting from them as to their potential democratic values even though for a while they might be quite tainted by religious sentience.  We are going to have to live with this.

Again, as already written here, we are in 1848.  Many of the Arabic countries "revolutions" might end up stolen but we need to manage to have at least one succeed, and help it as much as we can to make it a beacon of hope.  Tunisia maybe?  They did not have such a chance in 1848....  they had to wait for 1861 and 1870 to see the first glimmers of real results.  I do not think we have the luxury to wait for even half a decade..........

Über den König Venezuelas und die Demokratie

Venezuela hat ein streng präsidentielles Regierungssystem. Es war immer so und es ist seit der Militär Chávez an der Macht schlimmer geworden: der Präsident hat Befugnisse, die kein anderer Präsident im ganzen Amerika hat. Er darf immer wieder für das präsidentielles Amt kandidieren, was in keinem demokratischen präsidentiellen Regierungssystem der Fall ist (bis vielleicht auf Surinam).

Die Stelle des Präsidenten ist also wichtig und es ist sehr wichtig, dass die demokratischen Kräfte in Venezuela einen guten gemeinsamen Kandidat finden. Und dennoch ist es besorgniserregend zu sehen, wie die 10 "wichtigsten" Parteien der demokratischen Kräfte keine gemeinsame Bewegung organisieren, um in den verschiedenen Bundesstaaten ihre Botschaft -nicht ihren Mann oder ihre Frau- zu verbreiten. Natürlich haben sie es gar nicht leicht: die Militärregierung schikaniert jede Veranstaltung der Opposition, die Opposition hat wenig Geld und die Regierung benutzt Staatsressourcen immer wieder, um Werbung für den Caudillo zu machen. Dennoch müssen sie endlich mal nicht an einen Führer denken - das ist was für die Chávez-Anhänger- sondern an eine Bewegung, so wie die Bewegungen, wie man in der Tschechoslowakei und in der DDR 1989 gesehen hat.

Blogger Juan Cristobal hat vor kurzem einen Post über Maria Corina Machado geschrieben (ja, siehe in Wikipedia Foto mit Bush). Da fragte Juan, ob diese Politikerin jetzt kandidiert und darum überall in Venezuela reist. Hier werde ich einfach einen meiner Kommentare ins Deutsche wiederholen:


Ich nehme an, Maria Corina Machado will schon kandidieren. Deswegen reist sie durch das ganze Land. Und trotzdem denke ich, dass sie, der Causa-Radical-Vorsitzender Andrés Velázquez und die Toppolitiker von Primero Justicia (bis auf den Gouverneur, der zur Zeit nicht herumreisen darf), die Toppolitiker von UNT und die von PODEMOS schon jetzt Maturin, San Félix, Calabozo und alle andere nennenswerte Städte im Land im Namen der demokratischen Kräfte besuchen müssen. Sie müssen das tun, auch wenn sie schon wissen, dass sie nicht als Präsident kandidieren werden.

Venezolaner müssen endlich aufhören, zu denken, dass nur "der Auserwählte" herumreisen muss. Venezolanische Politiker müssen endlich mal aufhören, wie Feudalherren zu agieren, nur in ihrem Feudalgebiet bleiben oder eine "Krone" als Belohnung für das ganze Herumreisen verlangen. Die wichtigsten Vertreter jeder Partei, die behauptet, eine Nationalpartei zu sein, müssen das ganze Land von nun an besuchen und über eine demokratische, pluralistische Wende sprechen.

Nur so haben wir eine Chance, Venezuela aus dem politischen Mittelalter herauszuholen.

Chávez denkt wie ein Feudalherr, der König geworden ist. Die anderen Politiker müssen anders denken.

Away

(This post was written about a year ago, and then it got lost somewhere in my files, since the feelings are still current, here it comes)

This month I have helped two dear friends to pack their bags. I have said good bye to many friends in the last few years but I have never had the chance to see their process so close. There is something different about a good bye party and your friend smiling with a beer saying it will visit you on Christmas (but you know he won't) to see your friend' closet going empty, trying to figure out if that old shirt that brings warm memories from High School is an indispensable item or not.

There is something different about checking that bag' weight and asking if they are going to need all those bathing suits in that cold place, how many pair of shoes can they put, how many times they would have to wash the only items they can carry; for a year or more. This month was a friend who marry and left to Australia with her husband. The other is following his new wife up to Canada, she found a job there.

So we smile and argue about the best way to pack the shirts, and the pants. We suggest her to take at least one good dress because you never know if you have an occasion that merits it over there. We take one last picture. One girl looks at one drawer and asks "What about perfume? Are you going to take any?" - "Well" - Our emigrant friend answers - "Maybe just one bottle, pack just my favorite one... there is no room for anything else" - "Can I take your books?" - "Take everything you want... except this one.. and this one"...

Then follow a discussion about what the parents are going to do with the empty room. They will probably keep it as a guest house in case the lost daughter or son decides to pay a short visit. We speak about the last bank intervened, the latest political prisoner, the last acquaintance we heard of being kidnapped. In every meeting, even one as informal and quick as helping your friend with the last minute details before their departure, those anecdotes arise. Then our friend looks at us and says "Just be careful, all of you who are staying here, please just take care of yourselves".

Then we promise a visit, someday, somewhere. They promise a visit, in the same vague terms. Keep in touch. You added me to skype yesterday. I will let you know when the apartment is ready and you'll know you have a home over there...

I have homes in many places. In United States, Mexico, Chile, Panama, Spain, Germany and Australia, to name a few. But like I have said over and over again in this blog, I'm not those kind of people who dream about traveling around the world and staying for free. I'm more like those kind of people who would rather keep their friends close. Not for a random every two, three four years visit, not for a Skype call. I would rather have my friends like I used to have them, for a phone call (plain, normal, local phone call), for a coffee, for a drink, for a short trip to the beach, for a reunion, for a birthday, for a movie, for watching a soccer game together. I would rather have my friends at my love ones funeral, and in the hospital if a disease comes along, or meeting the newborn of any of us face to face, not thanks to a Facebook mobile picture.

But my friends are now ambassadors, filled part with nostalgia and part with new adventures. Their lives are no longer mine. They are not available for long talks and huge laughs anymore. At most, long stories rely on email and blogspots. And, the desires to come back. If they only could, if they were not so disconnected already, if things were better, if things were different.

Guest bloggers wanted

This blog' traffic is usually from overseas - specially United States and Europe so that's why I address more to foreigners than Venezuelans. But recently, I have noticed a non ordinary traffic of Venezuelans in my blog. After receiving comments and e-mails from some of them, I have come up with this idea. More than an idea, is a proposal. It goes like this:

Readers already know my story: they have read about the anguish reflected during dinner conversations with my family, they have read about my early encounters with this revolution in high school, about the marches, protests, and street clashes I have witnessed, about my brief stage as part of a political party and later, as part of a student movement. They have read about the people I have lost -due to violent death or more likely to emigration - on these years. They read everything about my graduation, a bit about my job search. They even know a bit about how my love life has been putting Venezuelan reality as a context. They suspect my life resembles the life of many Venezuelans.

