Carter Center and Chávez's latest tricks

I asked the Carter Centre to answer about the trick with the ballot, among other things. I haven't got an answer yet but I will keep you posted.

The murder of Venezuelan citizens and the Chávez regime

Every week, several hundred Venezuelans get murdered. Venezuela's murder rate has gone from 19 x 100 000 inhabitants in 1998 to over 65 x 100 000 today. The minister of Interior doesn't give a press conference every time two people get murdered. But yesterday the ones who were murdered were clearly killed when Chávez employees shot them during a political rally. The Chávez government  decided to minimize the incident at all costs. You can hear in the clip how minister El Aissami talks to the national Chávez TV for several minutes to say basically as little as possible and pretend the government cares: he said two people died in some incident between Barina and Barinitas and that the police was investigating.

Some people say this is one of the killers 

Why doesn't he do the same thing for the 17000 to 19000 other people who get murdered in Venezuela every year? Because he only did this as preventive measure. The government does not want to mention those who got murdered were peaceful opposition people and those who murdered them were Chávez employees.

Chávez followers murder 2 opposition politicians | Chávez-Anhänger bringen Oppositionellen um

During a political rally in Barinas state, Chávez officials blocked the road through which opposition people were going to pass. Two of the opposition leaders got out of their vehicles and asked the Chávez people - state employees - to let them through. The others shot them.

The current national government will probably say there was a provocation.

In Barinas, Gewalt gegen Demokraten

Während eines politischen Aktion im Bundesstaat Barinas sperrten Chávez-Beamte die Strasse, durch die die Oppositionellen passieren wollten. Zwei der Oppositionellen stiegen aus ihren Autos ab und forderten die Chávez-Anhänger auf, sie fahren zu lassen. Die anderen schossen sie tot.

Die gegenwärtige Nationalregierung wird wahrscheinlich sagen, dass es eine Provokation gab.

How is Chávez's military government using state resources for the elections?

How is the Chávez goverment using state money to try to get re-elected? In a thousand ways or more. But one I am hearing about now - and not for the first time - is by using PDVSA vehicles for mobilizing their voters for election time.

If you happen to be in Venezuela right now, you can go to the area I show below. There, you will see one of the main petrol distribution centres in Carabobo state. And there you will see right now several hundred vehicles waiting to be distributed across the region so that state employees can drive them around to get their (multiple?) voters to vote for the caudillo.

They did that already in 2010. Now the vehicles - paid with our money - are waiting there again.


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Chávez, Putin's puppet, and other stories

Chávez, Russia's puppet: a bad joke?

The president of the oil company Rofnet's, Deputy Prime Minister of Russia and former KGB agent Igor Sechin, gave Venezuela's military strongman Hugo Chávez a present from former KGB agent and current president of Russia, Vladimir Putin. The present is a puppet. What else did you expect?

Chávez must be very excited

Sechin said he came for a new project to building houses at the Fuerte Tiuna - it seems like that little area is the source for a thousand projects for foreigners to build houses in the country - and, last but not least, to invest in the Carabobo 2 oil fields. He also mentioned Russians could invest 20 billion dollars for 40 years cooperation in Junin 6. Right.

Rotten Food for Dollars

Meanwhile, an opposition deputy from central Carabobo, Neidy Rosal, reports there are 179 thousand tons of grain in 30 ships waiting to be disembarked in the haven of Puerto Cabello. A large part of that load will become rotten...and a lot of people involved in importing will get huge amounts of subsidized dollars for that cargo...which will allow them to have huge profits for stale food Venezuelans won't eat. This is still the Pudreval affair that goes on and on in Venezuela but it has become just recurrent news at a local newspaper. I am still not sure how much of the whole thing (the port's collapse, the rotten cargo) has to do with sheer incompetence from the port's functionaries and how much utter corruption from different groups.

Fatherland or electricity

Finally, the caudillo said in one of his latest speeches that what is at stake in Venezuela now is not whether we will keep having the power failures that plague the country in the last years or not...what is at stake is "the Fatherland". You bet.

Venezuela and the military caste (II)

Venezuela, still under the rule of the military caste

You know Venezuela is far, far away from being a democracy when you have to see that the military caste plays such a role in the election process: today the guys with the boots and the guns declared in a press conference that the different political players had told them they would respect the army and accept the results that the National Electoral Council announces.

In Venezuela election day looks like this: every voting centre has armed soldiers who regulate how many people can enter at what time to cast their votes.

Does the British or the German army have to do this kind of thing? No.

Still, for interesting developments, look at what Francisco announces here and Miguel here.

Holy cachapa! This was Venezuela in 1982-83!

If you speak Spanish and you know Venezuela you will recognise a few or all of the names.
Oh, dear!

