Chavismo, xenophobia and the world

Former coup monger Diosdado Cabello, current president of the National Assembly and one of the key Chavista strongmen, announced today the state of emergency has been extended to further municipalities of Táchira, the most densely populated Venezuelan state bordering Colombia. He said the border could be also closed along the states of Zulia and Apure. On the side: Cabello's brother is minister of Industry and Cabello's wife is minister of Tourism. His daughter often appears in flashy videos sponsored by the government singing for the "revolution" and the late caudillo Chávez.

The ombudsman of the people, Tarek William Saab, a man who is supposed to represent all Venezuelans but who is best known for writing poems to Chávez, said Colombia should ask the world to pay homage to Venezuela because Venezuela has accepted six million Colombian immigrants. He was referring to the millions of Colombians who have arrived to my country not just since Chavismo is in power but for many decades now. We don't really know how many they are as the Venezuelan registries are an absolute mess.

Imagine some big public official in Germany or the USA - not Trump but someone already elected- would say the same thing about Turkey or Mexico.

Tarek

Polish newspaper Wyborcza, Ms Sapiezynska and Venezuela (updated 2)

Last month I was in Poland and I asked a couple of friends there to recommend a newspaper on the "liberal side". They both mentioned Gazeta Wiborcza, which is a newspaper that usually partners with the Guardian. My Polish is still basic, but I want to improve it and one of the ways of doing that is by reading as much as possible. 

One day on a trip to the Tatras I had some time and decided to read a bit during a dinner. There was a very interesting article about Pasternak, a victim of communism. Then I found a couple of other articles about economic matters. Interesting. Before I continue I have to say it seems, all in all, like a good newspaper. Then I came across an article about the populist politician Pawel Kukiz written by a certain Ewa Sapiezynska. That's when I almost chocked on my until then delicious borsch. I re-read it thinking I hadn't got it right. I checked with GoogleTranslate. It still said what I thought was nonsense. I checked with my Polish friends: it was nonsense.

Ms Sapiezynska studied sociology and spent some time in Chile and a few months in Venezuela. She currently works as researcher at a lesser known private university in Warsaw and she is, apparently, one of those in Poland who still defend the Chavista regime.

I knew little about Kukiz. Basically, what I knew was what my friends had told me and what I had read in such publications as Spiegel, the Guardian and The Economist. All in all the guy doesn't leave any positive impression on me: he is a disgusting populist, has conservative, extremist view, etc. This post is not about him, though. It is about Chávez and the way Sapiezynska tries to say Chávez was the good populist. Basically Sapiezynska says Chávez might be a populist, but a good one, while Kukiz is a bad one.

I leave it to others to discuss about who this Kukiz character is. I still hardly know about Poland, even if it seems my very superficial knowledge about that country is better than the idea Ms Sapiezynska has about my country.

Here you read my comments on what she wrote in Wyborcza and what she wrote in Al Jazeera.

Sapiezynska said Chávez came from a poor family. In reality his family was lower middle class, like mine. Chávez used to say - this is not reported by her but many other foreign 'believers' bought into that- his family was so poor he had to go barefooted. That was simply bullshit. At that time two teachers could afford to buy shoes for their children and much more. I know: my parents were teachers as well. In fact: the purchasing power of a teacher back then was higher than now. And Chávez's family had quite some land that came from one ancestors of his, Maisanta, who was a competing warlord to dictator Gómez but who was turned into a revolutionary by Chávez's take on history.

Education didn't become free with Chavismo. In fact: a lot of Chavista honchos not only went to university for free during the so-called "IV Republic". They even got scholarships to study abroad, like the husband of the Infanta María Gabriela Chávez, who studied foreign relations abroad with a scholarship introduced in the government Chávez tried to topple.

This Polish sociologist claims Chávez was born "with the wrong skin colour" and in spite of the racial component, he managed to become an official. That is also rubbish. There was and there is racism in Venezuela and yet the situation is much better than in countries such as Poland. There were governors and presidents of the Central Bank that were as or darker than Chávez. The reason is simple: the vast majority of Venezuelans are incredibly mixed. I know that. My family is.

She doesn't go into details about what really happened in Venezuela in 1989 and 1992. In reality the "neo-liberal reforms" Carlos Andrés Pérez announced in 1989 were hardly implemented as the government became largely paralyzed firstly by the violence than ensued that announcement, the violence called El Caracazo, and by the legal actions against Pérez because of corruption. Some claim up to 3000 people were murdered during those days. Still, until now there is no list of missing people, even if the violence took place in the most urban centres of Venezuela. Until now only about 270 deaths have been accounted for. Why has Chavismo not been interested in an independent investigation about those events? Because military honchos close to Chávez were as much involved in the crimes against innocent people as what they later called "the right". Because even some of the military honchos who got power when Chávez arrived had relatives who were actually killed by the extreme left fighting the military in their usual cat-and-mouse games in the eighties.

Ms Sapiezynska doesn't say right-winged dictator Pérez Jiménez, a man who got hundreds of social democrats, communists and other people in prison camps, who got them tortured and sometimes jailed, was a model for Chávez and that Chávez repeatedly mentioned his admiration for that guy and how superior he was over the democracy that came after him and preceded Chávez.

Ms Sapiezynska is probably under 30 but she should have known about the shortage economist at the end of the socialist regime in Poland (probably she would call it "state capitalism"). Venezuela's shortage economy precedes Maduro: it started to appear when Chávez instituted massive price controls, introduced a currency control that helped increase corruption and let the Central Bank print money to win every possible election.

Sapiezynska quotes two very well-known Chavista apologists other people from the extreme left quote as "independent analysts": Mark Weisbrot and George Cicariello-Maher. They are as independent as the current ambassador of Venezuela to Cuba.

She writes in Al Jazeera that Venezuela had a stable economy when Venezuelans had been queuing up for many years to buy milk and chicken, flour and sugar. She doesn't not mention Venezuela has the highest inflation in the Western hemisphere and she does not mention the government of Chávez let M2 grow as you would not see in any single normal country. 

This is how the Chávez regime printed money

Sapiezynska doesn't mention that although Venezuela has been highly dependent on oil for over 70 years, the  dependency now is much higher, even if we didn't take into account the oil price development in the past 15 years. In 1998 oil made up 70% of Venezuela's exports. Now the percentage is more than 96%. Back in 1998 Venezuela exported - in total - more non-oil related goods than now.