To some extent this is true. My life resembles the life of almost any high middle but recently impoverished middle class educated young woman. I'm nothing original. I have similar concerns and similar aspirations people of my generation and my conditions has. But then there are many subjective realities that I can't explore nor express accurate in this space. Maybe a girl with a different career or still single, maybe a young woman who already left the country and is struggling to adapt herself to a new environment. Maybe a guy still studying or just coming out of the university or starting his own business. Maybe someone having to live the difficulties parenthood carries in this crisis. Maybe someone with a better or worse situation in life than the one I have. Maybe someone who works for the government. Someone who has experience a kidnapping or an assault (I'm lucky, even in the most dangerous city in the world, I have not yet directly experienced any). I know very little about life in other Venezuelan cities or towns besides my own: Caracas.

So if you can feel identified with any of the lines above, or even if your reality is almost exactly like my own. If you are Venezuelan, live in or sort of recently left Venezuela and speak English; I want to invite you to write here as a guest blogger. This blog is for people who wants to approach to the reality of a Venezuelan. I designed this blog for people who wants to look beyond the news and inside citizens houses, life and most importantly, feelings. So if readers could get a glimpse of what happens here, how does it feel, how do we manage to keep our heads and hearts still; from other voices besides my own; their understanding of our reality would be a lot greater.

To put the long story short, if you feel entitled to, write your testimonial. Above all talk about how do you feel, what do you think; if its politically correct or not, is not important.

You can send me what your write, along side with your name or a nickname (I prefer to keep my real name private, you are free to put your real name or not), to my e-mail (in case of doubts, my account is "julia1984ve", its a gmail account, I'm writing it like that to avoid spam). You can also include a link or links to your blog, twitter, personal page or any other way for readers to contact you or see/read more about you. If you want to include a picture/drawing/image, that would be great too. You can keep it short or long. If it's too long I will have to publish it in two parts which can't do much harm. Your post might also include links to other pages or not, that's up to you.

I will read of course your post before publishing it, and I'll edit it if necessary: but only small grammar mistakes, typing and things like that. In case of a major editing I will consult that to you. I won't publish anything you are not agree to be published. And obviously, you will appear as the single author of the post.

If your post receive comments, I will moderate those comments. I usually don't publish comments that are offensive, compromise my real identity, or are just plain trolls or spam. I don't publish comments people have explicitly asked me not to. If you disagree with this policy, we can talk about it and see what we can negotiate.

I have the feeling that this post and invitation might fall in deaf ears. But I don't lose anything for trying. And if it does work, if anyone actually sends anything I think it will be an interesting opportunity for me to diversify my blog' contents, for guest posters to get other spaces and platforms to be heard, and for this blog readers to enrich their knowledge and understanding on our little but yet important; Venezuelan perspectives. So I'm trilled about the idea, don't you? If so, please, please, please... sign in!

Venezuelan, whence art thou?

Almost a third of my readers here are Venezuelan citizens. I would like to ask those of you who are Venezuelan where  you were born.  Please, answer to the poll on the right.

Thanks in advance.
Margarita Island

Chaguaramos

There are palms galore in the sub-tropic and tropic regions. The Roystonea oleracea or Chaguaramo is one of them. As you can infer from the Latin name, their fruits -not good for you unless you are a parrot or a pig- are very oily.



Native Americans and peasants all over the place (including my ancestors) used these plants as thatch and construction material...and to feed the pigs. You will see the leaves used for Palm Sunday processions as well.

A chaguaramo can grow 40 metres tall, so you don't want to be under one of them when a leaf falls.

This palm is similar to the Roystonea regia or Royal Palm, which can be found in more places, but you can differentiate them because the chaguaramo's seedlings are violet and not green and the leaves are darker than those of the Royal Palm.

The picture below is from the "Altar de la Patria" (sic and sick), very close to my hometown. You don't get much shadow from these palms but they can be an impressive sight.

That everyday "coup d'état": two this week in Venezuela

François Mitterand was a long time opponent of Charles de Gaulle, to the point of writing a book which title was "Le coup d'état permanent", the continuous coup.  He reproached de Gaulle his strong presidential style to the point of equating it to a a rule issue of a coup.  In France with a long tradition of unstable parliamentary government the accusation did ring, but that did not stop Mitterrand, once elected president in 1981 to rule as much or more as an "imperial presidency", US style.

When all is said and done it was rather amusing and somewhat ridiculous because the separation of powers in France had been achieved long ago and was too anchored to be easily corrupted, even for some one with the stature of de Gaulle.  And this did not stop de Gaulle to resign after he lost a referendum that he sponsored.  In Venezuela on the other hand, a president asks for a major referendum, loses it, and goes on applying the failed referendum anyway, through a system that can be justifiably called a "permanent coup" and military at that.  The constitutional violations of the regime, of a Constitution that it wrote itself 11 years ago, cannot be counted anymore.  Every day new violations, based on previous violations, become the law of the land.  This week we got two more for the list.

Today, to start, the regime used again bad weather to justify the take over of land away from a governor legitimately elected.  The souther area of Zulia is again flooded as the regime did not do the necessary work it promised when it already took away the major farms of the area.  See, in a very flat land which Sur del Lago is, you need to dredge regularly the rivers to make sure that water runs to Maracaibo lake as soon as it can manage considering the near zero natural slope.  This was already a problem 4 months ago and it has become again a problem with unseasonal rains.  The government has no excuse because if it could advance that it did not have time to finish dredging scheduled for the rainy season in May, it cannot even demonstrate that such dredging has started!  Thus floods would have also occurred in June, possibly, and Chavez government is caught once again pants down.

But the regime is clever in a way and he uses the natural disaster to liquidate the influence of Zulia governor in the area.  Already 4 months ago it took away all the major farms which were supporters of the Zulia governor.  But apparently this must not have been enough and as jobs were lost, as agriculture starts the expected nose dive once the state takes over, the regime need to move in as a force "for good".  So a new "motor district" is created, through a law that was voted a few months ago against the constitutional disposition.  That motor district is simply an area of Zulia  state that will be now under full control of Caracas.  Period.  If things happen there that go against the interests of the people of Zulia, well, too bad, as the governor could conceivably be barred from visiting the area and protest abuses.  See, the military are the ones taking over the area......

To give you a taste of what the future holds for Sur del Lago, besides joblessness and floods, the regime also decreed today that all the dredging machineries will be taken over by the regime "provisionally", this one assuming only the costs of payroll and gas.  It seems that chavista own polls must tell them that nationalizations have become very unpopular since the people are observing every day the failures of what has already been taken over.  But this provisional is hardly any better because the intent is that if the regime operators wreck the dredges, well, too bad for the owner.

You may ask, while we are at it, how come dredgers are private.  Well, as an easily inundated area many farms probably use such services to clear up their bordering rivers and maybe even to keep clean access to the lake through which they could ship their production.  But the main channels and rivers are a responsibility of the government who wisely does not invest in such seasonal endeavor and supposedly should be paying the people that have these business to do the job.  Clearly, it was not done and this is not surprising for a regime that will only pay for showy project, never on maintenance as considered a poor vote getter.

