Killing the truth in Venezuela: the 1001 assassination attempts according to Boligarchs

Boligarchs have a long-standing tradition of announcing how the Evil Forces are trying to assassinate their main figures.

Boligarchs are beyond the law in Venezuela

Here we have an update of all the accusations since Chávez's death.

03.05.2013 Maduro accused Uribe and the "Venezuelan extreme right" of trying to kill him.

11.06.2013 Venezuelan government said it managed to stop an assassination attempt by Colombian military against Maduro. A little bit later, former vice-president and well-known Boligarch Rangel said the opposition had bought 18 war planes from the US to attack Venezuela and that they were in a Colombian military base.

24.07.2013 Boligarch Diosdado Cabello declared a new murder attempt against Maduro and himself was under way and that he, Diosdado Cabello (God Given Hair) would present a formal accusation "in due time".

27.08.2013 Venezuelan government announced there was yet a new plan against Maduro being planned in Colombia. Two Colombians arrived 13 August to try to kill him.

15.03.2014 Maduro said Obama has a plan to kill him.

28.05.2014 The government revealed another plan by the opposition to kill Maduro and other "revolutionary" leaders and topple the government.

You can find more references to all the accusations and the lack of proofs here.

The Chavista government has been illegally tapping private conversations. We know the extreme left will say "so does the NSA" but then 1) that doesn't make it more legal, 2) the Chavista government routinely uses that information to cajole people on national TV, to threaten them, to abuse them publicly. They show real and fake information they claim to have intercepted from specific opposition politicians and they make serious accusations about these persons...and these persons can do nothing for the Judiciary System is a joke.

Of course, now the general prosecutor is saying, retroactively, that the security forces have had a permission to wire-tap the opposition since March...but then the wire-tapping has been going on for years now.

Imagine the second most important guy from Obama's or Merkel's government had a special weekly programme on public TV in the USA or in Germany where he or she shows real or fabricated conversations illegally wiretapped from the opposition. Imagine said guy accuses these opposition politicians of planning a coup, of being thieves, etc. 

Imagine the Judiciary System is basically totally made up of people the executive has chosen and most of the key elements are directly connected to the ideology of the people in power.

And this, in Venezuela, is what the Carter Centre and many other useful idiots call a democracy.

Priorities of "socialist" Venezuela (corrected)

The Maduro government has approved 43 million bolívares - over 5 million euros* - to finance a soap opera that will portray Venezuela's war of Independence. Of course, we can expect the story to follow the usual myths the Venezuelan military and pseudo-historians have fed us with since that war ended.

No money for blood test but plenty of money for military soap opera crap

At the same time you will find out poor Venezuelan patients have to pay on average around €116 in stuff like blood tests and others in our "free" health system. When I was a child - before Chávez came to power - that was much less likely.

* OK, I stand corrected by 1000. It didn't make sense otherwise. Thanks to LemmyCaution.

US Congress representatives supporting Maduro's regime

Conyers

The House of Represenatives Foreign Affairs Committee passed a bill for sanctions against Chavista oligarchs. Apparently, a bunch of representatives led by John Conyers (born in 1929) is asking Obama to repel the bill.

Representatives Gregory Meeks (born in 1953) and Karen Bass (also born in 1953) are also supporting the move because they think any sanction would undermine a dialogue. There are a few others (11 in total) but I haven't been able to find the names.

Now, these three people agreed, like 99.7% of all representatives who took part on a vote, to support a motion "supporting the people of Venezuela as they protest peacefully for democratic change and calling to end the violence". What are they looking for now? Who are behind them? Not us, the opposition of Venezuela.

My question: what dialogue if Maduro has said he wants a dialogue but he won't accept negotiations? A Mugabe-style dialogue?

Meeks

Bass

Some of the Boligarchs these representatives would be protecting:

Diosdado Cabello, former coup monger and current president of National Assembly

Rafael Ramírez, oil company PDVSA mogul

What do Venezuelans do for a living? (III)

Second part was here
All data comes from the INE


Here you have a new view of how important the public versus the private sectors are in different Venezuelan regions.

As you see, eastern Delta Amacuro is basically a region of state employees. But then Delta Amacuro's weight in Venezuela can be better seen with the following chart, where you have total number of workers in the governmental and private sectors in the same regions. As you can see, Delta Amacuro's share is tiny.

Still, it is not surprising that the regime has a higher share of the vote in rural areas highly dependent on government jobs.