This sociologist does not explain how the "empresarios" (it seems she wants the word to take the same sense as "politicos" in English) managed to take money out of the country and create chaos. Actually, she probably doesn't have a clue about how Chavismo has created the most corrupt system Venezuela has had by maintaining the different currency systems that enable shameless arbitrage.

She may not understand the fact the government keeps giving petrol almost for free does not have to do with any social measure, as subsidized public transport could be introduced, but on the fact the military  is the main beneficiary of the smuggling that ensues. If Venezuela's petrol prices were raised to a fraction of the average price you see in South America as a whole, the government would have several times more money to spend on education or health...but the military wouldn't be able to make the profits it make now. It goes the same for a lot of other products.

At the end of the day, though, the purchasing power of a Venezuelan is nowadays lower than that of a Colombian or a Brazilian. Cars in Venezuela are now several times more expensive than in Germany but petrol is for free...and vegetables that grow optimally in Venezuela are cheaper in Western Europe. This is not caused by greedy "empresarios" but by policies of people who are sometimes just complete incompetent military or pseudo-revolutionaries and sometimes complete criminals with huge fortunes based on the arbitration produced by price controls and import benefits to friends of the government.

Sapiezynska doesn't mention at all the murder rate in Venezuela more than tripled since the military caudillo got elected in 1998. If she did, she would probably say, like notorious Ramonet, from Le Monde Diplomatique, that it is a plan by the CIA (Ramonet wrote years ago two full pages in that rag to explain why the increase in crime during Chávez's tenure was caused by the CIA and what he called the extreme right, which is anyone opposing Chavismo...he didn't provide a single proof in those huge two pages).

Sapiezynska does not tell people that the so-called achievements of the regime lag far behind those of a lot of Latin American states.

She claims Chavismo reduced poverty by 50% since 1998 but she doesn't say that data is already old, that that reduction was only possible because international oil prices rose not by 50%, not by 100% but by more than 500% and that poverty has been increasing for many years now. Even if the Central Bank and the INE are hiding most of the recent data, poverty figures are probably back to what they were in 1998. How do you know that? You just have do do the maths and compare the purchasing power back then and now. On top of that, Sapiezynska doesn't tell the readers poverty reduction has been more effective in many of the Latin American countries with governments that belong to bad "team" (in her Manichean world). If she cared, she could check out the data from ECLAC or the World Bank: the less developed countries of South America have overtaken Venezuela in poverty reduction already before oil prices started to drop (and they still haven't reached by far the levels they were before Chávez came to power, even if you take into account inflation).

She claims Chavismo has done something for education when we know that claim is bogus: Venezuela didn't eradicate illiteracy as I wrote already here. There was never an independent United Nations' study about illiteracy in Venezuela. In fact, Chavismo took Venezuela away from international academic tests on education quality. As I reported earlier (in German here, with some links in English), Chavismo even tried to sabotage the efforts carried out by the regional government of Capriles to let the few schools it had under its administration to take part in the PISA programme. If some journalist has any doubt about this, she can get in touch with me.

Life expectancy: Mexico got to Venezuelan levels, Colombia and Peru overtook it since Chavismo is in power

Sapiezynska won't tell you about how the current head of the Supreme Court was a friend of Chávez and a former candidate for the position of governor of Nueva Esparta for the Chávez party. She won't tell you the previous head of the Supreme Court - during Chávez's time - publicly declared that the division of powers was bad for the State (and thus not welcome).

She doesn't say anything about the incredible nepotism under Chávez or Maduro. Nepotism nowadays is even worse than during the Monaga times of the XIX century. The head of the Republic's Treasury is Maduro's nephew. Several dozen relatives of Maduro and his wife are employed by them at the National Assembly.

She won't tell you about how the former military coupster Diosdado Cabello, the second in command and a coup monger like Chávez, uses illegally wiretapped recordings of the opposition to threaten them on public TV. She won't tell you Cabello's wife is minister of tourism and his brother is the minister of Industry.

Above all, she won't tell you about how oil prices evolved during the eighties and the nineties.

I suppose this sociologist prefers not to read Amnesty International's reports on Venezuela and much less Human Rights Watch's. They are probably agents of the Empire and HRW was even expelled by Chávez. I suppose she would consider the current ombudsman of the Venezuelan people, Tarek Williams Saab, the right source of information for that. You can watch Chávez here reading a poem Saab wrote.

Wyborcza has a wide range of contributors with very different opinions. I suppose this person is one of those who claims to be "the real left". Poland might not have as many contacts with Latin America as Germany, France or Spain and Ms Sapiezynska might have been one of the few "scholars" available at a certain time and moment and who might have had the time to write something about the country. Still, Wyborcza should try to find people who have a more solid knowledge about Venezuela's economy and history and who are honest enough as to present the different positions of the Venezuelan population as a whole, not only those of a particular ideology or, should I use Kundera's term?, of a particular imagology.


Ps. tip: read what The Guardian's journalist Rory Carroll had to say about Chavismo

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.

Cherry picking or banana selection? The art of wobbly statistics

The Guardian has some interesting statistics about life under Chávez. Unfortunately, the data seems to have been cherry-picked or perhaps went through some banana republic kind of selection.

Firstly: most initial data refers to 1999. Chávez started to rule 4 February of that year. Things began  deteriorating already in the second half of 1999, as some acute observers will tell you.

Take, for instance, the murder rate. The article talks about 25 murders per 100 000 inhabitants for 1999 against 45,1 in 2010. That's bad enough, but if we expand the time frame we see it is even worse. The murder rate in 1998 was 19 murders per 100 000 inhabitants, so you can see just a few months after Chávez came to power things worsen very rapidly. You can check out the data for 1998 in UNODC's 7th Report. If we were to go further back in time we will see there was a huge hike in the nineties, it stabilize in 1996-1997, dropped a bit in 1998 and went up year after year. In 2011 the murder rate was much higher and 18850 persons were murdered. The murder rate under Gómez in 1910 was very similar to that in 1998. Now it is by far the worst in South America. You can get the data, if you speak German, from here. You just need to find the amount of murders back then and the population.