The other coup of the week was directly inside the armed forces: likely watching the example of Qaddafi in Libya, or the Pasdaran in Iran, Chavez has decided that he needed to have a reliable and armed militia as it looks more and more that in 2012 vote the odds are against him.   And when I use the term militia here, I am using it in its very worst definition: a paramilitary body in the hands of a political constituency.

Thus, in spite of the explicit prohibition of the 1999 Constitution (article 324)  this week a law reform was published arming the militia.  To add insult to constitutional violation, he used for that the enabling law illegally voted last November and which purpose was to rescue the country of the October November floods.  It is simply impossible to tie that arming the militia is a good thing to rebuild the country: the enabling law is used because Chavez does not want the parliament to discuss a law that can only be modified by a 2/3 vote, which he cannot get now.  So this new mini coup d'etat.  The "legal" ruse here is to incorporate the militia to the army but under direct command and organization of the presidency, allowing it to hire civilians according solely to presidential wishes.  Thus the militia will have access to the weapons of war of the Venezuelan army but the army will not be able to anything about it, and even less control its future use, such as in repressing a popular protest complaining about the results of 2012 that Chavez would refuse to acknowledge.  Iran/Ivory Coast style.

Curiously you need to read this blog or the foreign press to measure the magnitude of the militia arming, as it looks that Venezuelan papers either do not get in full yet or are too self-censored to attack Chavez on such an unacceptable thing.

Let's see if the opposition alliance at the MUD is going to wake up and see that such actions wreck any chances they may have to win in 2012....  I ain't not holding my breath.

From Russia, with love: 7 billion dollars in weapons for more underdevelopment


This is the kind of details you don't get in Venezuelan newspapers: the Venezuelan government spent 400 million dollars this winter to set up a Venezuelan-Russian bank.  Venezuela's FONDEN was the one providing the dosh after it got the green light from the Russian Antimonopoly Organisation to buy 49.9% of the shares of Evrofinanse Mosnarbanka (Еврофинанс Моснарбанка). According to Kommersant, Rosbalt dixit, the Venezuelan government will use  these shares to form a package that will constitute 49% of the capital for this new bank. Putin was pressing since 2006 for Chávez to take this step.

Do you know of any discussion about this at the previous National Assembly? Do you know if the alternative forces can demand the government to backtrack on this?

According to the paper, the main reason for setting up this new bank is to  process the deals between Venezuela and Rosobonosexport. Rosobonoexport is the company delivering weapons to Hugo's military. Venezuela is the second best client for Russian's Lords of War, after India.

Russia could be providing about 7.5 billion dollars in loans for the Venezuelan military to buy toys with.

Do you have any idea why we need to spend so many billions in buying weapons? Does Hugo want to Gaddafy us? How many schools could Venezuela create in Guárico and Portuguesa with those billions? How many roads and projects for developing agriculture in Monagas could be financed with this money?

I wonder if Rosobonosexport has been very-very grateful to some of Venezuela's boliburgueses.

Ps. talking about the dirty business of war, blogger and journalist Steven Bodzin sent me this very interesting link. I will be talking more about this topic.

Are self starving students managing to expose the inner workings of the regime?

Self starve, wreck an Imperial McDonald!
Self starvation is becoming increasingly popular these days in Venezuela, and I do not mean to be facetious.  I did write a few weeks ago that I was perturbed about that audacious game of starving oneself to death as a protest form in front of a regime that has so little value for human life (in English and in Spanish).  There is a mix of lots of individual courage, some recklessness and a tad of showmanship involved; but these students are dealing with the biggest showman that Venezuela politics ever have had, someone that does not take easily to be outperformed, and someone with the violence behind him to exact revenge when time comes.

And yet it worked: the first hunger strike by students in front of the OAS forced the government to recognize that there were bona fide political prisoners in Venezuela and that the judicial system was there to serve the interests of Chavez.  There was not even a pretense to consult the High Court before releasing some of the prisoners.  Even if the freedom of political prisoners is not complete, even if the judicial system remains genuflected in front of Chavez from now on there is no need to accuse the regime of such evils: they have been proven, they are an established fact.


A very "bourgeois looking" student,
sewing his mouth
But at the same time another hunger strike was starting and this one was much harder to understand and yet will expose equally well the regime.  This time a new group of students demanded that the regime pays its promise to education, that there was no excuse not to provide campus with the minimum funds for them to operate.  It is still early to predict the outcome, and things are getting ugly as students are doing one of the grotesque habits learned in pathetic Venezuelan jails: to sew one's mouth in protest.  The government is refusing so far to meet with the students whose sole demand is that the minister in charge receives them and the university rectors for a frank dialogue where real decisions can be made that satisfy both parts.

But the regime cannot dialogue because it is a military regime in nature and for a military regime dialogue is equivalent to defeat.  A military regime knows this very well in its core.  Historically since Chavez reached office any, ANY promise of dialogue never took place, and the feeble attempts to which it was forced too were never carried through Chavez but through his underlings until the regime found a way to dismiss the proceeding and move on a new offensive.  El Caudillo cannot dialogue, he can only give orders.

And thus this time around the regime cannot find its voice because what looked at first as a silly hunger strike gamble in front of a totally useless UN dependency (1) is turning out to be quite revealing of its warts.

For example we can consider the attitude of the University Minister, a rotating post where all fail and where none manages the real goal chavista goal which is to submit the autonomous universities where chavismo is regularly defeated by margins as high as 5 to 1.  The infelicitous Yadira Cordova, who probably received a Cuban like order not to meet the students, has gone as far as saying that they were manipulated, thus bringing the old and very tired argument of the chavista collective paranoia that all is a conspiracy against the bright revolution.  A very Cuban strategy, by the way.  And a very understandable projection sine none in the regime will say something original, something that does not closely toe the party line.

Chavista freedom loving students, yeah, right.....
The regime also tried to call for a march of its students, those that it wants to sell as real students.  Unfortunately I can witness that there was no such a spontaneous gathering of chavista students and that the bulk of the march was conformed by public employees told to go or less.  My S.O. working in the public administration was drafted and he sent me a few pictures such as the one I am posting on the right and to open.  It was clear to all that it was a poor show, reflecting the lack of imagination of the regime who still think at this point that political battles are won by whomever manages to have more people hitting the streets. Never mind if groups of them deface a McDonald along the way while some other bolivarian students stopped by inside for a bite to eat, as seen by my S.O. among many other interesting stuff he saw.

Other more grotesque and absolutely tasteless strategies were tried.  A group of chavista "students" went to set a barbecue stand in front of the hunger strikers and offered them meat, claiming that they were worried for their health.  They eventually tossed the meat at them.  We get regular reports that at night motorbike gangs with hidden faces drive in front to intimidate.  And at the most infamous late night chavista show of La Hojilla they showed a video of supposedly a hunger strike student eating a sandwich.  Even though the said student declared later that he was not on strike, tha the was on the support team and thus had to hide and not eat in front of his comrades, VTV keeps passing over an over the libelous  "scoop".  These days we are reminded daily of the thuggish ways fo chavismo, unable to rise to the situation, always sinking to the lowest gutter it can fit and resorting when all else fails to mere unjustified disqualification.

