Cocaine and Chavismo, a Country in Decomposition

Everyone I know across Venezuela tells me the same: they are having a lot of trouble trying to make ends meet. Chicken? Onions? Beans? Meat? Flour? Hard to find and incredibly expensive for someone who earns in Venezuela's currency. We have heard for years now about the shortages in medicine supplies but now we have reached levels unheard of. We are entering hyper-inflation mode and the regime keeps talking about "economic war". Other bloggers have written a lot about this even if Chávez initiated the destruction of Venezuela's already weak economic structure, Maduro has accelerated the process. Maduro has allowed the shameless kleptocrats to prevail over all other interest groups of Chavismo. Desperation is increasing by the day. Still, most Venezuelans in Venezuela find it hard to understand things are going to get worse. When you suffer an inflation of over 150%, you haven't got much time to grasp it will keep increasing. You just try to survive yet another week.

On Friday we read of a major detained at the Colombian-Venezuelan border trying to smuggle cocaine. He had about 503 kg of cocaine in his lorry. This is nothing new but this major, Juan José Sorja Ojeda, turns out to be a permanent assistant to Hugo Chávez's father. The Chávez Family treats Barinas, their home state, as their fiefdom and there they have their haciendas, a lot of relatives have high ranking state positions. This major was a sergeant with nurse training who suddenly became a major. That is quite a jump in the Venezuelan military system.

Here you can see a picture of him next to Walter Martínez, the "star of international news" at the national - Chavista - state channel Venezolana de Televisión.

@cocando aquí está su foto para q lo conozcan! pic.twitter.com/t5EKCXzMwL

— OpositorRdikl RAV (@OpositorRdikl) February 13, 2016

Juan José was very active on Facebook and he was a very vocal supporter of Chavismo. The fact that he was caught while trafficking cocaine doesn't say anything about independence of powers but everything about lack of coordination among the different groups in power now. It also might show at least some of the low-key soldiers controlling our roads do mean business and want to do the right thing. The minister of defence, Vladimir Padrino, rushed to explain the guy was "no real military". The reasoning? "A coward, someone lacking dignity, honour, someone scorning his arms, cannot be a military". OK...so I suppose most Chavista militaries, once discovered by others in some crime, stopped being military.

Venezuelans are getting more and more isolated and neighbours do not seem to care. If you speak Spanish, you can read Krauze's article about that in El País.

Chavista justice and the drug boss who went out of line

Well, you know: Makled was a gangster who was a Chavista first but then he wanted to get into politics in Valencia, the city where he was most active. That displeased Chávez and even though Makled came fourth when running for mayor of Valencia, the regime initiated a process against him. He fled to Colombia, the US and Venezuela fought for his extradiction, Makled wanted to be extradited to the US but ended up in Venezuela. Recently his trial took place and the judge gave him 14 years.

The government was not amused. What did it do? There was a speed investigation process of the judge who saw Makled and he was just sent to the Helicoide, where criminals are detained before some speedy trials.

This is not my fight. I am just observing how gangsters fight each other.

This is about who controls the cocaine traffic through Venezuela.

Venezuelas "Revolution" für Europäer erklärt

Am Freitag wurde das Kindermädchen, das die Kinder vom venezolanischen Minister der Kommunen und früheren Außenminister Elías Jaua betreut, im Sao-Paulo-Flughafen wegen illegaler Waffeneinfuhr festgenommen. Die Frau hatte in ihrem Koffer einen .38-Revolver und die entsprechenden Patronen. Sie war zusammen mit Jauas Schwiegermutter in einem Flugzeug der staatlichen Erdölgesellschaft PDVSA nach Brasilien geflogen und man hat die Waffe bei der Flughafenkontrolle ertappt.

Sehen Sie mal, wie Jaua in diesem Bild lächelt:

Ich bin sicher, dass dieser Mann jetzt nicht so breit grinst.

Seit 1999 - also seit der Ankunft der Chavistas- ist die Mordrate in Venezuela um über 300% gestiegen. Sie ist jetzt die höchste in Südamerika und wesentlich höher als in Mexiko. Nur Honduras und Guatemala scheinen in Lateinamerika eine etwas höhere Mordrate zu haben und beide sind kleinere Länder. Die Regierungen von Chávez und Maduro haben immer wieder neue Entwaffnungsprogramme angekündigt, die immer wieder in Vergessenheit geraten. Was kann man sonst erwarten, wenn die Bonzen und ihre Leute so mit Waffen umgehen?