Now, although the journalist plotted for inflation, she didn't do so for child mortality. She just presents two dots: one saying infant mortality was at 20 in 1998 and another showing it was just 13 in 2011.

But I took the same data, from the Instituto Nacional Electoral and plotted the whole thing.

Look at what you get:

It looks less impressive in this way, doesn't it? It is the same thing with literacy...probably worse, but we do not have very reliable data about it as the current government refuses to let independent evaluators analyse Venezuela's education, unlike what Capriles, the opposition candidate, did with the PISA programme in Miranda.

Finally, although the article shows how oil exports in 2011 are several times what they were in 1999 (she should again have chosen 1998 or at least shown several years before), it does not show why this happened: oil prices sky-rocketed, as you can check out yourself at OPEC's site.

I had actually plotted official OPEC data while contributing to the article on Venezuelan history in German Wikipedia. I put the chart here. It is in German but the data should be clear: $ per barrel and year.

I am not an economist. I am not a statistician. This is not rocket science. This is something your son John or Johan can do at age 11.

Cherry or banana picking?

Sozialismus des 21. Jahrhunderts: ade

Z*A = K   (Zeit* Arbeit = Kohle) Ein neues Gesetz der Sozialwissenschaften

Heinz Dieterich hat nun einen Artikel über seinen Bruch mit Hugo Chávez geschrieben. Viele der Chávez-Anhänger fühlen sich schon wieder verraten, wenn man die Reaktionen der Leser in KaosEnLaRed.net sieht. Und kaum einer unter ihnen denkt darüber nach, wieso das immer wieder bei ihnen passiert: warum gibt es immer wieder diese Aussteiger?

Dieterich behauptet, wie schon viele Kommunisten vor ihm, dass seine Ideen etwas mit Wissenschaft zu tun haben. Man würde gern wissen, was Dieterich unter "Wissenschaft" versteht, ob in der Soziologie oder sonst. Wie auch immer: Dieterich denkt, seine Idee, Arbeitszeit als Mass aller Dinge für Belohnung in der Wirtschaft zu benutzen, wäre etwas Revolutionäres, etwas Neues. Dieterich weiss anscheinend nicht, was Produktivität ist, was Motivation bedeutet. Er hat wenig mit Kreativität gehabt. Zeit messen, belohnen: das ist für ihn die Lösung unserer Probleme, das Ende vom Kapitalismus, Menschen werden sich daran halten. Es ist für Dieterich egal, wenn jemand vor dem Schreibtisch 8 Stunden hinvegetiert  und wenn jemand 8 Stunden lang eine Reihe Erfindungen schafft.

Vielleicht hat der "Wissenschaftler Dieterich eine Idee, wie man "echte" Arbeitszeit messen kann? Mit einer Kamera vielleicht? Einfach genial!

Und Dieterich, der von Informatik nichts weiss, sagt uns auch: nun kann man wirklich die partizipatorische Demokratie einführen, denn nun können wir alle immer bei jeder Angelegenheit unsere Stimme bei E-Wahlen geben. Ich nehme an, der Dieterich wird das nur behaupten, solange die Programmierer auf seiner Seite stehen.

Tja...das war der Denker des 21. Sozialismus. Wenn Journalisten jemanden suchten, der endlich mal eine theoretische Basis für den "Chavismus" zur Verfügung stellen konnte, hatten sie den Dieterich.

Und nun haben sie nichts.

Warum?

Dieterich sagt, er hätte "wissenschaftliche und politische Ethik" und dass er darum bei einem Kongress sagte, Venezuela hätte noch keinen Sozialismus "im historischen Sinne", dass man in Venezuela einfach dabei war, die Bedingungen für eine gerechtere Gesellschaft zu bauen. Und das war nicht gut genug für viele und das war definitiv nicht gut für Chávez. Der Caudillo war sauer. Der Caudillo sagte ein Treffen mit Dieterich ab. Dieterich hatte seinen Stolz. Chávez rief ihn dann nicht an. Liebe war weg.

Tja...schade, dass Dr Dieterich den Nobelpreis für wissenschatliche und politische Ethik nicht bekommen hat. 

Dieterich sagt dazu, Chávez benutzt dieselbe Strategie, die Deutschland nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg benutzt hat, um wieder voranzukommen: Chávez benutzt die soziale Marktwirschaft. Ich glaube, die CDU/CSUler werden wirklich baff sein, wenn sie hören, dass Chávez auf den Spuren von Alfred Müller-Armack und Ludwig Eckhard ist. Das hatten sie bestimmt nicht gewusst. Das hätte ich auch nicht geahnt. Dieterich schon. Und Dieterich ist - so steht es in Wikipedia - ein Dozent an einer mexikanischen Universität.

Wenn der alte Eckart wüsste

Dieterich erklärt, Chavez habe ihn wegen der Bürokratie nicht mehr kontaktiert...so wie das bei der Sowjetunion halt war. Man weiss schon: die Kommunisten sagen immer wieder, die sozialistischen Regierungen - die angeblich keine sozialistischen Regierungen waren, sondern "kapitalistische Staatsdiktaturen" - wären an der Bürokratie gescheitert. Wie auch immer: Chávez hat ihn nicht angerufen. Also Schluss.

Warum bekommt man den Eindruck, es handelt sich um eine Liebesgeschichte der Bravo-Zeitschrift und nicht um den Aufsatz eines politischen Denkers?

Kein Wort über die Macht der Militärs, über Korruption, über die Drohungen des Chavismus, Waffengewalt zu benutzen, wenn die Wahlen nicht günstig sind. Kein Wort über die ideologischen Widersprüche und die absolute Abwesenheit einer nachhaltigen Entwicklung. Also bleiben uns nur Dieterichs Zeilen über Verschmähter Liebe Pein.

Deutschland, die Mauer und Chavismus

Berlin, Deutschland

An diesen Tagen gedenken die Deutschen den Bau der Berliner Mauer. Die Mauer war die Lösung einer totalitären Regierung gegen Transparenz, Vergleich, Debatte, echte Kommunikation. Die Mauer hat ganze Familien getrennt und viel Hass geschürt. Hunderte von Menschen wurden umgebracht, als sie aus der DDR fliehen wollten.