And yesterday a Chavez that cannot dodge the issue anymore tried to dodge it anyway attending the graduation of a Bolivarian University promotion, a promotion that will not be able to find a job in the private sector because sadly their diplomas are worthless as they spent more hours studying socialism ideology  than technology.  You should have heard the speech of the valedictorian (?) and wonder if you would even want to hire him as a cab driver.  Once there Chavez promised a few things that coincided with the claims of the starving students.  And yet these are not going to lift the strike until they receive a written promise by the regime, from Chavez or the minister in charge.  Why? Because Chavez has promised so much and given so little for them to believe his words in a cadena.  The regime's word is worthless.

This is where the surprising success of the strike is coming and how slowly but surely they have become a part of a much larger mobilization of which they are becoming the leading face, whether we like it or not.  The students are not asking for much in a country which spends billions in useless weaponry, that wastes hundreds of millions in rotten food, that is known for its largess to its foreign pals.  And the country understands that, sees that there is no excuse for a "social" regime not to increase scholarships, not to provide food in student cafeterias and refuse to make decent teachers wages just because it wants universities embrace its ideology.  The students on strike are not asking anything for themselves, they are pleading and sacrificing for all students, chavista or not, from elementary school to campus.  The point of chavismo inefficiency, misuse of money and egotism is suddenly and mercilessly driven in the heart of the regime.

And thus we must embrace these striking students with all our heart because they are proving to us that there is some decency left in Venezuela and that the fight for our future is worth fighting.

----------------------------------------------------------------------


1) UNDP in English, is a UN organization which among many tasks has to evaluate the progress in human development.  In Venezuela it has lost some credibility because it has accepted the statistics of the regime at face value (which it does with any government).  We can understand that the UNPD does not have the means to verify the human index for every country in the world but we cannot understand that UNDP has not expressed clearly that it doubts the numbers of some countries where democracy and transparency do not prevail.

Wie der Kapitalismus den Mars zerstörte oder "Die Sendung mit dem Esel"

"Auf dem Mars...das habe ich immer gesehen oder gehört (sic) wäre es nicht unwahrscheinlich, dass es eine Zivilisation gegeben hätte. Aber vielleicht kam der Kapitalismus, der Imperialismus, da an und hat das Leben dort  zerstört.

Passt mal auf, passt mal auf: hier auf der Erde, wo es vor Jahrhunderten Wälder gab, gibt es jetzt nur noch Wüsten; wo es früher grosse Flüsse gab, gibt es nun nur noch Wüsten. Es gibt einen Prozess fortgeschrittener Desertifikation auf der Erde, der das Leben auf dem Planet mittelfristig bedroht".

Das sagte der venezolanische Präsident, Hugo Chávez. Selbst die Russen mussten darüber berichten. Ich konnte mir den Gedanken nicht verkneifen, es handele sich um eine sehr schlechte Parodie der Sendung mit der Maus, eine Parodie, die nur aus einer vom Militär regierten Erdölrepublik stammen könnte.




Der venezolanische Caudillo sagte auch, dass 96% der Bevölkerung Venezuela nun Zugang zu Trinkwasser hat, als ob das eine wirkliche Leistung wäre...als ob das die Wahrheit wäre.  In Wirklichkeit müssen Millionen Venezolaner das Wasser von LKWs kaufen:

Ein überdurschnittlich gut gebautes Haus in einem Slum in Lara, Venezuela. Der blaue Behälter hat das Trinkwasser für diese Familie

Chávez hat natürlich nicht erwähnt, dass es kein Kapitalismus war, der zur Zerstörung des Aralsees in Mittelasien und zur Umweltverschmutzung zahlreicher Gebiete in Osteuropa und in Sibirien führte. Chávez sagte auch nicht, dass 99.8% der Bevölkerung Chiles Zugang zu Trinkwasser hat, dass der Anteil der Bevölkerung mit Zugang zu Trinkwasser in Mexiko 97% beträgt. Und wie können arme Menschen das erfahren, wenn sie nicht lesen und nie im Ausland waren?

Chávez sagte auch nicht, dass die venezolanischen Flussbecken von Caroni und Caura jetzt mehr als je zuvor durch unkontrollierten Goldbergbau massiv zerstört werden und das trotz Versprechen der Regierung.

Aralsee

Watery lies leave yours truly discombobulated as to Mars invaded by alien capitalists...

[UPDATED] Back at the ranch after a week end obsessing about Libya I must put up with Chavez starting the week with two, TWO, noon cadenasThe one that just ended deserves reporting.

First, in what Chavez announces as a grand gesture to solve the water problems of Caracas, he started giving away a few plastic containers to some homes.  Fine, you might say, but he also announces that his objective is that a water truck shall come every week for deliveries.  In other words Chavez is describing us the future rationing of water because now, even if his un-waterlogged plan were to work, a family will need to learn to live, laundry and all, with 1,500 liters of water a week,  That is less than 400 gallons a week, toilet, laundry, drinking, cooking, moping, showering, etc.....  Divide that by, say, 6 and each family member has less than 80 gallons a week for all their needs.  And imagine the fleet of trucks required to deliver 400 gallons per home per week, in a country where inefficiency, corruption and incompetence are the norm. There you have it, official rationing of water, even as he announces the completion, some day soon, I swear, no kidding now, trust me this time, you´ll see of a new aqueduct system that was scheduled to be done 10 years ago.  Why the delay?  Do not hold your breath waiting for the explanation, rationing is so much more a socialist approach to life!
Water trucks and scarves........

At any rate yours truly found particularly offensive that Jacqueline Farias, the Caracas gauleiter, attended the inauguration of plastic tubs in popular areas with an obscene and useless scarf of expensive nature, showing that she does not have laundry problems.  What is it with Chavez cachifas that they all love to wear scarves as expensive as possible?

But since you have been very good readers I left the best for the end: Chavez speculation on how capitalism and imperialism ended civilization on Mars!  I kid you know, watch the video below.



My translation below from sec 16  to sec 32:


"In Mars I always said, heard, It would not be strange that in Mars there had been civilization.  [pause for effect] But likely capitalism arrived there, imperialism came, and there were done with that planet"

And this after he apparently stated that no water has been found in the Solar System except for a little vapor "vaporcito" on Mars.......  All my Scientific American collection is committing suicide as I type......

Should we be surprised about such idiocy coming from a man who states confidently that Humans have been around for only 25 centuries?  Heck, I am even re-posting that video!!!!



We are ruled by a true ignoramus who thinks he knows it all......  But the worse of the lot is not him, it is the people unwilling to correct him......  Would you ever work for such a brutish boss?

UPDATE.  Well, it looks like our Martian Socialist Chronicles  has managed to unify the anti Chavez blogosphere, including even reluctant places like the Huffington Post (pathetic defenders included according to JC).  Besides this post, you can read Miguel's Venusian take, CCS's medical sarcasm, Fausta's what the F?, Gustavo's deadly serious pessimism, El Chigüire illustrated history of Bolivarian Mars (note how they added music and Mars Beam to the video), Bruni came with a ditty, and even German folks were regaled by the news,  plus the National Post, etc, etc....?

Nice going Hugo!  Way to grab front pages!