Jaua lässt seine Familie in einem Flugzeug der staatlichen Erdölgesellschaft fliegen und wir erfahren davon, weil das Kindermädchen mit einer unangemeldeten Waffe ertappt wird. Was kann noch falsch sein? 

Wie ich anderswo kommentierte: wenn das das Kindermädchen war, will ich mir gar nicht vorstellen, was Jauas Tennislehrer so trägt.

Am Freitag hat Maduro den Innenminister Rodríguez Torres abgesetzt. Er setzte an seine Stelle Carmen Teresa Meléndez Rivas, die bis Freitag die Verteidigungsministerin war. Ihre Stelle wird wiederum von einem anderen Militär, von Vladimir Padrino López, übernommen. Man sagt, Maduro musste Rodríguez feuern, nachdem die Polizei unter seiner Kontrolle 5 Paramilitärs, unter anderem Odreman, tötete. Odreman war dem auch ermordeten PSUV-Abgeordneten Robert Serra sehr nah.

Also: die Paras entscheiden jetzt, wer der Innenminister ist.

Rory Carroll talks about Venezuela

Here you have a nice presentation by journalist Rory Carroll about Venezuela under Chavismo.

Your Chavista mind

This is the kind of Chavista activist Maduro can count on.

If you don't read Spanish, I read it for you. 

"Historian. Proud of living in the BOLIVARIAN SOCIALIST REPUBLIC OF VENEZUELA". Revolutionary. National-socialist. Venezuelan and Chavista in mind and body".

On the back you can see Kalashnikovs and Sukhois, the kind of toys Chávez bought for over 9 billion dollars in the last few years.

Most Chavista voters are not like him but definitely there is a considerable lot and they are very dangerous.

Is Chávez dead?

Here I list the people who must have seen the caudillo since December 2012, apart from doctors and a selected group of security.

• Nicolás Maduro, president and former body-guard and bus driver
• Diosdado Cabello, military and former coup monger
• Elías Jaua, long-time sociology student and radical rioter
• Chávez's two eldest daughters
• Arreaza, Chávez's son-in-law and minister of "Innovation"

People such as Cristina Fernández, Rafael Correa, Humala and Evo Morales have been prevented from seeing the man.

So: is Chávez spending his last days in La Orchila as some people claim? Or just dying at the Military Hospital in Caracas?

Why would the Boligarcs want to keep postponing elections? Do they want to carry out something while people is wondering about the man?

Meanwhile, the minister of Justice had to own up last yet there was a new record of murders in Venezuela. He claimed there were over 16000. An NGO monitoring crime in Venezuela says the real number is above 21000. It is almost for sure Boligarcs will claim the opposition killed Chávez...which will be quite some shameless statement, specially considering the murder rate has more than tripled since 1998.

Venezuela: the Threshold

I was a child when Brezhnev died. I was fascinated by Russia and thus I used to read and listen to anything coming from the Soviet Union. I remember how I would try to read between the lines what the Soviets were saying and used to compare that to what US Americans, Russians in exile and others were saying.

Consider this:

Brezhnev was ill for years but his situation became really grim at the start of 1982. He refused to relinquished power until he died of a heart attack 10 November of the same year.

The Soviets elected Andropov right away. His term in power was very brief. He was elected on 12 November of the same year, suffered total renal failure in February of the next year and in August he had to be kept in a clinic from where he never left. The ones around Andropov had a facsimile of a signature attached to all documents that Andropov was supposed to sign. He died in February of 1983.

Chernenko came to power 11 April 1983. He was already ill, so ill people could hardly hear what he said during Andropov's funeral. Early in 1984 he had to be hospitalized for a month but kept working. Then he was so ill that his people did the same they had done with Andropov: fake his signature.

He died 10 March. Only then did the citizens of the USSR really understand how bad his situation had been.

Chavismo is hardly an ideology, even if it uses tactics and symbols of authoritarian socialism and communism. It's just petro-caudillismo with a stronger military stench as before, riding on the longest oil-price boom - I'd rather say oil price and not oil as oil price and feudal mentality are the keys to a lot of Venezuela's ills.

Chavismo is in a quagmire: what to do without Chávez? While Lenin was alive, no one and definitely not Lenin, were talking about "Leninism" in the USSR. When Stalin ruled, "Stalinism" was never a word used by the government or officially tolerated by the Soviet regime. They talked about Marxism or Marxism-Leninism. When Stalin died, "Stalinism" didn't become a good word in the Soviet Union. That was for the strictest useful idiots abroad. They kept talking about Marxism or Marxism-Leninism or simply communism. Outside the Soviet Union hippy commies did talk about all kinds of big-guy-isms. 