Einer der wenigen Menschen, die sich nie von der DDR-Diktatur und vom Bau der Mauer distanziert hat ist Sahra Wagenknecht, die nicht zufällig einer der wenigen Politiker Westeuropas ist, die Chávez unterstützen.

Venezuelas Mauer

Die meisten Menschen in Venezuela haben keinen Internetzugang. Es ist gar nicht einfach für sie, andere Länder zu besuchen. Die meisten sprechen keine andere Sprache ausser Spanisch. Chávez braucht keine Betonmauer, um sie zu isolieren. Seine Kontrolle der Medien sorgt dafür: die regierungskritische Medien sind vorwiegend Zeitungen, die nur eine kleine Minderheit las und liest in einem Land, wo kaum jemand Zeitungen liest. Es gibt noch dazu Globovision, ein schlechter Fernsehsender, der weniger als 30% der Bevölkerung erreichen kann.

Die Venezolaner müssen jetzt neue Brücken bauen und Tunnel durchbohren, um die Informationsmauer zu durchbrechen, die die Regierung und einfach die technologische und bildungspolitische Rückständigkeit gebaut haben. Wir müssen zu den Leuten jenseits dieser Mauer gehen, Debatten, Austausch von Ideen fördern. Es wird Zeit in Anspruch nehmen, diese Mauer wirklich abzubauen und seine zerstörerische Kraft verschwinden zu lassen. Wir müssen es aber ab sofort tun.

How far from pluralism

Venezuela's shame

Last Sunday we got the usual Chávez ranting in the presidential Aló Presidente show. The president and 1992 coup monger announced the expropriation of yet another company, Venezuela's largest privately-owned steelmaker factory. The main stock holder of that company is the father of well-known opposition leader Corina Machado. The military caudillo then said he did not like the fact POLAR employees were protesting against his latest expropriations. Chávez said he does not want to expropriate POLAR "for now" but "no strike will overthrow [him]". "Don't challenge me, that is to challenge the people", he said. Chávez really thinks he is the people.

He then addressed POLAR's CEO, Lorenzo Mendoza: "You are going to end up losing it, Mendoza...don't mess with me, keep yourself to your things, your company and your family, which I respect a lot, but don't challenge me". He also recommended Mendoza to do as Cisneros, the biggest magnate in Venezuela. Capriles had decided to cooperate with the military caudillo, his Venevisión channel does not criticize the former coup monger anymore and now he is doing fine, very fine. "Follow Gustavo Cisnero's example...he decided not to mess up with me, he's intelligent...there it is, [his] Venevisión channel, it does not belong to the government, but it is there".

The caudillo also said that if the opposition were to win the 2012 elections, "they would try to expel anyone within the military forces that smells like Chávez". He declared: "if I were rich and I were living in Caracas' (posh) East, but I were not on the side of the opposition and I had a nice life from their point of view, I would keep Chávez or a revolutionary, because if those opposition bosses were to arrive to power, they would cause a broadside". Talking about revolution...just like the Ancien Regime, but more rapacious. In reality Chávez is not against the rich, but against the rich who oppose him. In reality he is not for the poor, but he will pretend to be for the poor who support him. A poor not supporting him would become another escuálido.

Europe's shame

The National Electoral Council, under Chávez's control, invited a group of left-winged politicians from abroad to be "independent observers of the process". The government is having a hard time finding EU politicians who are ready to do this, but they still can find some. One of them is Sfia Bouarfa, a politician from the Francophone Socialist Party of Belgium, PS. Ms Bouarfa has had trouble even within her party because of her extreme positions. You can take a look at her site, in French, here. There you can read what she had to say about Venezuela. She was "an international observer". She said the opposition -the opposition alone- tried not to respect the election rules. She did not get into much detail, but she definitely did not see the hundreds of state vehicles used to transport voters for Chávez, she did not see the way in which the military regime used state resources for propaganda purposes, she did not listen to Chávez's constant threats and she did not take a look at CNE's shameless and clearly illegal gerrymandering. Ms Bouarfa says the alternative parties "have as only programme to get rid of Chávez" and "stop the Bolivarian (sic) revolution"...no proposal but the ultraliberalism of Primero Justicia". Never mind I can show her several programmes that have more substance than the "wish list" the military regime finally presented as "plan for Venezuela" after 8 years in power.

Ms Bouarfa says "it is sad to see that certain parties claiming to be from the left like Podemos or MAS have joined the right or extreme right". I wonder what she is doing in the PS. Perhaps she should join the communist Worker's Party of Belgium. She should firstly find out what Podemos, MAS and even Causa R stand for. She also writes Chávez's party, the PSUV, got 95 representatives against 65 from the alternative forces. She does not say the PSUV got 48% and the alternative forces 51% of all votes. She finally complains about the "mainstream media" for criticizing the elections and Chávez. "They call themselves free and objectives. Each one will appreciate". Yes, Ms Bouarfa, everyone will appreciate.

Here I want to ask the French-speaking Socialist Party what their position is regarding the current situation of Venezuela and Ms Bouarfa's position.

You can ask them too, if you want. Please, write a polite letter to the PS and ask them what their position is:

info@ps.be

Let's see what they say. Do they endorse Bouarfa's position? Do they think Chávez is automatically a democrat just by virtue of past elections and people should be quiet? Do they think he is not an authoritarian? Do they think he is not threatening with violence and civil war if he were to lose? Do they think he is not abusing of state resources to use as direct party propaganda?

Human Rights Watch on Venezuela
Amnesty on Venezuela

Amnesty on Venezuela
Chávez: le peuple c'est moi

Should deputies or senates from the Belgian French-speaking Socialist Party support a regime like Chavismo? I am asking them and sending the question to the media as well.

PS in Brussels

Useful idiots

Right now BBC has a three-episode programme about "Useful Idiots". The pictures you see here were randomly chosen by a software I have and have no relationship whatsoever with the post. Really.

Ps. I just wish BBC would change Willy Grant as reporter for Venezuela.

Einmal Nazi, immer...was?