Venezuelas Untergang (I)

Heute 25.5.2014 gibt es Bürgermeisterwahlen in zwei Gemeinden Venezuelas: in San Diego und in San Cristobal. Die Maduro-Regierung hatte die Bürgermeister dieser Städte zu Gefängnisstraffen verurteilt, weil sie Strassenbarrikaden dort nicht aufräumen wollten. Die Bürgermeister sagten, dass sie das nicht durfen, solange Leute sich da widersetzten, dass das Aufgabe der Nationalpolizei war. Die Vorsitzende des Obersten Gerichtshofs, Gladys Gutiérrez, war aber eine andere Meinung. Frau Gutiérrez soll die wichtigste Vertreterin der venezolanischen Justiz sein, sie war aber eine frühere Kandidatin der Chávez-Partei, sie wurde von Chávez einmal zur Botschafterin Venezuelas in Spanien ernannt. Nun sitzen beide Oppositionspolitiker lange im Gefängnis und sie werden jahrelang danach nicht mehr kandidieren dürfen. Somit hat die Maduro-Regierung zwei Politiker beseitigt, die sonst für die Stelle der Gouverneure für Carabobo und Táchira aufgetreten wären.  Damit Sie eine Idee von der Militärpräsenz in Venezuela haben: in San Diego sind nun etwa 6000 Menschen aufgerufen, einen neuen Bürgermeister zu wählen. Die Maduro-Regierung hat 1300 Militärs und Polizisten entsandt, um die Wahlen dort "zu überwachen". Das passiert in Kolumbien nicht mal in den von der FARC-Guerrilla betroffenen Regionen.

Militärs und Personenkult im heutigen Venezuela: das war zwischen 1958 und 1998 nicht der Fall

Diese Botschaft geht an Teile der SPD und der Grünen in Deutschland...dies ist für  Leute wie Herr Klaus Barthel oder Hans-Christian Ströbele, denn die meisten bei der SPD und bei den Grünen wissen schon Bescheid*...und die Linksextremisten der Linken werden nie zugeben, dass Chavismus eine undemokratische Bewegung ist, die zuerst demokratisch die Macht gewinnen konnte und diese durch Wahlen aber durch immer schmutzigere Methoden sichern konnte: 

Wahlen sind zwar eine absolut notwendige aber absolut keine hinreichende Bedingung, um über Demokratie in einem Land zu sprechen. Solange es keinen Gewaltenteilung und keinen Rechtsstaat gibt, gibt es keine Demokratie. In Venezuela gibt es weder das eine noch das andere. Sie waren nie sehr stark, sie wurden wurden langsam aber sicher und absolut vollständig von den Militärs und den Chavista-Bonzen demontiert.

Diese Lokalwahlen werden sehr wahrscheinlich von der Opposition gewonnen werden. Das heisst aber nicht, dass es Demokratie in Venezuela gibt. Im 21. Jahrhundert können neue autokratische Regierungen keine Wahlen wie in Weißrussland oder Nord-Korea oder Kuba beherrschen. Diese Bürgermeister werden aber immer weniger Kompetenzen haben.

Im nächsten Post geht es um die neue Rezession und um den Anstieg der Armut trotzt anhaltenden Erdölbooms.

* Hier können Sie sehen, welche Europarlamentarier die Demokratie in Venezuela unterstützen. Es sind die Menschen, die sich wegen der massiven Menschenrechtsverletzungen in Venezuela große Sorgen machen.

The tomatindex, onionindex and chickindex in Venezuela

How many kilos of what can you buy with the minimum wage in Venezuela?

I tried to calculate the amount of items you could buy with Venezuela's minimum wage of 1998 and 2014. I looked for prices for a kilo of tomatoes, a kilo of chicken and a kilo of onion.

In 1998 you could buy 83.3 kg of chicken and now you can buy 75 with that salary.

In 1998 you could buy 125 kg of tomatoes and now you can buy 85*.

In 1998 you could buy 250 kg of onions and now you can buy 53,13.

*I have to own up for the tomato it's a tricky business: prices fluctuate a lot and I didn't have the average yearly prices, just what I could find find on a search. Only in the case of the tomato it could be you could buy less tomatoes in early 1998 than in May...but then I'm already using a moderate price for tomatoes today.

You can tell me if I made a mistake with the data I have. One thing I find weird is that onions are more expensive than chicken now.

All in all, what we can say here is that a Venezuelan worker has reached a point where he is not better off now than 15 years earlier, when Hugo Chávez was elected as president of Venezuela.

Oh, onion! Coveted onion! A chicken for an onion!

The difference is that the price of an oil barrel has gone from $12 to over $100 and Venezuelans should be a bit wealthier for that.

Sources:

http://historico.notitarde.com/1998/05/18/valencia/valencia5.html

http://www.aporrea.org/misiones/n76552.html

http://historico.notitarde.com/1998/12/27/economia/economia3.html

http://eltiempo.com.ve/venezuela/economia/gobierno-autorizo-incremento-de-38-para-el-kilo-de-pollo/27933

http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anexo:Salario_m%C3%ADnimo_en_Venezuela

Price per kg, Bs

Item                             1998              2014

Chicken	1,2	40
Tomato	0,8	50
Onion	0,4	80

Volle Kanne mit der Gehirnwäsche in Venezuela

Hier übersetze ich für Sie ein Fragment eines Büchleins, das vor kurzem zusammen mit der von der Maduro-Regierung finanzierten Zeitung Correo del Orinoco erschienen ist. Es handelt sich um eine Biographie des Militärs, Putschisten, ehemaligen Präsidenten und Sarah-Wagenknecht-Helden Hugo Chávez Frías.