The Soviets had strong cults of personality, but there was at least some real structural and ideological transformation going on in the country.

In Venezuela we only got more petrodollar-driven clientelism and even less accountability than before. We got the revival of a completely irrational cult around Bolívar and the military.

Some clever Chávez oligarchs know that. And they are worried.

Is Chávez that ill?

Yesterday a French citizen accused of one of trying to carry out a "magnicidios", assassination against the president, was expelled from Venezuela. According to the regime, Frédéric Laurence Bouquet was a secret agent of the French Republic. Do they want us to believe Sarkozy was trying to kill Chávez or do they think he was a mercenary AND an agent?  In any case, the French know very little about this. Is this action part of the usual liberation of prisoners at the end of the year and not as Miguel says, part of a softening, or a change?

One of the self-styled revolution's strongmen, Diosdado Cabello, declared in another kitsch seizure that "everyday we have to be like Chávez and then we will have revolution for a long time".

And Florida-based doctor-gossip star Marquina claims Chávez has had lung thrombosis.

The question is: when will elections take place?

Presidential Cacophony and the Woes of a Nation

There are two weeks to the presidential inauguration. Do you think the military caudillo will pop up in Caracas for 10 January?

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
23	24 Maduro says he talked to Chávez	25 1) Villegas says  Chávez presents slight improvement 2) Maduro says Chávez is walking and doing excercices	26 1) Maduro repeats his message and says Chávez follows normal physiotherapy procedure 2) Cabello says constitution doesn't say where and when Chávez could take oath in front of Supreme Court if he can't make it to National Assembly	27	28	29
30	31	1	2	3	4	5 Congress inauguration New president of congress needs to be selected
6	7	8	9	10 Presidential Inauguration	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30	31	1	2
3	4	5	6	7	8	9
10	11	12	13	14	15	16
17	18	19	20	21	22	23
24	25	26	27	28

Lack of ethics goes beyond "ideologies". El País has an interesting article about how Spain's government has profited from selling weapons to the Venezuelan regime, specially anti-riot equipment. Minister Morenés is not only minister of Defence of the current conservative Partido Popular of Spain, he has also been a big fish within the Spanish weapons industry.

The only general hospital of my birth city, Valencia, is collapsing, but we are the best customer for the Spanish ailing weapons sector. Most of the money does not come from the national budget but from FONDEN, the Fund for Sustainable Development, which the Chávez government uses as personal account.

Take that, Ms Wagenknecht. I suppose you must be very proud of supporting a man like Chávez.

Chávez's big guns: between Scylla and Charybdis

Both vice-president and anointed Chávez successor Nicolás Maduro and the Machiavelian head of the National Assembly and former coup monger Diosdado Cabello are facing a conundrum: when to spill the beans and cast the die, when to say the caudillo won't make it.

Rough seas between Caracas and Havana

Our latest constitution is badly written but still most people will say it clearly states the elected president has to take oath 10 January by going to the National Assembly or by going to the Supreme Court if he couldn't go to the National Assembly. As Miguel wrote, Nicolás could very well ride on the wave of Chávez's persistent popularity, specially as Chávez declared this Sai Baba's follower to be his Petrus. But waves don't last forever, the sooner he does it, the better. Cabello, on the other hand, reckons he or someone closer to him could have a bigger chance of getting the throne if the elections were a little bit later.

Maduro was initially confident - or at least he wanted to show confidence - that Chávez would somehow appear in Venezuela 10 January. Diosdado kept repeating that date didn't matter and Chávez could be sworn any time later on. It seems Maduro has realised Chávez might not be able to go to Venezuela for that date. Now he is suggesting what I thought initially: that Chávez may just as well take his oath in the presence of the Supreme Court whenever the doctors say so. Of course: this might mean, according to Chavista fuzzy logic, that Luisa Estela, Venezuela's Judicial Star, the woman who said separation of powers is a rubbish concept, will have to take a  plane to the Caribbean's biggest island. So, following the US interpretation of the Muhammad dictum: if Chávez won't come to the National Assembly or the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court must go to Chávez. There is another date these people have to pay attention to: the municipal elections, which Tibisay Lucena, the head of the National Electoral Council, said would be 26 May.

Now, bear in mind 26 May may be seen as a suggestion. Although Tibisay Lucena publicly declared that was the date, anything can be moved if it is good for the Chavista strategy.