1

Brigitte hat mir vor einigen Tagen einen Link zu einem deutschen Verehrer des Hugo Chávez. Es handelt sich um einen Mann, der in der DDR geboren ist, der zuerst mit dem DDR-Staat nicht zurechtkommen konnte, der aber auch nach Wende auch keinen Platz in der Gesellschaft fand. Seit 1987 bezeichnete er sich als Nationalsozialist. Er war dann Mitglied bei der NPD und aktiv bei anderen Rechtsradikalen in Deutschland. Er sagt nun, 1997 wäre er ausgestiegen. Danach war er wegen Körperverletzung oder, wie er sagt, wegen "Körperverletzung" im Knast. Seit 1999 beschäftigt er sich u.a. mit "Spirirualität". Im Jahre 2009 war er wieder u.a. Mitglied der deutschen Republikaner und kurz danach der DVU. Dann kam sein Saulus zu "Paulus"-Moment , zum zigten Mal: Er wurde Mitglied in der Volksinitiative gegen das Finanzkapital. Nun ist er ein Verehrer des Chávez und sagt, die Venezolaner hätten es besser als die Deutschen, ein Volk, das "ausgebeutet und belogen" wäre und "alles mögliche erträgt", ein Volk, das unter der "Diktatur des Kapitals" zu leiden hat. Er sagt, er kann nicht nach Venezuela, weil er arm ist. Und das glaube ich ihm. Auf jeden Fall ein Sozialfall, aber schon extrem.

Wie Robin Williams sagen würde: he has "issues". Der Mann wäre auf jeden Fall ein Extremfall in jedem Land. Lohnt es sich, über ihn in Zusammen mit Venezuela zu reden? Ich war zuerst nicht sicher, aber er ist schon ein Vertreter - wenn auch unbekannt und ohne Macht - der letzten Verteidiger des Chavismus in Europa.

2

Was kann man aber über jemanden wie Frau Sarah Wagenknecht sagen? Sie ist auch eine Ossi, sie hatte es aber a bissl besser: sie wurde Abgeordnete der Linken im EU-Parlament, sie heiratete einen Geschäftsmann - ob sie ihn Kapitalist oder Schatz nennt sei dahingestellt - und wettert nun als Bundestagsabgeordnete gegen den Kapitalismus. Sie sagte einmal, die DDR wäre besser als die BRD und sie hat die Berliner Mauer als ein "notwendiges Übel" bezeichnet.

Im Gegensatz zum ersten Fall kann Frau Wagenknecht ein bisschen reisen und mit ihren eigenen Augen Venezuela sehen. Und was schreibt sie in ihrer Homepage? Wenn ich ihre Texte lese, denke ich zurück an das Lesen der sowjetischen Pravda. Ich könnte lange und in Detail jeden ihrer Sätze demontieren. Ich zitiere hier aber nur dies:

"Innerhalb von wenigen Jahren brachte man mehr als 1,5 Millionen Menschen das Lesen und Schreiben bei, die Analphabetenrate wurde von über 11 Prozent auf nahezu null reduziert."

Mein Gott, davon könnte selbst Schweden schon mal was lernen. Für die Demontage verweise ich lediglich auf meine Posts mit dem Label "Education in Venezuela".

Oliver Stone and his fight against terrorists

I just listened to Oliver Stone talking on BBC. It seems that when people become famous in Hollywood they think they are more insightful about anything. The fact is that Stone is as professional as most rabid right winger he wants to distance himself from. In fact, Stone's objectivity - I don't talk about partiality - is as good as that of the most partisan media in the US. Right now even most members of the German extreme left party Die Linke have a more critical view of Chávez than Stone.

I think the BBC should also have engaged a journalist with a deep understanding of Venezuela, not someone asking very predictable questions.

When the journalist asks him about freedom of expression, Stone just goes into "oh, that is so oligarchic", probably with some eye-rolling. Oh, Oliver, you are so cliché.

Stone says most people (what's "most people"?) watch the private media. This is very telling. This shows the only thing he knows about Venezuela is derived from his guided tours with Chávez, from his time in the luxurious hotels watching Globovisión - the only regime-critical channel nowadays- and looking at the kiosks in Caracas. This "specialist" does not speak Spanish, hasn't got a clue about Venezuela's oil cycles, hasn't delved into enough information regarding countless corruption cases carried out by the Boliburguesía, starting with Chávez's clan. His sources are things like "The Revolution shall not be televised".

Stone does not know, for instance, that

• less than 30% of the population can watch -admitedly FOX-like- Globovisión (those in Caracas and those with cable-satellite dish)
• the combined circulation of regime critical newspapers is lower than 200000 per day and Venezuelans read very little
• Chávez constantly threatens the opposition as no head of state of a democracy country would do (we will annihilate them, we will take out the tanks, sweep them away, they are not human, they are subhuman, etc, etc, just watch the videos I constantly link to here)
• the personality cult has just gone absolutely bonkers and Chávez does not tolerate any even slight criticism of his persona among those who want to work with him (and he has total control of the national government and thus of the petrodollars)
  
• Chávez and his ministers completely refuse to hold open debates with opposition leaders
• Chávez has introduced laws that were rejected in the 2007 referendum (I am not talking about re-election)
• Chávez has taken away almost all the power from mayors and governors as soon as the opposition won several key municipalities and states
  
• Opposition groups are regularly prevented from walking in very tiny numbers, in the main square of Caracas or in any other square where Chavistas are mayors
  
• the police has repeatedly attacked using brutal force opposition groups that peacefully distribute flyers in areas that are considered "del pueblo" (i.e. poor areas or rural areas)
  

Stone, as a rich pseudo-socialist would be completely at lost if he were to debate with someone like Teodoro Petkoff or...hell, even with your humble blogger.

People like Stone are not interested in Venezuela at all. Venezuela is just a tool in their private fights. For people like Stone you are either with Chávez or you are with the terrorists. Does this sound a bell to you?


Caracas Chronicles on Oliver Stone
Caracas Corhnicles on Weissbrot (who helped with the documentary's script)

Getting used to a dictatorship

Tania Díaz










Goose and gander

The new Venezuelan minister of the Popular Power (sic) for Information, Tania Díaz, has just declared the first group of schoolchildren is ready to become "communication guerrillas". They will be used to spread governmental messages in Caracas and then throughout Venezuela. They will "present a new way of looking at the world through Bolivarian socialism". They will get all resources for that: loudspeakers, written material, courses of "communication".