Am 5.3.2013 um 16:25 wurde diese Liebe verewigt und Hugo geht in das Vaterland derjenigen, die, wie er, die Menschheit lieben und für sie kämpfen.

Dort begegnet Hugo Maisanta¹, der zusammen an der Seite von Zamora² kämpft, dort sieht er Simón Bolívar selbst, der die Flagge von Miranda³ entgegennimmt; auf dieser Seite steht Aquiles Nazoa⁴ und Alí Primera⁵, die ein Lied improvisieren; dort sind der Che, Sucre⁶und Chávez' Freund, der blonde Acosta Carles⁷. Alle sind da!

Sie stehen Schlange, um den Neuen zu empfangen und sie begleiten ihn genau zu jenem Ort, wo er einst sagte, man sollte ihn dahin bringen, wenn er wieder geboren würde (sic)."

"Gott Vater, schicke mich zum selben unvergesslichen und mit Palmen gedeckten Häuslein, zum selben Ort mit dem Lehmboden, den Lehmwänden, dem Holzbett und der Stroh- und Moosmatratze , mit dem grossen Hof voll Obstbäumen. Und eine Großmutter und eine Mutter und ein Vater voll Liebe und Geschwister und ein Bauerndorf am Rande des Flusses". Hugo ist glücklich. Die Oma flüstert ihm ins Ohr Erzählungen und Erinnerungen. Es dämmert.

Der Text lässt auf eine Mischung von katholischem Katechismus, kubanischen Santería-Legenden, venezolanischem María-Lionza-Aberglaube und marxistischem Personenkult hindeuten, die unter Verwendung halluzinogener Pilzen entstanden ist.

Dies ist was die venezolanischen Kinder jetzt für ihr Erdöl bekommen, statt Bücher, mit denen sie über Mathe, Spanisch oder Biologie lesen können.

Ich werden in zukünftigen Posts mehr über die brutale Gehirnwäsche schreiben, die jetzt in unseren armen Schulen betrieben wird.

1 Maisanta war Chávez' Urgrossvater, ein Caudillo, Mörder, Großgrundbesitzer und Gegner vom Diktator Gómez. Er wurde von Chávez zum Revolutionär hochstilisiert.

2 Ezequiel Zamora (1817-1860) war auch ein anderer Großgrundbesitzer, der in einem der venezolanischen Bürgerkriege getötet wurde und von früheren Linken als Sozialist gegen die Großgrundbesitzer umdefiniert wurde.

3 Francisco de Miranda (1750-1816) war ein Nationalheld, der auch die Flagge Venezuelas entworfen hat, von Bolívar im Jahr 1812 verraten wurde. Die meisten Venezolaner reden den Verrat Bolívars schön und sagen, es wäre ein Irrtum gewesen, dass Bolívar eigentlich Miranda für einen Verräter hielt und ihn deswegen an die Spanier übergab (!)

4 Aquiles Nazoa (1920-1976) war ein Volksdichter, nicht besonders sozialistisch aber populär, er wird aber (auch) von den Kommunisten sehr geliebt.

5 Alí Primera (1942-1985) war ein linksgerichteter Musiker, der immer wieder gegen das USA-Reich sang

6 Antonio José Sucre (1795-1830) war Militär der Unabhängigkeitskriege, Freund von Bolívar

7 Acosta 'der Blonde" Carles war ein Militär, der kurioserweise während des Caracazos gegen die Plünderer vorging und dabei von Linksextremisten getötet wurde...irgendwie mutiert er aber zu einem Linksrevoluzer

Siehe auf Englisch

Venezuelan exports to Colombia and the dialogue (updated)

Exports from Venezuela to Colombia in millions of dollars

It is not always easy to find reliable data on Venezuela's trade with the rest of the world these days. That is why I (and many others) have to use sources from the trade partners. Venezuelan government sites these days are more about obfuscation than about information.

Colombians keep nice, easily readable data. Here you can see the exports from Venezuela to Colombia since 1994. Remember: the caudillo Chávez came to power in early 1999. From 2009 to 2010 Venezuela went into recession because oil prices got to a local minimum - less than in 2004-2008 but still a lot more than in the 1990-1998 period. If the Venezuelan government hadn't kept the currency heavily over-valued and if it had been less aggressive against private producers, we would have had a good time exporting. Instead, exports haven't recovered.

We are good for the UNASUR countries in as much as we buy and don't sell.

Below you can see Colombia's imports not only from Venezuela but from Colombia's other major partners. I put it in logarithmic scale. Still, you can see how Venezuela goes from being the second country from which Colombia imported to ninth. Venezuelan producers are exporting less and less to the neighbouring country. Colombia can improve its trade balance and Venezuela depends more and more on oil exports to the "Empire" and China.