Libya-Venezuela etc

 Qaddaffi has massacred his people for decades now: the Abu Salim prison, the killing of wounded in hospitals and so on. I linked already to Amnesty International's information on Libya.

Now: if the international community is going to go after him, I think it should use a more accurate set of reasons and be more specific about the scope. It seems the scope is changing all too fast.

The international community should also be able to debate openly if it is good to be selling weapons to dictators who "haven't massacred their people just yet". Should China and Russia not explain on a world debate why they deliver weapons to Burma's regime? To Venezuela's? Why the US is doing the same to Arabia's?

Am I being naive? Very probably yes.
Some people will say: well, if we don't sell them weapons, China will. OK. No comments.
At the beginning I was wondering about Angela Merkel's and Westerwelle's position not to vote for the resolution: was it because of election time only? Does the government want to out-Green the Green not just in the nuclear thing? Is the government trying to find out energy alternative to the nuclear reactors it has to close down now? Is it that the government is haunted by the German past? Nothing made  sense. Blogger Daniel had other reasons

I believe the Germans have seen intelligence that is opposed to what the US and France are saying and above all they want a better plan, specially about what is coming now.

Gaddafi supporters are of course completely wrong. Gaddafi has been massacring his people for a long time, not just now but also when the international sanctions against him were firstly put in place many years ago and then later when Blair and  Berlusconi were kissing him, when the Germans were training his police forces and when the French selling him their weapons. 

And Gaddafi has been delivering all the oil the West needs for many years now…just like our compatriot, the comandantepresidente and heroe of the Museo de Historia has been providing oil to the US Americans.

Are the Russians and Chinese afraid to lose contracts for oil and weapons? Probably they are. Still, it seems the Germans and the Russians and the Chinese understand there is no real plan, the situation can escalate. What if Gaddafi does use civilians on a "Green march" in order to provoke more civilian casualties? How can the international community prevent this? I don't think they have a plan.
Here you see a German video (in German, of course) with some of the best informed Middle East specialists Germany has. This is the second part, the whole programme was very good and quite some food for thought.

Spotting crime, offering new solutions

From Miranda to the space to Miranda back again
The government of Miranda, in the hand of the alternative forces, is carrying out a new project to improve security in the area.

What they are doing now is basically this: their cops identify with GPS devices the location and further details about any new crime in Miranda state; the information is then digitally classified and visualized in the Miranda police centre; specialists then try to find out patterns to see how to best use police forces and prevention mechanisms in the most optimal way. This is not rocket science, but it is making good use of technologies already available.

I just hope the Chávez regime does not intervene with this new initiative. Chávez always tries to sabotage anything the alternative forces do, no matter how this affects Venezuelans. 

Let's hope the Miranda government works together with the best mathematicians, sociologists and criminologists from such places as the Universidad Central de Venezuela and Universidad Simón Bolívar in order to really make the best use of the data for crime prevention. The best would be if they then share their knowledge with the national government, even if the national government is still what we have now.

Do you know what the national police does right now? The CICPC has a big map -the old way- and colour pins a few cops use to try to track what crimes are commited where. It is time for them to catch up with the times. Venezuela has the highest murder rate of South America and criminals are using modern technology.

The approach used by Miranda should be further considered and improved upon.

Unexpected collateral damage from Libya (in Russia)

Changing world orders sometimes can have amusing side effects.  Putin earlier today repeated the Qaddafi words assimilating the UN resolution to the Crusades.  Well, HIS president, Medvedev was not amused and said that choice of words was "unacceptable".

See, that is why in autocracies they only chose family to succeed them or share power with them.  When there is no blood link one never knows when the youngster may start speaking up!

This is going to be fun as other such "incidents" are sure to happen here and there.....

Just two toes


My country has lots of sloths. No, I am not talking about bureaucrats here (eye-rolling), but about members of the Megalonychidae family. The one you see in the first picture is a Choloepus didactylus

The one you see next is a Choloepus hoffmani. It also has two toes but it is a quite different species, it is half-blond. Other species like the Brown-throated sloths I posted two years ago have three toes.

 



Venezuela ohne Tsunamis

Venezuela hat keine Tsunamis und dennoch versinkt es immer wieder im Chaos.

Ich lese die Lokalzeitung und stelle fest, dass es am Wochenende nichts Ausserordentliches gab. Alles, was die Zeitung zu berichten hat, ist seit einigen Jahren  absoluter Alltag.  Damit Ihr wisst, was Alltag im "sozialistisch-bolivarischen" Venezuela bedeutet, stelle ich Euch einige dieser Nachrichten vor. Es handelt sich um Nachrichten aus dem Bundesstaat Carabobo. Es könnten aber Nachrichten aus vielen anderen Regionen Venezuelas sein.
Puerto Cabello

  • Der Staatskonzern Corpoelec, der im Jahre 2007 nach der Verstaatlichung mehrerer Energiefirmen gegründet wurde, meldete, dass ein Teil von Puerto Cabello schon wieder ein paar Stunden lang ohne Strom sein würde. Der Grund ist  Instandhaltung. Dies ist die Norm in Venezuela jetzt. Wir haben keine Tsunamis, wir haben seit Jahren keine nennenswerte Erdbeben. Die Verwalter der "bolivarischen" Firmen sind so inkompetent, dass man nun überall in Venezuela stundenlange Stromausfälle "wegen gewöhnlichen Instandhaltung" erdulden muss. Kürzere, völlig unerwartete Stromausfälle sind die Norm. Übrigens: die U-Bahn in Valencia muss oft einen ganzen Sonntag wegen "gewöhnlichen Instandhaltung" schliessen.
  • Ein Bus mit 30 Passagieren wurde Sonntag um 10:00 auf der Autobahn Valencia-Puerto Cabello überfallen. Die Täter waren schwer bewaffnet. Sie haben alles  geklaut: Taschen, Handys. Solche Überfälle sind wirklich so gewöhnlich wie kleine Unfälle auf der A5 in Deutschland. Meine Cousine, die kein Auto hat, hat schon mehrere solcher Taten überlebt und sie hat immer mehr Angst, wenn sie einen Bus benutzen muss.
  • 16 Menschen sind am Wochenende im Bundesstaat (2.5 Millionen Menschen) bei verschiedenen Gewalttaten ermordet worden.
 In Venezuela nichts Neues.


That Libyan double standard and other half truths

Since Amr Moussa, maybe thinking about his eventual election as next president of Egypt, went on record dissociating himself of the attacks on Qaddafi bases, you can find many articles that go as far as mentioning the double standards of the West.  Indeed, if Sarkozy is bombing Libya why is Obama not bombing Bahrain or Yemen?

Of  course, this is a specious deviation of some form of anti US sentiment, coupled interestingly inside the US with a visceral anti Obama position, with some idiotic conservative commentators complaining that Obama is going to Brazil in such time of crisis.  I mean, if in the last 10 years any US president were barred for leaving the country because of the war, Bush would have never gone to South America as he did.  But let's move beyond such petty parochial calculations.

The fact of the matter is that the situation in Libya is extremely different than the ones in Yemen and Bahrain (and Egypt, and Tunisia, and Syria and etc...).  Ignoring this, escaping to the utter simplicity of "it is not our problem" or to a somewhat more elaborate utter naivete of the "double standard" is simply bad faith, or utter ignorance, and often both.