A few days earlier, the government started a process against the opposition governor Salas Feo on the basis that he is "proselitizing in Carabobo state schools". What did he do? He distributed books and other school material with the image of his party. Obviously, he should not have done that, he should have distributed that material without any propaganda*. Still, it seems that in Chavista Venezuela what is good for the goose is not good for the gander.

Yesterday former coup monger and current president Hugo Chávez said that "if the opposition tries to do something irregular" he will speed up the revolution process. Former vice-president and journalist Rangel added on the same ocassion that "the opposition is not democratic and the opposition are behaving in a subversive way".

Venezuela as a political soap opera

The general public in democratic countries usually does not get to see how a country becomes a dictatorship. People hear that a country in some remote part of the world has been living under autocracy for decades and then a new dictator pops up in the news. Sometimes people just start to read more and more articles about growing problems with human rights somewhere with a name ending in 'an'.

Things have turned out to be different with Venezuela. It has become a permanent political soap opera. In 1998 the South American country was a democracy, albeit dysfunctional. It still was a democracy several years later, with Chávez in power. Chávez's clownish ways and the excitement by the left in Europe and North America guaranteed an almost permanent place for Venezuela in the news in Europe and North America.

A lot of people were crying "wolf, wolf" from the very beginning, but most foreign and national observers did not believe the coup monger of 1992 could become what he is now. After all: he came to power via elections. Some people from the right were saying Venezuela was becoming a sort of Cuba while doing their shopping in malls that were chock-a-block with imported stuff. The Venezuelan government has been organizing elections on a yearly basis. This is not a dictatorship, is it?

The Carter Centre and the EU did a very sloppy work in evaluating elections and the government has done a lot of unkosher things to "optimize" electoral results, but Chávez did have and has the support of millions. His popularity kept growing as oil prices kept rising and even if it has started to go down, it is still high. Everybody knows the opposition is deeply divided. It claims to be working now more united, but still it is made up of many dozens of political parties.

Things are a changin'

Venezuela is receiving several times the amount of petrodollars it was getting in 1998 but the economic situation is becoming more difficult and the country is in recession. The government knows it has to speed up its process for total control before things deteriorate further, specially in view of September's elections.

Fortunately for the Chávez regime, Venezuela has plenty of oil and gas and more is discovered by the day. Spanish oil giant Repsol just announced Venezuela's gas reserves have increased by 30%. Moratinos, Spain's leftist minister of foreign affairs, is certainly happy to hear that, specially with Spain's current economic situation.

















Venezuela is still far away from a Cuban state, in spite of all those Cuban intelligence officers and in spite of all the governmental attacks and foul play.

Chávez's apologists still see space for hope. And even if things were to become like Cuba one day: isn't Cuba the romantic island of Buena Vista Social Club and the cocktails for rich European tourists? There is still plenty of room for getting used to it all, specially with so much oil at play.


* A reader sent me an email saying he did not know Venezuelan pupils don't usually get text books from the state and that he was shocked. He has good reason to be shocked and disgusted. I will go into more into the catastrophic problem we have with education in a new post.

I am the people, I demand absolute loyalty: 1, 2, 3

ONE

On 23 January 2010, Hugo Chávez said the following:

"those who want fatherland: come with Chávez..."
"I demand absolute loyalty to my leadership."
"I am not me...I am a nation (un pueblo), I am not a person, I am the people"
More here:



And just now TV station Rctv (available on cable only) has been taken off the air once more.

TWO

Miguel Ángel Martínez, PSOE politician and vice-president of the European Parliament said some weeks ago that "the vision people have in the European Union about the process taking place in Venezuela is not real" and "the idea about a monopoly on information [in Venezuela] does not correspond with reality" (here in Spanish). I have decided to send him a link to this post.

I have some questions.

1) I would like to know from Mr Martínez if he is aware of the fact that less than 30% of Venezuelans can watch government-critical TV channels in Venezuela: those in the capital, those like Mr Martínez who stay at a posh hotel room on a diplomatic visit, those in Valencia or those who have cable TV (a minority in Venezuela, which is not Europe).

2) I want to know if Mr Martínez can tell us whether the Venezuelan opposition can speak out freely in state TV channels or if those state channels are to be used only by the government for its propaganda all the time.

3) I would like him to tell us if he is aware of how many hours a week TV and radio stations are forced to broadcast the president's speeches, among them those full of very vulgar insults against the opposition (just one of many examples here).

4) Does Mr Martínez know how many Venezuelans read newspapers and what the circulation of regime-critical newspapers is?

5) Does he know that Venezuela's president does not accept to have an open debate with anyone from the opposition, not even in election time, and that no critical journalist can even get close to him?

6) Last but not least, I want Mr Martínez to say something about the video above. Perhaps "No comments, those are internal matters"?

I will let you know what he answers.

THREE

Last August a group of very well-known thugs supporting the government attacked TV station Globovisión (a sort of worse FOX News, but still the only thing still critical to the government on TV). The leader of the attackers, Lina Ron, was caught in fraganti by many cameras. As the attack was undeniable, the president had to state that Lina had to go to prison. Rory from the Guardian wrote about the event here. Her detention was just a farce. As the opposition thought, she was free again in no time and she was just next to her Líder Máximo on this latest event. You can see the peroxide blonde here:

Thanks to Alpha, who has an excellent post in Dutch here


PS: Mr Martínez still hasn't replied

Question to old lefties:

(just in case, I could also ask the same question to "righties" with similar figures)
For how long were you in love with this bloke?














Aye, I know a lot of people were meeting him years ago.




















And do you have now another idol?


Read about Mugabe's life here. If you want to learn a bit about where Venezuela differs and where it is similar to Zimbabwe, look, among other things, at my posts with the labels "ethnicity" and "corruption".

If you want an excellent post about how the gerrymandering in Venezuela will be organized, go to Daniel's blog.

The European Extreme Left planning how to support Lukashenko's friend

As the German Marxist-oriented newspaper Junge Welt* reports, the European extreme left plans to hold a conference this autumn to coordinate how the different extreme-left parties will continue supporting Hugo Chávez's regime.

What parties are we talking about here? It is basically those that are to the left of the democratic left. They are the ones who call social democrats (off the record) "traitors", "sissies" and so on. Some of them claim for the general public to be "the real social democrats".