Do you think the UNASUR group will be an efficient moderator in any hypothetical dialogue between the Venezuelan opposition and the regime? Mind: the trade imbalance with Brazil is much more dramatic. More about that next week.

Imports to Colombia ($ millions), logarithmic scale. Click to get a more decent view

Verhandlungen in Venezuela: wie geht es weiter?

In Venezuela sind die Verhandlungen zwischen Regierung und Opposition suspendiert worden. Die Gründe sind klar für die Venezolaner: die Regierung Maduros will Dialog genauso wie die Regierung Mugabwes es wollte: um Zeit zu gewinnen.

Nach dem ersten Treffen, das live durch alle Fernseh- und Radiosender ausgestrahlt werden musste, waren alle Diskussionen unter geschlossenen Türen. In Wirklichkeit hätte man das erste Treffen schon durch einen Sender ausgestrahlt, dann aber auch alle anderen Treffen, denn nur wenn die Beobachter der Unasur-Gruppe und der Kirche anwesend waren, zeigte sich die Regierung bereit, überhaupt Sachen zu versprechen, wenn nicht definitiv zu erkennen. Die Unasur-Gruppe besteht eigentlich aus Vertretern von Ländern, die seit dem Ankunft von Chávez einen deutlichen Handelsbilanzüberschuss mit Venezuela haben. Da Chávez die ohnehin schwache nationale Produktion völlig geschwächt hat, ist die Abhängigkeit Venezuelas von der Erdölausfuhr grösser geworden - von 75% bis auf 96% ist sie seit 1998 gestiegen. Nur durch den Export von Erdöl in die USA und nach China kann Venezuela die Güter bezahlen, die es aus den Unasur-Staaten bezieht.

Maduro ist genauso bereit zu Gesprächen wie Mugabe im Jahr 2008 und jetzt:

Zur Zeit sitzen immer noch zwei Bürgermeister und Leopoldo López im Gefängnis und zwar wegen ihrer politischen Opposition, nicht weil sie ein Verbrechen begangen hätten.

Friedliche Demos werden angegriffen. Studenten und Journalisten werden immer wieder festgenommen. Die Polizisten und Nationalgardisten stehlen oft die Fotoapparate (sie beschlagnahmen sie nicht, sondern stehlen sie).

Die Vorsitzende des Obersten Gerichtshofes, Gladys Gutiérrez, war früher Kandidatin von Chávez für die Gouverneurstelle von Nueva Esparta und dann Botschafterin Venezuelas in Spanien. Man sagte lange, sie sei eine seiner Liebhaberinnen. Ihre Vorgängerin, Luisa Morales, sagte der Presse, die Gewaltenteilung schwäche den Staat. Praktisch alle Mitglieder des Obersten Gerichtshofes sind Puppen der Regierung. Genauso schlecht steht es mit dem Nationalen Wahlrat.

Meine Worte für die Europäer, die einen Dialog wollen: schön wäre es, es wird aber nur dann möglich sein, wenn wir die Gespräche immer öffentlich machen, denn Venezuela ist nicht die Schweiz und die Regierenden zur Zeit sind Menschen, die genauso auf Pluralismus und Gewaltenteilung pfeiffen wie Mugabe. Die Regierung Maduros, die Militärs und die Castro-Diktatur werden die Ankündigung von Verhandlungen nur benutzen, um Zeit zu gewinnen, nie aber auch nie um grundlegende Änderungen zu akzeptieren, damit das Land die erforderlichen Strukturen hat, um Demokratie zu genießen. Ich sage das noch einmal: ohne Gewaltenteilung und ohne einen fairen Wahlrat gibt es keine Demokratie in Venezuela.

Low and great expectations for health in Latin America

I produced the chart above based on the latest data from the WHO. It shows life expectancy in 1992 and 2012. Back in 1990 Cuba was still the prima dona of Latin America. As you can see now, Colombia has caught up and Chile has clearly beaten Cuba.

Countries like Peru and Bolivia are doing well. Mexico is improving more slowly and yet it has caught up with Venezuela. Peru has caught with Venezuela and, as you could see from Colombia: it really beat Venezuela in spite of not having the oil Venezuela has.

The only country in this series that is converging with Venezuela - at least until 2012 - was Argentina.

Venezuela has squandered a lot of money. Yes, life expectancy has improved, like elsewhere in the region, but it hasn't improved as it should.

Have you had any contact with a Venezuelan embassy in Europe in the last couple of years?

If so, I would like to hear from you. Have you found the information you wanted? Have you been treated well? Did you find an employee who speaks your language if that language is not Spanish? If you have a picture of any of the Venezuelan embassies or consulates in Europe, I would be thankful if you could send them to me.

I will be producing a post on Venezuelan embassies soon.

Who is Maduro's ambassador to Austria? (updated 2)

The military Alí de Jesús Uzcátegui Duque, current ambassador of Venezuela's regime to Austria, was, according to El Universal, the director of the basic school of the Military Forces in Maracay in 2002.