And yet: they are all tense. They know petrodollars get spent much faster these days, specially in the land of Grace, specially in the hands of fervent revolutionaries. They aren't sure where and when to take the next step between Havana and Caracas.

We have already had a virtual Chávez on several occasions: Venezuelan law says the president cannot pass laws anywhere else but Venezuela. And the Chávez government has created a digital signature that by some outré interpretation of the law makes him physical present in Venezuela even if he is actually abroad in some kind of Bolivarian trnsubstantiation.

Venezuela and oil disasters

The huge explosion that cost the life of at least 39 people in and around Venezuela's largest oil refinery, Amuay, is not an isolate accident. Since Chávez sacked in 2003 over 2000 PDVSA employees maintenance and security levels dropped dramatically. It doesn't matter PDVSA now has over 135% more workers than before.

March 2011 saw already an explosion in Amuay....there weren't dead back then but there were fatal casualties in that refinery in that year.

Alejandro Tarre has a good overview of the issues with regards to accidents and lack of maintenance in PDVSA since Chávez is in power.

As he says, Primero Justicia (Henrique Capriles' party) has kept track of 77 deaths related to PDVSA accidents since 2003. PDVSA's very 2011 annual report conceded it carried out only 2 out of 9 required maintenance procedures for that year.

Venezuela's refineries are a complete mess. Venezuela has to import more and more petrol than ever in spite of all the crude it has.

Of course it's not le Carré, it's Graham Greene (updated)

Read the story at Huffington Post...really.

If this happens just for the power at a Venezuelan embassy, imagine what can happen for the position of president in a caudillismo-prone feudal Venezuela.

Now read what the Nairobi newspaper The Star wrote about the issue. It contains further details for a typical Venezuelan case: a bottle of Johny Walker and a fixer.

And meanwhile, the military president Chávez is telling opposition candidate Capriles - yet again - that he  is a Nazi. In case you don't know: Capriles' maternal great-grandparents were murdered by Nazis and his grandmother hardly survived.

Still, German deputy Sahra Wagenknecht has repeatedly minimized Chavismo's anti-Semitic comments telling us Chávez's comments were taken "out of context". She considers herself an expert on the issue. I will return to that...also dealing with those "contexts".

He would have written such a story

Death at the embassy or The Dishonourable Consul?

A Venezuelan embassy employee in Nairobi, first secretary Dwight Sagaray, has just been detained, in relation with the murder of Olga Fonseca,  Venezuelan ambassador to Kenya. Fonseca had arrived on 15 July to replace Gerardo Carrillo Silva. Geraldo Carillo had been previously accused by several Kenyan employees of sexual abuse. Carrillo fled Kenya before he could be interrogated (OK, he had diplomatic immunity). According to some employees, Ms Fonseca had pressurized them to take back their accusations against the former ambassador. She was found strangled last Friday.

Nairobi, Kenya

Things are getting weirder by the day around the Bolivarian employees.

The Economist on the caudillo's council of state

Read The Economist for a good article on Venezuela's military strongman and the creation of the council of state. I very much agree with what they say.

It remains to be seen if said council does more than sing paeans to the comandante. Before 1 July we shall know.

Venezuela is one of the mid- to large-size American nations where the military have ruled the longest since independence, more so than Argentina, Chile, Colombia or Mexico

Purges in Venezuela: it starts all over again

Today the Chávez party decided to expel Briceño, the governor of Monagas, a state in the Eastern Llanos with an important lot of oil fields. Briceño is one of the many PSUV honchos who belonged before to the traditional parties. When military caudillo Chávez came to power, he decided to become a "revolutionary" and talk evil about those traditional politicians who had kept Monagas in misery - never mind he was a mayor back then.

The PSUV decided to expel Briceño now because he dared to criticise how the state oil company was dealing with the environmental catastrophe in the Guarapiche River. Briceño was particularly angry at PSUV authorities giving the go-ahead to distribute water from a dam that is still highly contaminated. He rejected specially role Diosdado Cabello played in all that. Cabello, who is now the president of the National Assembly and one of the most powerful men within the military caste, also comes from Monagas and he and his people at the PSUV probably wanted to get rid of Briceño for the next state elections.

I hope the alternative parties just keep a safe distance from all this mess. Briceño is no saint.