Among the parties supporting this conference you can find the German Linke, the heirs of the SED. Apart from the extreme left proper there may be a couple of politicians from the left branches of the social democrats, but there are less and less of this type as European social democrats have become wearier of associating themselves with such governments as Chavez'.

The extreme left parties will discuss in this conference mostly how they will support the Chávez regime for the coming regional elections in Venezuela this November. They will decide how to carry out lobbying work, coordinate their work to block any condemnation of Chavismo at EU level.

I am not very worried about their work. Still, I wanted to report it here. I am now more concerned about the way real social democrats are still too quiet about the violation of human rights by Chavismo. There are exceptions: the French socialists have proved they can see through the appearances. They have already condemned Chavez's referendum proposal, among other things. But we need the Spanish PSOE, Labour, the SPD and any others who call themselves social democrats to have courage and denounce Chavismo's hatred for pluralism and the many vices that the Venezuelan electoral system and judiciary present. Is the PSOE so quiet, for instance, because it is afraid of losing so many juicy weapons deals for a Spain going towards recession?

If the social democrats in Europe do not speak out fast, they will be the biggest losers: Chávez is giving a horrible reputation to socialism in Venezuela and once the economic kettle explodes, the bad reputation will be also felt by those governments in Latin Amerian countries currently profiting from Chávez's financial support and Venezuela's petrodollar bleeding.

* According to Spiegel and others, several of the journalists working for Die Junge Welt have a Stasi past. If you want to know more about what the Stasi was about, I would recommend you to see the excellent German film Das Leben der Anderen. The picture I put on top was the Stasi's emblem.

Ken Livingstone with Mugabe's Venezuelan friend

(I know the second man hugging Chávez is Iran's President Ahmed Ahmadinejad, I just wanted to put a picture of another of Chavez's friends in the world, someone different from Mugabe or Ghadaffi or Syria's president or Castro)


This 29 August we could read in The Guardian a letter written by Ken Livingstone, the former mayor of one of the richest cities in the world.

You can read the letter here.

Here I simply address several of his statements:

"The idea that this country is a dictatorship is ridiculous – probably some of those assiduously promoting it have difficulty in keeping a straight face."
Mr Livingstone basically asserts that because he could see from his hotel TV set the critical Globovisión on cable and he could check we have some newspapers that are critical of Chavez.
The little things he does not know:

• Most people in Venezuela DO NOT HAVE cable TV and cannot watch Globovisión.

• Caracas plus Maracaibo plus Valencia are not all of Venezuela. M

ost regions outside the main urban centres are not reached by Globovisión or RCTV cable.

• Less than 25% of Venezuelans have Internet access.

• El Universal and El Nacional are newspapers that have always been bought by a minority in a country where those who read, read so very little.

Mr Livingstone does not tell you that a lot of high officials in the Chávez regime openly threatened people who signed the petition for the referendum for Chávez. Those officials said whoever signed against Chavez would be sacked. He does not say how Chávez announced the finger prints of those who signed against him would pass to history.

Mr Livingstone does not say Chávez has declared many times that if the opposition wins, there would be war.

Mr Livingstone claims Chávez showed how good a democrat he can be by admitting his obvious defeat last December. The former mayor does not mention Chávez said the opposition's victory was a "shitty shitty shitty victory" and that he would not change anything in his proposal and he would push for it later, even if it was rejected by most people (he has already passed several laws via special powers that were part of the points rejected in the referendum).

Mr Livingstone does not explain why the Venezuelan National Electoral Council has not declared what happened with 10% of the votes in last December's referendum, that the National Electoral Council should have published the final results many months ago and that it has not done so even if the numbers they provided in the first report simply DO NOT ADD UP.

Mr Livingstone does not explain why Chávez does not allow critical journalists or channels close to him.

Mr Livingstone does not explain the real meaning of Socialism, Fatherland or Death.

Mr Livingstone does not explain the pathetic Personality Cult we have in Venezuela, where the state spends millions in thousands and thousands of billboards glorifying Chávez as a successor of Bolívar, as the new great hero.

Mr Livingstone shamelessly says illiteracy has been eliminated to "UNESCO levels". That is not right at all. UNESCO never confirmed Chavez's assertions. As you can read in The Economist, this is a big, big fib. Venezuela's literacy rate in 1998 was around 93% and growing. After some years, Chávez claimed it had been reduced to 0%, something not even Germany has managed to do and definitely not the UK. As that was not credible, Chavez and his cronies mentioned other numbers..."well, we have brought literacy to something in the ninety%". Hello? What is difference from 93% in 1997? And then they have had to concede hundreds of thousands of the people who registered for the Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela cannot read or write. Mr Livingstone does not say either that now Venezuela has pulled out of open evaluation tests of education levels, as those promoted by UNESCO. He does not say Venezuela is one of the few countries in Latin America that do not take part in the PISA programme.

Mr Livingstone talks about the old rich, but he does not talk about the Boliburgueses, about the Kaufmans and the Antonini Wilsons, about the ministers who claim this is a true socialist government while wearing the most expensive clothes.

Mr Livingstone claims Chávez has introduced a "new free healthcare system", when he does not know the state of public hospitals (already free before Chávez).

Mr Livingstone mentions crime very briefly, but he does not mention the murder rate in Venezuela has increased over 300% since 1998, more than in any other country in Latin America, including Mexico. He does not mention either the 8 ministers of Justice Venezuela has had since 1999 have lied month after month about the murder rates, that they have claimed the murder rate is down because they compare one isolated weekend to another or one region during a couple of days suitable for their pseudo-statistical analysis. He does not want to say Venezuela's government stopped sending the number of murders in 2003 to United Nation's Office on Drugs and Crime when it became too clear crime was out of control in Venezuela.

Mr Livingstone does not explain exactly what has been achieved with the money poor Venezuela invested in one of the richest cities in the world.

Mr Livingstone tries to make Britons believe most of the opposition are evil rich people who dislike the poor. That is like saying most Britons who do not like Mr Livingstone are neo-Nazis and as proof he chooses some fringe neo-Nazi group.
What kind of tactic is that? If some Venezuelan were to tell Britons everybody who is not with Mr Livingstone/Cameron/Blair/you-name-him or her is a Nazi or that he is just some kind of selfish monster, I think Britons would be very angry and feel that Venezuelan does not know what respect and honesty are.