Uzcátegui rose to prominence because he was the one sent by Baduel to the Orchila Island that year to bring back the former coup monger and then president Chávez to Caracas. Chávez had been deposed for less than two days but Baduel and other military rethought their stance and decided to put Chávez back in office. Uzcátegui was then appointed as Director of Military Intelligence as prize for his behaviour. Baduel is a former friend of Chávez now in prison for falling out of love with Chávez and/or corruption, depending on what opinion you hear.

Uzcátegui graduated from the military academy in 1976 and he was actually in the same group with Baduel. Uzcátegui, unlike Baduel, remained loyal to the "comandante eterno". While Baduel became a maverick, Uzcátegui kept close to power.

The man was made secretary general of the National Defence Council in 2007. Just a few months later Uzcátegui was sent to Austria to become the Venezuelan ambassador. He had also been director to one of Chávez's countless foundations, the Fundación Proyecto País, between 2005 and some time before it was closed down in 2008. General Uzcátegui was married between 1979 and 2011. Mario Silva apparently mentioned him in his infamous interview with a Cuban operative in Venezuela, which was leaked last year. Mario Silva said there Uzcátegui was one of the military "they" (the Cubans?) could trust to become minister of Defence or be close to the minister of Defence.

And now he is in Austria and, according to this article, he put a school under pressure to sack a Venezuelan woman working there who had taken part in a march in Vienna for human rights in Venezuela. His embassy had apparently sent a picture of the woman in the march and asked the school to sack her because Maduro is the "legal president". Apparently, this military doesn't know in Europe you can march to demand the head of State to step down. And now Austrians know what we always knew: employees of the Venezuelan embassy in Austria -like elsewhere- take pictures of Venezuelan dissidents and use those pictures for bullying or worse.

I am still waiting for the Austrian foreign office to tell us what is really going on in Austria.

You can watch a boring speech of military Alí de Jesús Uzcátegui Duque introducing another speech by writer* Britto García, an old communist during an event in Bratislava, Slovakia. The usual mantra propagated by officialdom abroad goes like this:

• there was a coup against Chávez (true but they don't mention the military were the main responsible for that and they don't mention Chávez carried out an even bloodier coup in 1992 against a democratic government) and everyone opposing Chávez and now Maduro is a fascist
• there is now some kind of "marriage" between the civil society and the military - the unión cívico militar

* Britto's merits as a writer might be the source of dispute, I took away the quotation marks I had initially, see comments for reason

Wie die Regierung Maduros in Österreich schikanieren darf - How the government of Maduro can bully in Austria

Here you can read in German how a Venezuelan immigrant who was protesting in Austria against the Maduro government was sacked from her job as a care giver at a kindergarten because the ambassador of Maduro's government said so. Basically, this lady went to demos to protest against the regime in Venezuela, Maduro's embassy people took pictures of her, wrote to the school and got her expelled.

I wonder what the Austrian ambassador in Venezuela says now.

Ich frage mich, was der österreichische Botschafter in Venezuela nun sagt.

A great Venezuelan scientist died

Jacinto Convit García just died. He was 100 years old and yet he died prematurely. He was one of the most productive Venezuelans in the last 80 decades or so.

When I was a child my parents took me to a workshop where don Jacinto was talking in a plain fashion to the general public about the work he had been doing through the decades. I still remember that day as a very magical day, a day of meeting someone who was truly into 1) discovering how nature works and 2) helping people.

Convit got the Príncipe de Asturias Award for Science and the Légion d'Honneur for his research on leprosy and Leishmaniasis.

How many tomatoes can a Venezuelan buy?

The price of 1 kg of tomatoes in Venezuela is right now about 40 to 50 Bs. Some friends of mine could only find them at 50 and they do not live in a posh but a poor, rural area. Let's say it's "only" 40. A school teacher with 10 years of experience earns about 5385 Bs. That means that she would be able to buy 134.6 tomatoes with her whole monthly salary. 40 Bs is officially around €4.6. We know the black market is another story, but anyway: tomatoes grow in Venezuela much faster than apples in Germany and there can be several crops in one year in our sub-tropical country. This is not "winter time" or anything in Venezuela.

1 kg of tomatoes in Chile costs around 850 pesos. A teacher with the same experience as the Venezuelan I mentioned earlier would earn at least 600.000 pesos. He would be able, thus, to buy 705.8 tomatoes with his salary.

You get a feeling about how Venezuela's economy is collapsing. We used to have a higher standard of living as Chileans.

What do Venezuelans do for a living? (II)

I previously showed a couple of charts showing labour distribution according to certain work categories in different Venezuelan regions according to the Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas. One thing we should be clear about is that in Venezuela there is a particularly high percentage of irregular workers, people who more often than not live worse off than Spaniards on the dole.