Benzin, um darin zu baden

Viel billiger als Mineralwasser: Benzin

Die SDZ schreibt über Benzin in Venezuela. Der Artikel ist gut, allerdings etwas ungenau. Da wird zum Beispiel gesagt, dass schon lange kein Präsident sich mehr getraut hat, den Benzinpreis zu erhöhen. Das ist nicht ganz korrekt: Rafael Caldera hat die Benzinpreise im Jahr 1996 erhöht und nach Caldera haben wir nur einen Präsidenten gehabt: den ehemaligen Putschist Hugo Chávez. 

Chávez ist derjenige, der keine Cojones hat und zwar weil er weiss, dass einer der Treibfaktoren der Gewalttagen beim Caracazos die Benzinpreisserhöhung unter Carlos Andrés Pérez 1989 war. Damals haben die Linksextremisten die ohne Vorbereitungen angemeldeten Sparmassnahmen von Pérez ausgenutzt, um eine Konfrontation mit den angriffslustigen Militärs und Polizisten zu suchen und Plünderungen zu provozieren.

Meine Stadt hat über 1.2 Millionen Menschen. Sie hat nur eine richtige öffentliche Bibliothek und die ist so gross, wie die Bibliothek eines kleinen Dorfes in Andalusien. Das Geld, das zur Zeit für die Subvention von Benzin ausgegeben wird und vor allem den Besserverdiennden dient, könnte für tausend Bibliotheken eingesetzt werden. Die Venezolaner haben aber andere Prioritäten.

Carter, Carter, Carter, give up!

Ceaușescu and Carter

Shah and Carter

Chávez and Carter

Hm...was auf Deutsch verpasst

Die Schweizer hatten vor 20 Tagen dies geschrieben. Es war schon ein guter Überblick...nur war das Feuer in der Rafinerie von El Palito noch nicht ausgebrochen.

Hier brennt's

From Palestine, with love

I like Amos Oz's writings a lot. And his words here.

Oil tanks, thunder and explosions: Is it something in the air?

PDVSA now not only red-red but more often than not on fire

Two tanks at the huge El Palito refinary were burning last night. According to Ramírez, head of the state oil company PDVSA and Minister "of the Popular Power for Energy", a thunderstorm was the culprit:  lightning strokes hit two oil tanks and that was it.

A couple of years ago we heard about a huge fire after lightning stroke the Venezuelan refinery in Bonaire. There have been other minor incidents when we hear it was lightning again (when it is not an iguana or some other South American animal).

A friend in Bonaire told me back then people in that island were saying PDVSA Bonaire didn't have the proper equipment like lightning rods to prevent these accidents from happening. When the fire broke, it didn't even have the required foam and other equipment to extinguish the fire and the Dutch authorities had to help.

What is the truth about these lightning accidents in Venezuela's refineries? Do you know? Is this just bad luck or more of the bad maintenance issues that have plagued Venezuela's oil industry since 2003?

Der Untergang?

Chávez hatte vor, in Los Teques zu erscheinen, war aber nicht da. Stattdessen kam sein Vizepräsident, Elías Jaua. Gestern wollte er in der Küstenstadt Catia auftreten und eine Rede halten, er war aber nur kurz dort. Ich bin nicht sicher, dass das, was Aussenminister Maduro sagt, das entspricht, was man als Untertitel zeigt. Die Sache läuft aber anscheinend nicht so gut für die Militärs und die Boliburgueses. Daniel Duquenal hat interessante Kommentare zu den letzten Wochen des Wahlkampfes. Ich bin vorsichtiger, aber irgendwie werde ich langsam optimistischer.

Ah...ich hatte es fast vergessen: der Llanosführer hat seit fast eine Woche keine Tweets mehr geschickt.

 

Murder in Venezuela versus the rest of America

If we do the maths, unlike El Universal, which just quoted the absolute numbers from an OAS report, we can see how Venezuela under Chávez compares with the rest of America when it comes to violent crime.  So: we take the population of all our hemisphere, the total number of murdered people and compare that  to the most reliable information we have about our country. Admittedly, that is not easy as the Chávez government refuses to send detailed information about the mess it has put Venezuela in. 

Things are not rosy for the inhabitants of the Land of Grace. A Venezuelan citizen has almost 5 times more chances of getting murdered than the average citizen of the American Hemisphere, from Canada to Chile.

In some countries the murder rate is much lower - take Canada or Chile - and in others it is high but still  lower than in Venezuela - take almost all the rest, including Mexico and Colombia. Only a couple of small countries have murder rates worse than Venezuela's under Chávez. Those countries are Honduras, Guatemala and Jamaica.

Venezuela's murder rate has tripled since the Llanos caudillo is in power.

Venezuela exportiert gute Ärzte

Eine gefährliche Entwicklung zeichnet sich in Venezuela: in den letzten fünf Jahren haben 12300 Ärzte aufgehört, für das öffentliche Gesundheitssystem zu arbeiten. Über die Hälfte von ihnen, 7000, sind ausgewandert. Wenn man bedenkt, dass Venezuela, wie Norwegen, den längsten Erdölboom der Geschichte erlebt, scheint die Sache paradox zu sein. Wenn man aber die Zustände der öffentlichen Krankenhäuser, die Politik von Spaltung und politisches Mobbing der Chávez-Regierung und die extrem hohe Mordrate des Landes berücksichtigt, sieht man ein, dass diese Entwicklung die logische Folge der Militärregierung Chávez ist.