Selbst die Bildungsministerin schläft ein, Chávez fliegt nach Kuba

Bildungsministerin Hanson muss einschlafen, während der Militär Chávez seine letzte Rede hält. Das war während einer "Cadena", einer Ansprache, die per Gesetz von allen Radio- und Fernsehsendern übertragen werden muss. Der Caudillo fliegt morgen nach Kuba, um sich wieder operieren zu lassen. Er wird dort über fünf Tage lang bleiben, sehr wahrscheinlich viel länger. Der Vizepräsident, Jaua, erklärte heute, der Präsident ist gar nicht amtsunfähig, nie, nicht mal einen Tag lang.

The military government in Venezuela and a banana 1984

Do you remember 1984's Newspeak? That is what I thought of when I read the following tweet, written by one of Chávez's most notorious honchos, Diosdado Cabello, another military coup monger from the Llanos:

"The candidate of the Venezuelan people is Hugo Chávez. Chávez is the People, is happiness, is peace, is solidarity, is love, is socialism, is fatherland"

"El candidato del pueblo venezolano es Hugo Chávez, Chávez es Pueblo, es alegría, es paz, es solidaridad, es amor, es socialismo, es patria"

Don't you believe me? Follow @dcabellor.

Die venezolanische Regierung, Václav Havel und Kim Jong Il

Ratet mal, wen die Chavez-Bonzen verehren!

Gestern starb der tschechische Schriftsteller und Politiker Václav Havel. Er hatte öffentlich die Regierung des Militärs Chávez u.a. wegen der Festnahme des Oppositionspolitikers Oswaldo Álvarez Paz kritisiert. Die Chávez-Regierung hat nichts gesagt. Die Regierungspropagandamaschine hat den Tod zwar erwähnt, nichts aber von seiner Rolle als Dissident unter dem Sozialismus erzählt. 

Heute starb Kim Jong-il, der nordkoreanische Diktator. Die Chávez-Regierung hat prompt einen Brief veröffentlicht, wo der venezolanische Caudillo sein Bedauern über den Tod des nordkoreanischen Führers ausdrückte. Chávez hatte vor einigen Jahren den Wunsch ausgedrückt, Nordkorea besuchen zu wollen, ob einfach nur, weil er halt auch zu diesem exotischen Ziel reisen oder halt die Gringos provozieren  wollten, wissen wir nicht. Einige seiner Minister hatten schon vorher ihre Verehrung für die nordkoreanische Regierung geäussert. Der Minister für Planung, Jorge Giordani, schrieb zum Beispiel im Jahr 1997, dass sich Nordkorea durch den Sozialismus zu einer starken Volkswirtschaft entwickelt hatte. Das war kurz vor einer der grössten Hungerkatastrophen des Landes.

Nein, Venezuela ist noch keine Diktatur, genauso wenig wie Russland. In beiden Ländern kann man überall sagen, man sei in einer Diktatur. Wir wissen, dass man das in einer Diktatur gar nicht sagen darf. In Venezuela darf man immer noch sagen, Chávez sei autoritär. Venezuela ist also keine Diktatur. Es ist nur ein von einem lächelnden Autokrat geleiteter Zirkus, ohne Rechtsstaat.

Chávez-Anhänger und der Universitätsbrand

Chávez-Anhänger können, soviel sie wollen, die öffentlichen Universitäten nicht unter ihrer Kontrolle bringen. Die Studenten wollen sie nicht. Und so verlor der Chavismus - schon wieder- die neusten Wahlen für den Studentenrat der Universidad Central de Venezuela. Der Kandidat der Regierung, Kevin Ávila, hat nur 500 Stimmen bekommen, während die anderen drei Kandidaten etwa 7700 Stimmen erzielt haben.

Wie haben die Chávez-Anhänger dann reagiert? Sie sind auf ihren Motorädern in die Universität eingedrungen, sie haben die Studenten angegriffen, die Stimmanlagen zerstört und den Eingang der Aula Magna in Brand gesteckt.

Ihr könnt damit rechnen, dass die Chávez-Anhänger weiterhin diese Einstellung haben werden.

Mehr Infos auf Englisch hier

Carlos the Jackal is no terrorist, Chávez honcho says

Carlos Escarrá, Venezuela's current Solicitor General and well-known Chávez honcho, has just declared terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, a.k.a. Carlos the Jackal, is not a terrorist but a person who fought for his ideals and for people's rights, specially that of Palestinians. Well, I assure you: Palestine can do without such "fighters". In reality Ramírez got quite a lot of money for working as a professional assasin.

Escarrá says

This is Venezuela' Solicitor General, for Goodness sake!

this man "fought for his ideals"