I added here new data for Carabobo, my region, also very urban and connected to Caracas and the Caribbean. In the first chart you can see where legally registered workers are active in different states of Venezuela. Notice the incredibly high proportion of people working in "services" in jungle-rural Delta Amacuro. There is also a large proportion of those in rural Portuguesa. The less rural the state, the less people you see working in the category "services". What on Earth does that mean? What are they actually doing? My hypothesis: mostly they are working for state entities, secondly for some types of shops. Portuguesa has the highest share of people working in agriculture, which is not surprising for a Venezuelan, and Zulia comes next in this selection, although there are other regions I didn't include that are more agricultural than Zulia (but I use Portuguesa as a reference for them).

The higher the proportion of people working in "services" for the State, the higher the proportion of Chavistas you will find.

Now, wait until you see the next post about this topic.

Delta Amacuro

Now look at the informal sector. You can see again agriculture taking a huge share in Portuguesa. Curiously, you also see some share for agriculture in the Delta...but this time people working in more precarious conditions. I suppose most are Warao. What I am curious about is who on Earth is working in "finance and insurance" as an informal employee.

More repression in Venezuela

Yesterday seven more people were detained in the working class neighbourhood of La Isabelica, in Valencia. They are accused of organising protests there.

As others reported earlier, the Venezuelan regime detained 243 young people in Caracas, of which 18 were underage. They were rounded up and put in jail for holding protest camps in the city. The former coup monger and current minister of Interior said the National Guard had found drugs, guns and even mortars...he could have said students also had a couple of planes and tanks hiding inside their tents.

As many people report me, the officers in charge of the Guardia Nacional forces are giving speeches to their subordinates about how those who protest are "traitors of the fatherland", scum, people who want to destroy their way of living. It is no surprise Human Rights Watch has produced such a report about Venezuela.

The hearing of opposition leader Leopoldo López has been postponed again..just like that. It is incredible López is still in prison, but then that's the way the military and Cubans have to rule in Venezuela.

The US under secretary Roberta Jackobson really screwed it up when she said the Mesa de la Unidad told the US government not to hang sanctions against the regime. The opposition representative Aveledo said that wasn't true, but he wasn't clear about what the Mesa de la Unidad wants either.

The opposition should stop carrying out any discussion with the government behind closed doors. A government that is fundamentally against any pluralism will always use the process to pretend it is open to dialogue when in reality it is not.

If there is a meeting, as foreigners expect, it has always to be as a live debate where one public channel broadcasts everything to all Venezuelans. People who used violence to get to power even if Venezuela had elections, who murdered people to reach their goals as Chavistas did, can only be dealt with in a transparent way in front of everyone. Never trust them. Behind closed-door meetings are perhaps fine for discussing details of government formation in Switzerland or the Netherlands but not when dealing with former coup mongers who have a lot to lose if they ever relinquish power.

What do Venezuelans do for a living? (I)

Share of employment per economic sector and region F: formal sector, I: informal workers

"What do Venezuelans do for a living?" There is a lot we could say about this and it is quite complicated. One thing that has always been quite clear is that the country has an extreme case of the rentier model whereby an oil-exporting state has distributed for many decades oil revenues in a more or less corrupt, inefficient way. Although about 45% of the population live from what is called "informal jobs", which are mostly based on selling each other Chinese and US imports on the streets or working as illegal taxi drivers or empanada vendors, the government uses a lot of foreign apologists to tell the world Venezuela only has about 7% of unemployment, compared with 26% in Spain.

Let's start examining things a wee bit deeper. I plotted the chart above with data from the Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas (INE). Although that organisation has become more or less a propaganda tool for the current government, it still has some interesting data.

I retrieved labour-related figures for all of Venezuela plus 4 regions: 

• Portuguesa, a mostly agricultural, semi-rural state in the Venezuelan flat-lands, the Llanos.
• Miranda, a North-Central, mostly very urban state with opposition Capriles as governor, a region where half of the capital is located and most of the better-off areas
• Zulia, a huge, very varied Western state with the second largest city in the country and a strong oil sector but also some agriculture and very rural areas and
• Delta Amacuro, a mostly rural area occupied, as the name implies, by a huge delta - that of the Orinoco River, the place where the native American Warao live.

The story is: how many people work in what economy sector. The sectors used by the INE are fuzzy at most. The category "services" includes stuff as dissimilar as a public employee working as secretary for the mayor and a software engineer working for a private company. There are two columns for each region: one representing the percentage of people in the formal or legal sector and one for the informal sector.

As you can see, Portuguesa and to a certain extent Delta Amacuro have a much larger agriculture share. Miranda's share on finance is larger than the average. Zulia has the most on the energy (mainly oil) sector. Most of the people in the construction sector are working as illegal employees - without any real security.

But there are some things that are more remarkable. Take the service sector in Delta Amacuro. This might be one of the reasons why that region is one of the most pro-government there is: its population heavily depends on "services" as state employees.

