Venezuelans in Europe
























Readers of this blog come from many countries, but most are Europeans and North Americans. Still, the most represented nationality is Venezuelan. A little bit less than 1/3 of all readers are from Venezuela.

Last month I carried out a poll to find out in what countries Venezuelan readers of this blog living in Europe are located. Results can be seen above. The vast majority are in Germany. There is one in a Western European country and two in Eastern European countries I did not list (shame on me). I assume there are a couple Venezuelan lurkers in Europe as well, but the proportion must be like that.

The distribution is different from the usual distribution of Venezuelans in Europe or Venezuelan "voters" in Europe -I write "voters" because the Venezuelan regime simply does not publish results of votes abroad-. This different distribution is normal as I write here mostly in Venezuelan English or Venezuelan German.









Venezuelans registered to vote in Venezuelan embassies in Europe (2008) o gente a la que el gobierno venezolano no le para bola en las elecciones









Tomorrow I would like to start a poll to find out a bit more about Europeans readers who are living right now in Venezuela. Please, if you are one, take part in the new poll. By European I mean someone who was born in Europe and did not eat arepas until his/her 4th birthday or later. If you were born in Venezuela, I count you as a Venezuelan and not as an European even if your parents are European and you are European and you don't eat arepas. You know what I mean: jus soli.

42 readers answered they can read posts in Spanish. They make up 67% of the readership. 30 (48%) said they can read posts in German. 9% do not reader in Spanish or German. Thus: I will continue writing mostly in English, but I will also write in German as so few people in German about Venezuela. Some of my links will be to Spanish sites. I write less frequently posts in Spanish in a blog that has a more "Venezuelan for Venezuelan" view.

Thanks for your visits!

Peace for Latin America?


Updated




total arms exports in millions of dollars worldwide


I don't know who would be against peace and real integration in Latin America, but I have a hunch about who is profiting from tensions between Latin American countries and who is profiting from Latin Americans spending billions and billions in weapons instead of books, schools and medicine.

Blogger Miguel (the Devil's Excrement) published some time ago an interesting post with a letter by Nobel prize winner Oscar Arias to the Uruguayan president proposing him to dismantle the army as Costa Rica did many years ago. Like Miguel, I also think our Latin American countries don't need armies: a very efficient, well educated security force as in Costa Rica or Iceland would do. Armies have just generated dictators and profits for the weapons industry.

The first picture shows the main arms exporting countries and the approximate amounts in billions of dollars.




Weapons as percentage of total exports


The second picture shows the percentage the weapons industry has in the total exports of each of those countries that sell the most weapons. The percentages I came up with seem like just a little but a percentage less or more does mean a lot for most countries, specially if they depend more on exports. Let's be clear: we will unfortunately stll need weapons, but we could save many billions if we started to get rid of our milicos.

Latin Americans have to think about this and they have to think about this very very very loud.




El País writes about how Spain's arms industry is having a wonderful year in spite of the recession. Among other things, Spain sold to Venezuela almost one million euros in anti-riot equipment (students, you know what you are going to get: made in Spain) and the Spanish government authorized the sale of 7 ships for the Venezuelan army for 925 million euros.
Once Chávez is gone expect US and Israeli arms companies as well as those of the other companies showns here to queue up to sell toys for our military, toys I doubt we need so much.

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