Bye, Bye, Krankenhaus, ins Ausland

Ein Arzt mit 35 Jahren Erfahrung verdient ungefähr 6000 VEF im Monat, was offiziell € 1105  entspricht, auf dem Schwarzmarkt aber viel weniger ist. In Caracas oder Valencia kostet die Miete einer kleinen Wohnung mehr als in Berlin oder Köln.

Ich werde später mehr darüber berichten.

Fat Chance

Journalist Bodzin has an interesting article about how obesity is taking over Latin America.

There have been some reports about this before. We heard and read about this already 8 years ago about such places as South Africa.

Already in May of this year I could read an article in El Universal telling us Venezuelans are yet again climbing another of those negative rankings and went from being the 6th most obese on Earth to being Nr 5.

Causes are complex. In Venezuela we have the added factor of criminality: the average citizen in Venezuela has over 40 more chances of getting murdered than in Chile and usually he gets murdered when he is on the streets.

The last times I have been in Venezuela I was surprised to see so many obese people there were now. It was not surprising but rather ironic to see so many ads about light beer, Coke, butter, you name it. I would eat with friends and I could see how their appetite was out of control and they hadn't noticed it at all. We would for instance be out eating some cachapas and I would see the cheese slices in those cachapas were three times thicker than I knew them...and my friends and relatives didn't even notice that. They also didn't miss the salads and healthy sauces I used to get before.

So: apart from new stress, less time, less spaces for doing sports, we have the issue of oblivions: we forget what our habits and culinary traditions were. 

In Venezuela those who can afford it often take the easy but dangerous and unsustainable way: go for surgery.

Obesity will cost us a fortune in the middle to long term. 

Do you think a government or the media will do anything about that?

American role models and lunacies

One of the problems in Spanish American political systems is the strong presidential system, a system that does not favour debate. Debate's main purpose in politics is to promote the flow of ideas and the open, fair competition between different views. This is hardly possible when you use ads and speeches that are basically preaches to the choir and monologues to the Nation.

Unfortunately, our main big neighbour to the North, the United States of America, has what is basically a two-party system, where debates between big national leaders is mostly limited to presidential candidates at election time. Canada? Thanks, very much.

I just read a new action film actor is promoting Romney's candidacy: Chuck Norris. So now it's not just the "Make-my-day" man but a martial arts hero. I immediately went to youtube to look for this ad. I didn't find it on my search right away, but I found found something else an interview with him that Fox News made last year.

One of the things that called my attention was how Mr Norris says Obama wants a One World Government. I immediately recognised that crap because I remembered some of the brochures evangelical fundamentalists

from the States used to distribute in Venezuela when I was a child...they still do. In one of those brochures they portray how the end of the world would come. It was something only a very obtuse person who didn't have much idea about the rest of the world could come up with. I was a child back then, but as I was already at least a bit acquainted with the Bible and also had a little bit of idea about "foreign countries" - mostly from reading-, I found the whole thing particularly bananas. The United Nations was part of the One World Government...which was going to be led by the Antichrist. The European Union, back in those days, had 12 member states...so the Baptist evangelicals who designed that brochure came up with the idea of suggesting those stars from the EU represented the stars on the crown worn by the Woman of the Apocalypse. And from this stuff is that Norris is coming from...and that is also why he says Obama is turning the USA into a socialist nation.

More widespread than you think

I checked out further on the Net and saw that Norris is a staunch creationist.

This is really creepy...these are the people representing a large segment of the population in the nation that is still the First Superpower. I am no Obama fan, but if this is what the other half has to offer...

I think the Chinese must be happy with these developments. Or, as the Flemish say, the gringos are goed bezig...or as we say in American Spanish, "no tienen oficio". Oh, boy, this is not the country where Thomas Edison and Richard Feynman grew up. Surely, there are some potential Edisons and Feynmans out there...and they usually dislike politics...but somehow too many people are preferring as role models the Chuck Norris and Clint Eastwoods of this world.

Thorny head, joyful colour

There are over 30 known species of Melocactus. They all are endemic to subtropical and tropical America. One of the most striking features of this genus is the colourful cephalium (from Latin and Greek for head) on top. An on that wee, thorny head, a beautiful flower grows.

This is one close shot from Margarita:

Yanomami land, 2008, 20012

Please, watch this documentary made in 2008.

I have been to a couple of those places myself several years ago and it was bad. It breaks my heart to hear from my friends things are getting much worse, specially on the Venezuelan side.

Somehow it strongly reminds me of some parts about the Amazonia on Vargas Llosa's book The  Dream of the Celt. But while the exploiters of natural rubber killed mostly people, the gold miners with their mercury and other substances are killing people and destroying on a more permanent basis the environment, which brings more death to humans and the rest of nature on a very long run.