Of course, the amount of workers in each state needs to be put in perspective. Here you can see totals per region, again two sets (formal and informal) for each state:

Total workers per region, sector and whether it's formal or informal

As you can see, the Delta region is a drop in the ocean of the (actually small) Venezuelan economy. But things become more interesting if you mind some other factors (to be continued)

Venezuelans and Britain: another "revolutionary" achievement

As a sign of Venezuela's involution, as from today Venezuelan tourists will require a visa to enter the United Kingdom.

For how long without a visa?

Venezuelans still can travel without a visa through the Schengen zone but, I wouldn't be surprised if that changes soon as well. Meanwhile, our Colombian and Peruvian neighbours, who needed a Schengen visa, will now be able to  travel from Portugal to Finland without it.

Thus: Colombians and Peruvians, without the incredible oil reservoirs Venezuela has, have now obtained a new level of recognition whereas Venezuelans are losing theirs even further.

*

Yesterday the dead caudillo's son-in-law and current vice-president declared the Venezuelan military can violate the constitution and take an ideological stance. The head of the Mesa de la Unidad are at a loss: they don't realise a "dialogue" with a regime of criminals is only worth pursuing if it is carried out as an open, live debate, not behind closed doors as it is now, after the first and only live encounter.

Mehr Umweltzerstörung in Venezuela: Groß-Valencia

Venezuela hat eine der strengsten Umweltgesetzgebung, die es auf der Welt gibt. Dennoch wird die Umwelt hier mit den Füßen so brutal getreten, wie kaum anderswo in Südamerika. Jetzt steht das Groß-Valencia-Gebiet vor einer sozialen Katastrophe: massive Wasserknappheit und Wasserverseuchung.

In dieser Region wohnen ungefähr zwei Millionen Menschen. Das Wasser, das diese Menschen aus den Wasserhähnen bekommen, ist seit Jahren einfach nur Dreck. Vor 15 Jahren konnten sie das Wasser immer noch trinken. Jetzt kauft jeder, der kann, Mineralwasser, um zu trinken und alle Armen versuchen, das Wasser zuerst zu kochen, bevor sie es trinken. Leider ist die Verseuchung jetzt nicht mehr organischer Natur. Das "Trinkwasser" ist voll von Chemikalien aller Art...sehr oft krebserregend. Die Chávez-Regierung hat Fehler nach Fehler gemacht und die Maduro-Regierung ist einfach eine Fortsetzung davon. 

Valenciasee: alles verseucht

• Zuerst hat die Nationalregierung den schon damals sehr verseuchten Valenciasee mit dem Wasserspeicher Pao-Cachinche in Verbindung gebracht. Der Grund war, dass der Valenciasee-Wasserspiegel immer weiter wuchs und man nicht wusste, was man mit diesem Wasser tun konnte. Der Pao-Cachinche-Speicher aber versorgte Valencia mit Wasser. Die Regierung hatte Kläranlagen in der Los Guayos-Gemeinde in Betrieb genommen aber ihre Instandhaltung vernachlässigt und ihre Erweiterung einfach ausgeschlossen. 
• Die nationale Regierung hat immer wieder mit der Kontrolle von Abwässern gepfuscht: Abwässer aller Art wurden ohne jegliche Reinigungsverfahren Richtung Valenciasee zugelassen, solange es sich um Abwässer der Comunas oder der Boligarchen handelte.
• Die nationale und regionale Regierungen haben zugelassen, dass Elendsviertel überall um den Valenciasee - vor allem in der Nähe von Valencia und Maracay - sowie um den Pao-Cachinche-Wasserspeicher entstehen und dass dort keine Wasseraufbereitungsanlagen eingesetzt werden
• Die Beamten, die die nationale Regierung für den Betrieb der Wasserkläranlagen angestellt hat, sind völlig inkompetent und können die erforderlichen Geräte und Substanzen für den Betrieb der Anlagen wegen der chaotischen Währungskontrolle und Finanzlage der Regierung nicht erwerben.

Seit einiger Zeit ist der Pao-Cachinche-Wasserspeicher so verseucht, dass die nationale Regierung einen anderen Wasserspeicher, den Dique Cachinche, im Westen Valencias, einsetzen muss, um der Region Trinkwasser zu geben. Dieser Wasserspeicher trocknet aber ab. Nur wenn die Regenzeit bald einsetzt, kann diesem dichtbesiedelten Gebiet Venezuelas eine schwere Krise erspart werden.

Carabobo, mit der Stadt Valencia und mit dem Valenciasee

Und das sah man kommen. Nur die Militärs, die Kubaner und die Boligarchen sahen das nicht ein.

Vor vier Jahren hatte ich schon etwas über das Problem im Valenciagebiet geschrieben.

The Idiots that manage Venezuela's economy

If you want to understand how thick the managers of Venezuela's economy are you just have to read a couple of statements.

Merentes, the president of the Central Bank of Venezuela, declared 14 March that Venezuela would have a GDP growth of 4% (four per cent) for the current year. The IMF stated two weeks later what this blogger said last year: Venezuela is going to enter a recession. The IMF thinks Venezuela will show a GDP of -0.5% for 2014.