Right now, no Arab league ruler/tyrant, has used brute force the ways Qaddafi has done in Libya.  True, repression has happened, true, foreign troops went inside Bahrain, but none of them, that we know of, has dared to use tanks or airplanes to repress dissent.  Tanks were used in Egypt but to separate pro and anti Mubarak protesters and as far as I know none fired.

We are entering a new world order, and the intervention against Libya is part of that process, a hopefully new mentality where no local despicable violence can be tolerated any longer, where the UN will learn to act faster to preserve Human Rights, where democracies will understand that it is in their interests to intervene heavily if needed because in the end it is in the interest of all of us.

Finally, for those that claim, like Chavez, that all this business it is just a matter of the West wanting to take Libya's oil, I will reply that their position is even more off base and simplistic than those brandishing double standards theories.  A large majority of Libyan oil was already going West, there was no need to go to war for that.  And if the Western countries were harboring such plans, they would have to fight among themselves for that oil other before having to face the new rising economic powers for it.  It simply cannot be done as all the Iraq trouble for the US clearly shows: no one today can control on its own a large chunk of oil supply unless it is willing to pay a hefty price, making the worth of the endeavor extremely questionable.

New times might be coming and those who cling to past paradigms of isolationism and relativist cliches are going to be in for a real surprise. 

I hope, anyway.

Para los chavistas, que sepan lo que signfica "rodilla en tierra" de verdad: recordando a Mohammed Nabbous.

Mohammed Nabbous
Pocos son los lectores chavistas que me quedan pero algunos tengo todavía.  Pues bien, aquí les mando un relato de verdad, un ejemplo de un libio que si puso rodilla en tierra para defender su libertad.  Como muchos de ustedes pretenden no leer el idioma del imperio, les doy una breve sinopsis.  Y para mis otros lectores, que se lo manden a sus conocidas focas.

Mohammed Nabbous era (porque un francotirador de Gadafi lo mató) un libio de Bengasi que se alzó contra el tirano que nunca fue electo en voto popular y que tenia 41 años mandando en ese pedazo de desierto con petroleo, sin compartir nada, robándose todo, poniendo bombas en aviones (como Posada Carriles, sea dicho de paso).

Cuando el pueblo de Cirenaica se canso de tantos abusos, Mohammed, que seguramente debía tener uno que otro conocimiento de tecnología de la información, se las arregló para montar una emisora que transmita la verdad de Bengasi, para que pueda burlar el cerco informático que imponía Gadafi.  Eso si era una emisora comunitaria, una que realmente informaba, no las vainas de propaganda que ustedes manejan.

Muchos periodistas dependieron de la información que él transmitía hasta que por fin algunos lograron llegar a Bengasi y verificar que todo era una cruel verdad.  A esa gente "si le constó" y no como a Esteban que lo único que le consta es el número de focas aplaudiendo a rabiar sus chistes malos y sus insultos palurdos.

Así que cojan ejemplo y no hagan como el 11 de abril que salieron despavoridos a esconderse en la Hummer o detrás del 18 años.  Pero sé que no aprenderán de ese ejemplo porque los Mohammed Nabbous de Venezuela ya hace mucho tiempo que abandonaron la robolución, bien fea que es ahora.

¡Ah!  si quieren mas noticias mas "oficiales" sobre este héroe de la revolución Libia, la auténtica, pueden consultar lo que quieran aquí.

PD: disculpen, pero no mencioné el original de Terry Glavin.

You can always count on the cowardice of the Arab League

So yesterday the anti Qaddafi alliance started bombing some military targets to stop Qaddafi advance, the more so that he was in violation of the UN resolution.

And guess what?


The Arab League spokesjerk comes out saying that the Arab league did not approve of the raids, that they did not want bombs, that they only wanted to protect civilians.

And how was the Arab league expecting to do that without bombing Qaddafi military targets?  Did we see Arab league soldiers land in Libya to interpose themselves between Qaddafi's mercenaries and the civilians of Benghazi?  Did we hear of concrete plans in the next couple of days of these guys to land?

Same story as always, they always manage to con the West into doing their dirty work and then they come out fast to defend their "people" from the crusaders...  and unfortunately we have no choice but to fall in their trap....

PS: note that I was not so naive as to expect effective help from the Arab League, but I am surprised at how shamelessly fast they started their flipflop.   A new record for the Guiness book of politics.

Through a glass, clearly

Chavismo reaction to the first bombs in Libya can only be interpreted as a scare of what might happen to them in a not so distant future.  I think that up to a point some must understand what is happening, in spite of years of self brain washing.  But that Chavez forged ahead a few weeks back in support of Qaddafi cannot simply be swept under the rug and something must be done.  Alas!  Instead of damage control I am afraid that they are making things worse.

The first error was to single out France when it is clear that if France was a main instigator, it certainly did not act alone even if Germany is silent.  If the foreign office of Caracas had any knowledgeable people left inside they should have known that France would never send bombers against advancing Libyan tanks if Berlin had expressly prohibited this.  The reason?  No matter what the electoral and financial reasons for Germany to abstain at the Security Council yesterday the fact of the matter is that French and German economies are today too intertwined for one to do something crazy without some form of discreet consent from the other.  In fact, from reader Lemmy Caution we learned that the Greens at the Bundestag reproached Merkel to have voted NO!  If the Greens support vocally there is no doubt that secretly Merkel supports it.  As such the sad charade of "revolutionary students" protesting tonight at the French Embassy in Caracas is, well, pathetic.  But then again Chavez had sort of given the order and they had to do it.  I suppose that now that we know that US and Britain are bombing barracks in Tripoli will mean protests in front of those embassy tomorrow?

The second error is to speak as if nothing mattered, as if it were a mere diplomatic problem, as if the Venezuelan offer of mediation had been a serious proposal.  There is nothing worse in diplomatic circles to speak against a UN resolution that is backed by all, including the Arab league.  Does anymore at Casa Amarilla has a notion on how difficult it is to obtain a strong consensus on such a matter at the Arab League?  How meaningful that was?  How it was the enough for China, the country Chavez is in love with, to abstain?  Has the foreign ministry of Venezuela read the UN resolution in full?  Did they get someone to explain to them that war crime charges were implied?  How much longer with the  "a mi no me consta"?

All in all we are seeing an haphazard response from chavismo to the Libya crisis, where several contradictory things are attempted, to defend Qaddafi the recognized war criminal, to link all to oil even though the West was already receiving most of Libyan oil, to shield Venezuela from such a future intervention. Unfortunately the only thing that the regime propaganda and declarations are succeeding at is to reveal its future intentions of repression, of never relinquishing power, of preparing idiotic excuses for such a future even though still 70% of our exported oil, I understand, goes to the US.

We see it all, clearly.

Saturday Science

Let's forget for a few moments Japan, Libya and Chavez destruction of science and education and remember what makes us humans.  For me,  science and the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake.  I will paste below the NYT editorial of today for your enjoyment.
-------------------
Mercury, the smallest one

Mission to Mercury

Late on St. Patrick’s Day, Eastern time, a spacecraft called Messenger, weighing a little more than a thousand pounds, slipped into an elliptical orbit around the planet Mercury, becoming the only manmade object to orbit the planet closest to the Sun.