Shame on you, Mr Livingstone.

Some news to read

I have little time, I just wanted to point at some articles:

Rory Carroll, The Guardian's journalist in Caracas on Chavez sliding down the slope

According to Spiegel (in German) Chavez was trying to invite himself to Germany, although Merkel is not interested in seeing him very soon. I will write more on this at the end of the week.

Extreme left Euro-deputy, Sarah Wagenknecht, talks (in German) about Chavez linking Merkel's party to Hitler as "historically correct".

I wonder if Wagenknecht would concede her party is even more closely connected to Stalin than the CDU to the NSDAP, the Nazi party. Well, I wonder what Wagenknecht says about Stalin at all...and were not Stalin and Hitler cooperating until Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union)

Who supports Hugo Chavez and his regime in Europe?

This post is going to be updated on a continuous basis.
The total amount of people supporting Chávez is decreasing by the day, but there are still some. It is a similar situation to Mugabe, who previously had so much support in the West.


Heads of State

Well, there are not many of them in Europe. Firstly we have:

• Alexander Lukashenko, Belorussian head of state. You can find some information on what the European Union thinks of Alexander here. I read Scholl-Latour's book with a lot of interest, although I do not approve certain things he writes about. He has produced a good account of Lukashenko in his book "Russland im Zangengriff" (in German). There is one chapter there dedicated to Belarus and what I read there corresponds very much with what my Belorussian friends have told me about the whole issue.

And that is about it. We can say Vladimir Putin's Russia is making a lot of money by selling weapons to Chávez's military, but that is far from saying Vladi loves to get a picture next to Hugo.

Eurodeputies supporting Chavez

• Sahra Wagenknecht: German, member of the Linke, she is from the left part of the communists.

Some articles about her: Wikipedia (German) has general information (there is less information about her in other languages), Spiegel (German) Sahra the the lobster pictures

• Giusto Catania: Italian communist, GUE/NLG
  
• Georgious Toussas: Greek, GUE/NGL, a member of the Greek Communist party.
• Manuel Medina Ortega: Spanish, PSE Group
  

Others

• Ken Levingston, a.k.a. Red Ken, the former mayor of London. He was promoting a deal by which poor Venezuela is giving oil to help the poor of one of the richest cities in the world. They were supposed to deliver "know-how" on such matters as tourism and traffic to Venezuela but in reality the deal costs much more to Venezuela than to London. Here you can read how Mr Levingston praises Hugo Chávez and says everything the media says are "lies". I wonder if he would be ready for a live debate with opposition for Britons and Venezuelans to see. I want to see the results in Venezuela of London's part in the deal.
  

• Michel Collon, Belgian journalist, linked to Telesur, Hugo Chavez "response to CNN" and to Belgium's . I wonder if his work for Telesur is compensated in some way other than "thank you".

• Sfia Bouarfa, senator of the Belgian (French-speaking) Socialist Party. She was invited by the Venezuelan, very red National Electoral Council to "supervise" the quality of their work. She gave a very positive report on it to the Belgian government.

• Tierry Deronne, another Belgian journalist and vice-president of Vive TV, one of Chávez's TV channels. He is a friend of Sfia Bouarfa, according to Bouarfa's blog. This journalist says on his blog that still 70% of the TV in Venezuela is in the hands of the opposition. I wonder if he managed to watch TV from a TV without cable outside Caracas. Mind: in Venezuela, unlike in Belgium, most poor do not have cable TV and outside a couple of major cities it is hard to get any non-cable TV station that critical to Chavez.

Here you have a list of all the Eurodeputies who support the regime of Chávez, a list by themselves.

Venezuela and The Guardian, Eva Golinger and CIA reports in Spanish

The Guardian, a traditionally liberal-left newspaper, published today an article about the situation in Venezuela.

As The Guardian's correspondent Rory Carroll said," President Hugo Chávez is encountering unexpectedly strong opposition to a referendum on constitutional reform which would cement his rule in Venezuela, with violent clashes between rival demonstrations and security forces feeding a mood that the country is at a turning point."

He mentions the polls predicting either a win of the No vote or a tie, but he also points out to the fact that polls have a record of underestimating his support. He mentions the possibility the supreme court may accept a petition to postpone the vote. Carroll says that although the petition was lodged by the opposition when it thought it would lose, such a ruling would now be a gift to the government. I very much doubt it: simply said, the government has shown it has gone as far (politically speaking) as the enormous revenues from oil exports can take it. Unless there is a dramatic increase in oil prices, it won't be able to keep its popularity like that. The economy is showing strain, the Venezuelan currency's devaluation is looming, basic products are scarcer by the day and criminality keeps on growing while the government keeps on denying it. Chavez has to risk it this Sunday and he will possibly use every conceivable method. Here we come to one of them:

Chavez supporters are circulating a memo they say they "intercepted" from CIA agents inside the US embassy. Curiously, the memo is in Spanish. Why did they not show it also in English? Out of respect for those who do not speak English? But why is there no sign, not a single link of such a document in English? Lack of space to add the link? Hello? Might it be the CIA uses now Spanish as a lingua franca among its agents? Have we Latinos advanced so far in the USA that they communicate among each other in Spanish at the CIA? I suspect it is a fake paper. Perhaps the Chavistas can put their act together and ask some extreme-left US citizen to translate the paper for them.

Oh...I see, Eva Golinger is translating it into the "original language" here. Well, she is translating at least the key facts.

What I think is the original (in Spanish) is here:

Aporrea (a pro-Chavez site, "Aporrea" means "hit")

But Eva writes: "The original document in English will be available in the public sphere soon for viewing and authenticating purposes. And it also contains more information than has been revealed here."

Soon? Soon? "For viewing and authenticating purposes"? What a cheek! It will be available in English soon. How credible can that be?




















More info on Eva Gollinger (in Spanish) at Tal Cuál


Update:

Hugo Chávez declared in his last official speech before the referendum that indeed, there is a "US conspiracy" called "Tenaza". In his discourse (check out a summary of it in Spanish in the very government page) he said he was going to win with AT LEAST over 15%. This is more than bluffing, if you care to read the whole Spanish link you will see the whole tone he is using.