Merentes said 21 April there would be a "slow growth" and high inflation.

Venezuela's economy could improve so much if we just made this chicken finance minister or head of the Central Bank

Of course, he and the rest of the regime are now blaming the slow GDP on the students and the rest of those who oppose the government. Never mind his first, very positive forecasts came right after the most virulent protests.

Back in 2012 Merentes  stated Venezuela was likely to have a GDP growth of at least 6% in 2013. In reality the GDP grew -officially- only 1.2%, which is lower than Venezuela's population growth. There were no big surprises, oil prices were just a little bit lower (around 3%) than in 2012. The Chinese loans for the election time and the massive money-printing were the main reasons why the GDP didn't drop more dramatically.

Merentes is a mathematician, but he doesn't seem to be even that. By all means he has no clue about economics. He studied in Hungary just at the time Hungary's communism was crumbling down, but he didn't seem to have learnt anything from the mess he saw there. Seriously: a poor, illiterate grandmother could have a much deeper understanding of Venezuela's micro- and macroeconomic issues than this joke of a minister-president-of-Central-Bank.

The other key men managing Venezuela's economic policies are communist Jorge Giordani, aka the Monk - read Rory Carroll's book to understand more about him - and Rodolfo Clemente Marcos, a military honcho who took part in the bloody February 1992 coup led by the caudillo Chávez.

We don't have to be seers to see what's in the offing. Venezuela will most likely get into a serious recession this year. It doesn't matter that the government will do all it can to borrow more money from the Chinese. This economic mess is taking place in the middle of the longest oil boom in our history. The regime will keep concocting new bureaucratic measures to "fight the economic war", measures that will only trammel economic development and keep promoting more corruption. The 31 ministers and over 100 vice-ministers will keep their obstreperous stance trying to explain why their mess is the opposition's and the US's fault.

Expect more repression to go along with all this.

What else do I expect?

• More rounds of negotiations with the Chinese for Q4 to get more loans to be paid in 2015-2017
• Higher electricity prices for companies in Q2
• A series of new laws to try to get more money from all kinds of fines to private companies
• New talks with the Chinese - who are getting more cautious by the day - for them to exploit gold, iron and more natural resources for some extra cash

Some time ago I tried to gauge the correlation between annual GDP and oil price difference. Of course, the relation is there but it is not quite as strong as many would suspect: the real oil price flow is highly variable due to very changeable contracts, the government has borrowed more and more money in order to make up for the sinking return for every petrodollar...still, I believe the correlation will become more apparent from now on.

In the next couple of weeks I hope to get more concrete data to produce some raw forecasts. Mind: I am no economist but the way I have seen the economists work...

The military, coups and Maduro's attention needs (updated)

Maduro announced some weeks ago three generals from the Air Forces had been detained for planning a coup. You can see the list of all generals here...it is easy to see how they might have been connected to quite a few of others out there. This is curious as the regime has been carrying out silent but clear purges since 2002. The diseased caudillo annointed virtually every higher rank official in Venezuela. And on 30 April Maduro announced he would tell Venezuelans on 2 May about a full list of people who have been detained in connection with this alleged new coup.  

The military - with that I mean mostly the officials - have largely benefitted from Chavismo. The higher they go in the ranks, the more likely you will see them involved with business deals for the import of weapons (Venezuela spends more on arms imports than Brazil), in all kinds of state projects. All of the key ministers of Maduro but one (PDVSA-energy) are military. A lot of the state governors are former coup mongers who helped Chávez during his bloody coup attempt or the coup attempt that came afterwards by Chávez's pals the same year of 1992.

Now the three main generals are

• José Daniel Machillanda Díaz, born in 1966. This guy was responsible for the import of simulation systems for Defence at his position in VEXIMCA, a business created by the military for dealing with weapons imports.
• Oswaldo Hernández Sánchez, born in 1961, was responsible for dealing with the finances for some military projects as stated in the resolution 15230 here.
• Carlos Alberto Millán Yaguaracuto, born in  1961. He was involved in a trial some years ago. He didn't have a good reputation

All three military were made general in 2010. They were active in Aragua state.

We know Madurismo and before that Chavismo have made a tradition of announcing "magnicidios", attempts to assassinate the president. No proofs have come out of this. Still, if Maduro and his thugs are telling us there are  more and more people detained within the military for allegedly concocting a coup, things can't be that good for officialdom.

And Venezuela hasn't been officially declared in recession, even if we know we are just there.

Update: and yesterday the former coupster Rodríguez Torres accused several opposition politicians and students of trying to carry out a coup. Rodríguez Torres was responsible for the murder of several people during the Chávez coup attempt of 1992. He is currently the 13th minister for Interior and Justice Venezuela has seen under Chavismo rule...that is in 15 years.

Expect more repression with the continued decay of the economy.