Through the coming days, scientists from NASA and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory will check Messenger’s systems and begin turning on its instruments. On April 4, observations begin.

Messenger spent nearly seven years in transit and traveled about five billion miles. It will spend one Earth-year studying the mineralogy of Mercury, mapping its surface and magnetic and gravitational fields, and trying to identify the substance covering the planet’s north pole. All the while, a ceramic-fabric sunshade will be protecting Messenger from the ferocious heat of the nearby Sun and the solar reflection from Mercury. The craft will eventually plummet into the planet.

It really doesn’t matter how many space missions you’ve followed or how many Hubble photographs you’ve marveled over. There is still a sense of raw excitement about reaching a critical stage in an expedition like this, an excitement that will only grow as data begins to stream toward Earth.

Part of the thrill is knowing that this is the pure pursuit of knowledge, the scientific impulse — a human impulse — carried to a remarkable conclusion. It’s hard to know just what we will learn about Mercury. Like all scientific missions and experiments, this is a journey to a more refined sense of what we don’t yet know.

-------------------------

I do not know about you but I still can feel the excitement and emotion of the previous of Voyager missions and how I was counting the minutes for the first pictures to reach us....

Silvio Rodríguez, otro idiota mas.....

El cantautor cubano Silvio Rodríguez nos regala hoy otra perla desde la inmoralidad a la cual el castrismo (y el chavismo que lo sigue cerquita) han descendido. El tipo dice así no mas que hay que respetar las costumbres de los pueblos y que el voto de la UN ayer en contra de Gaddafi es una barbaridad.


O sea Silvio, entendiéndote bien, si unas tribus quieren matarse entre ellas no debemos intervenir.  Si mujeres son linchadas porque "es al costumbre" no debemos intervenir.   Si niños son vendidos por sexo no debemos intervenir.  Si libres pensadores cubanos son dejados en mazmorras infames no debemos intervenir porque ya se volvió una costumbre del pueblo.

La verdad es que no se si insultarte con ¡Idiota! o con ¡Infame!  Tu me dirás. Aunque se te agradece informarnos lo vil que te has vuelto.

Colombia says it found Venezuelan weapons on its territory

Oh dear! Colombia says it found an arsenal labelled Cavim, the Venezuela ammunition and weaponry agency. It is becoming repetitive, you know.... Let's see how Chavez new best friend responds to yet another find of FARC held weapons coming from Venezuelan barracks. Let's assume for a second that these were stolen: will Chavez even pretend to open an inquiry?

When hypocrisy and realism meet: the UN Security council finally votes on Libya

The mountain eventually gave birth, and if it was much bigger than a Mouse it certainly was not yet a Lion....

The Security Council finally voted to establish a no fly zone over Libya (and that delay is the mousy part of the announcement.  But on the other hand it had a rather free ranging clause to allow any UN member to do whatever it takes to protect civilians (the tiger part of the deal).  Even perhaps too late the urgency of the measure was greeted ecstatically by Benghazi as Qaddafi is about to ravage them.  Let's react quickly to the late but good news of resolution 1973:

Tonight in Benghazi.  France future reward?
- I suppose that for all of its misgivings the US must have been participating to the French and British preparations so some kind of meaningful action should take place soon, very soon maybe, as soon as within a few hours even if it is only dropping some bomb somewhere in front of the Qaddafi mercenaries on their way to Benghazi.  Otherwise, why still push such a measure?

- Even if delayed, for once things were done properly: we had to wait for an Arab League endorsement until eventually the UN voted on it.  On practical terms this means that there is no propagandistic effect that Qaddafi can claim, and even less for collateral creeps like Chavez.  As a side bonus for us in Venezuela watching a Chavez salivating at the UN delays while thinking over his possible future repression plans, any word he utters against that resolution is going to put him even faster in the ranks of rogue states, with the painful isolation that will crush his ego.  The more so that Colombia voted for the resolution, driving a likely consequential wedge in South American politics and the all but still born UNASUR as Brazil abdicated its leading role by abstaining itself.

- Speaking of abstention.  The ones of Russia and China were expected.  I am pretty sure that they tried their best to weigh on Qaddafi but realized that the man was quite mad.  They did not want to be blamed for a Benghazi blood bath and, well, if France and Britain really want to send their boys, so be it.  In other words, an experienced diplomatic game by these two countries even if quite unsavory for most of us.  Veto power is usually used with more restraint than what people think it is.

-  Which bring us to the other abstainers for which there are only sorry excuses.  For Germany, I will say that they simply did not want to pay for it, period.  They would have anyway once a million or two Libyans run for their lives across borders, but after Ireland, Greece, and perhaps Portugal, Spain and Italy, well, the mood in Berlin is for closed wallets and fuck them all (praying secretly for the best success of the guys across the Rhine of course).

- India and Brazil on the other hand have really no excuse and can actually be qualified as bitter disappointment.  After all, no one was expecting them to chip in, and both are candidates to a permanent seat in the security council.  But as far as I am concerned, everyday that goes by Brazil proves more and more that it is unfit for such an honor.  After years of supporting Chavez, the Honduras blunder, the failure to dynamize UNASUR, that vote confirms that Lula has indeed wrecked the best judgment of once sophisticated Brazilian career diplomats.  Because I am convinced that it was not really a Roussef decision: after supporting the defense of Muslim prosecuted women and she will bail out on Libya?  I wonder what happened at Planalto.  Let's be frank, from me to you, if Brazil was not going to vote YES it should have voted a more responsible NO rather than a stupid abstention that only China and Russia could manage and be praised for it!  Dear Dilma: leadership is built on leading or taking a principled stand when you cannot lead; today you did not even manage to stay out of the way!

-  As for India.  Well, I do not follow it as I used to, in pre Chavez years when I had time on my hands.  But I have a hard time to see where is India's gain in an abstention.  Pacifying extremist Hindus?  Alienating further radical Muslims?  Falling for Qaddafi promises of an exclusive for oil, as if the West would allow such an exclusivity?

-  What next?  Your guess is as good as mine.  The resolution already includes travel prohibition and Libyan assets seizures.  It mentions by name those recruiting mercenaries in the Sahel to kill Benghazi people.  Clearly there are more than bombs in the objective and the hope is that the mercenary surroundings of Qaddafi might realize that the long term is not in their favor even if they torch Benghazi.  That is, what good it is to get all that cash from the crazed tyrant if you are going to have to enjoy it in Libya under his regime of terror, knowing that most Libyan will try to slip arsenic in your tea?  The UN is on their game!  And The Hague too.   That is the real deterrent of that measure, more important than bombing the criminal troops or boosting rebels morale for which both it might be too late.  Let's see if it will work.....

PS: special praise for the unambiguous and to the point support of the resolution by Bosnia (they know, they went through that disaster), Colombia and Portugal, a decided support that makes look even more morally bankrupt certain abstentions and grudging supports.

Real news? Worth reporting?

I am talking of silly CNN and BBC making special entries for Chavez annulling Venezuelan Nuclear plant.  Please! as Miguel pointed out and I mentioned myself in some post some day, Venezuela has neither the skill, the money, the real interest to even consider a nuclear reactor when it has all the trouble in the world to run its thermal plants and make sure its dam do not empty before time. 

Here, there is an entry from the WSJ as to the future and real threat of Nuclear Energy and the entry from the BBC as to Chavez annulling "his" nuclear program.  Which is the real serious news and information and which is the facile pamphleteer note?  Even the note of the Chigüire Bipolar is more researched than the one of the BBC!!!!  Or the CNN clip I saw yesterday fore that matter. 

I am getting sick of the massive hysteria promoted by the media while nobody talks anymore about the bodies washed by the tide....  Say yes to global warming!  No to nukes!  And wait for the next Tsunami to end all Tsunamis as Antarctica melts down!

The pro Chavez "students"

My S.O. was "requested" today to join the pro Chavez "student" march, even though he is decades from his latest degree....  You know, they need to bulk it up forcing public employees to attend.....   The chavista students are really an embarrassment, they suffer from terminal lack of creativity, have absolutely, have no individual character, sound older than Mathusalem, etc, etc...  But rather than go on with a rant on how much of an embarrassment they are, I will let two Weil cartoons of Tal Cual illustrate the matter better than any rant I can come up with.


Chavista students, happy to defend that they need to defend what they are told to defend, no matter how indefensible it is by any rational mind.  But then again, chavismo seems to have lost reason long ago..





The "clock tower" is UCV symbol, the oldest university in Venezuela, and autonomous.  Now chavismo loses elections by 1 to 5 margins.  Of course the chavista minority wants the regime to take over UCV t impose its credo.   Since it will never reach it through consent, it is squeezing beyond decency its budget (all research programs are now all but closed) and it is trying to build up restlessness through its agent to justify a police/military intervention and remove its autonomy, thus appointing its president to begin with, before silencing opinions.

What part of Amnesty International report on Libya didn't the world leaders read?

Please, read here.

I wonder if Mr Westerwelle is worried now his government has to close down several nuclear reactors and some energy swap is needed.

I wonder if Russia and China are worried about new weapons contracts from Libya's very very long-time dictator.

I wonder if what issue a no-fly zone prsented when it would protect many civilians Gaddafi will murder now?

I wonder how how many years the West will wait until it also starts to sell weapons to Libya's dictator again.

Al Jazeera is still reporting. It seems German news are now 99.999% of the time focused on the -yes, very big- tragedy of Japan.

A new world order

With apologies for the cliche title but with the events that have been taking place in the last 2 months I have the suspicion that we are entering into a new world system.  It all started with the fall of Tunisia dictatorship, moved on to the Nuclear reactor explosion in Japan and made a no return point with the abandoning yesterday of Libya's rebels to the murdering hordes of Qaddafi by the G8.

The consequences of all of these events, related or not as you may wish them to be, will be a protracted reevaluation of the West values and way of life, a political event that will be at the very least in the league of the fall of the Berlin Wall in the way it will affect our future lives.  In fact, my parallel might be 1848.  You may recall that the bright revolutions of that year were crushed one by one, either through a military coup like in France in 1851, or a brutal invasion in Hungary.  We roughly had to wait for 1918 to accept that democracy was to become the norm in Europe, and thus the final victory of 1848 even as the totalitarian era had already started in 1917.

The Tunisian revolution in a way is the true end of colonialism.  The governments or regimes that succeeded the colonial powers were not necessarily democratic and were often little more of a psychologically tribal nature.  Thus, once the independence process was completed many of those regimes found ways to renew relations with the old colonial powers, or squared their fate with the new ones.  The cold war and the beginning of globalization made the independence of Africa and Asia a much different movement than it had been a century ago when the Americas made a clean break with Europe, even starting imperialisms of their own, in the US notoriously but also in Brazil and Argentina to a certain extent.

The overthrow of Zine Ben Ali was the first time truly that Tunisia expressed itself in a Tunisian context, the true will of its people.  Even if Qaddafi returns, even if the Egyptian military betray the Egyptian revolution, even if Bahrain is retaken, what has started in the Middle East can be delayed but not stopped because it has little to do with reaction to external events, and all to do with internal situations and the exhaustion of a ruling system.

And then what is arguably the most organized country in the world, the one where the cable guy tells you he will show up at 3 PM and he does, started collapsing.  I am of those who have faith that the Japanese people will recover even if their reactor ends up blowing up.  But the world economy will never be the same.

No, the nuclear will not go away, we cannot afford it, but from now on the West is going to have to reevaluate its life of comfort, from cozy winter homes where you can remain in T-shirt and shorts while a blizzard blows outside, to the refrigerator feel of too many buildings in the US South in the most scorching summer days where you need a light sweater to sit at your computer.

We need to understand all of this, that the economy recession that started in 2008 is here to stay with us for at least a few more years to try to comprehend what happened yesterday at the G8, its abdication of world management, abandoning Libya to its fate, or to Egypt if it wants it.  The two countries that caused that were Germany and Russia, as the US stood idle.

Russia because it hates not to be in the driver seat, because it cannot find ways to get back on it, because it is bombing Chechnya.

Germany is tired of bailing out Greece, tired of bailing out all sorts of European people, does not want now to bail out Italy if its Libyan business go up in flames.  Germany is today a cold old lady that has no idea how to pay for her electric nuclear and oil bill while its nephews are trying to cash in early their alleged inheritance.

And the US because it has already too many commitments and simply has no idea what do, sorely in need of a new FDR.

And thus the British and the French were left alone in supporting the Libyan rebels, everybody else preferring a murderous dictator as long as oil flows again.

It would be too harsh to judge yesterday as an act of ultimate cowardice: after all, nobody is stopping France and Britain from taking Qaddafi on their own, with the more than likely blessing of the Arab league who are more aware than anyone else that a revived Qaddafi could end up being worse for them than Al Qaeda.

What is happening is that the West is suddenly made aware of its vulnerability, that the time of decisions has come and that means for many to regroup first before we decide what to do next.  We all depend from Japan, from Middle East oil, from Nuclear energy and now we all know that we will need to make major sacrifices if we want to retain some of the perks that we have benefited from since the 60ies.  We cannot have it all, and if this has not sunk into the populace yet it is fast making headways into those that know better at the top, finally real headways.  The days of demagoguery are reaching an end, hopefully.

This end of March all is confused and we do not know whether we are in 1938 Munich or awaiting FDR coming back with a New Deal.  The political class of the West, from Left to Right, even including ecologists as the leftist fringe is and will remain a fringe unable to understand the pulsations of the moment, has in front of it the mammoth task to explain to its people that choices need to be made, that there is more to life than coming back in a hurry home to vote for American Idol.

Hard times ahead as we might be entering an era of dramatic political changes, where "eat or be eaten" will acquire new meanings, where a chilled West will have to face its responsibilities, where China, Brazil and India will need to grow up.  I offer that since 1933 this might be democracy biggest challenge, and perhaps, as in the years following 1933, some democracies might fall before a renew democratic world order intolerant of autocracies and aware that the planet has finite resources can emerge.