Cubans and Russians and the military in Venezuela

If there are two things I still find missing in the reports about Venezuela under the Chavista dictatoship are 1) the role that both Cuban and Russian secret services are playing in the land of Grace and 2) the way Maduro, like his predecessor, the caudillo Chavez, is trying to make the military take over the economy of Venezuela in the same way as it is done in Cuba. 

Let's face it: the day Venezuela's regime falls is the moment when the Cuban dictatorship starts to crumble as well. The moment Venezuela's regime falls is the time when Russians lose almost all of their clout in the American continent.

It is time for us to make these relations as transparent as possible, to discuss them publicly in Venezuela, to challenge time after time the role of these powers.

SEBIN, Chavista "intelligence" service: just a tool for narco generals and foreign powers

Here you can read an interesting article about how the average Cuban sees Venezuela. As for the average Russian, I can tell you: he is as badly informed. I will write a bit more about that in my next post.

Comeremos Kalashnikov y los rusos manejarán toda nuestra información

El vicepresidente de Rusia y ante todo jefe de la industria militar, Dmitri Rogozin, declaró al diario ruso Kommersant que la fábrica de Kalashnikovs AK-103 en Venezuela, que tanto se había demorado, estará lista para 2019: las máquinas rusas están preparadas, todo está vigilado (sí, vigilado). Lo único que falta es que los venezolanos terminen de construir el edificio. Ya los rusos han elegido cuál será el contructor venezolano. Estas declaraciones se produjern en un encuentro con  Delcy Rodríguez, la ministra chavista para relaciones exteriores, hermana de Jorge Rodríguez, el comunista que controló el Consejo Nacional Electoral por tanto tiempo.

Rogozin también mencionó que Rusia terminará la construcción de dos centros para helicópteros rusos en Venezuela. Uno servirá para el entrenamiento de pilotos y el otro para el mantenimiento. Supongo que con esto tratarán de que no se caigan tantos.

Ahora viene lo mejor: el hombre declaró que Rusia está dispuesta a proporcionar chips para tarjetas bancarias y tarjetas de SIM y para colaborar "en la programación para la defensa contra ciberataques". Repitió la versión del chavismo: los bancos venezuela habrían sido víctimas hace poco de un ataque de hackers y - esto lo dice en primera persona del plural- "lo enfrentamos y vencimos". Por supuesto que esos supuestos ataques solo son una explicación chavista para ocultar que la infraestructura no sirve...y no sirve, entre otras cosas, porque en Venezuela nadie tiene idea de qué cuesta producir algo.

Ahora Rusia está "ofreciendo apoyo informático". Ya sabemos a dónde va a parar eso del software y programadores de Rusia.

Un par de detalles sobre este hombre: hace un tiempo declaró que la venta de Alaska a Estados Unidos no fue realizada de manera limpia y que Rusia tiene derecho a reclamar ese territorio. Rogozin también ha estado permanentemente involucrado en "ayudas" a Transnitria, un satélite ruso en la dividida Moldavia.

Otra de las cositas que dijo: que querría conducir de casa a su trabajo en un tanque GAZ-2975 Tigr para promover la industria rusa. Rogozin es uno de los hombres de Putin que no tiene permitido entrar en Estados Unidos o la Unión Europea. Algunas de las acciones o declaraciones de Rogozin serían clasificadas en un país normal como ultranacionalistas o sencillamente racistas.

More dictatorship for Venezuela

The head of the Venezuela Air force just declared the military personnel who signed the petition for the recall referendum should "verify their signature" on a voluntary basis - code for remove their signatures from the petition - . He added: "It is important to know with whom we count and on whom we should keep an eye...independence and socialist fatherland".

Former Spanish president Zapatero is now flirting with Iglesias, the Podemos leader financed by the Chavista regime. That is why Iglesias is praising Zapatero now and why the Venezuelan regime is using him for a show at OAS.

If you have any doubt about where the military top is right now in Venezuela, take a look at the tweets of the minister of Defence, Vladimir Padrino (yes, his father was a commie, not a Russian). Those tweets are a mix of Chauvinistic trash, Bolivarian-Chavista religion and threats against the others.

Venezuelans have been let down by virtually most countries.

Venezuelans can only count on themselves to end Chavismo.

Preparing for something?

Today a couple of our readers saw these APCs on the road from Valencia to Caracas. The National Guard uses these vehicles to contain protests.

Everyone else is talking about the first lady's relatives caught by the US American DEA in Haiti in a sting operation against cocaine dealers. I will write about them when I get some extra information.

Priorities for Venezuela's socialist regime

The Venezuelan regime knows where its priorities are. That's why it is spending $480,000,000 in maintenance for its Russian war planes. It will also spend Bs 6,000,000,000 in goodies for the military caste. That is equivalent to $944,000,000 or $7,600,000, depending on what exchange rate you use (I know how mental the range is).

In my city a huge amount of public schools similar to where I was as a child do not have teachers and pupils are getting their time wasted. A teacher in Venezuela doesn't earn enough to buy food for a family, much less to rent a tiny flat in a poor neighbourhood.

If this is not criminal, I do not know what is.

Bear in mind the military caste is the key element in logistics for the upcoming elections.

No wonder the regime does not want independent international observers.

Weapons and underdevelopment in Chavista Venezuela (year 2015)

Maduro announced on Wednesday he would buy 12 more Sukhoi fighters from Russia. The Venezuelan military had recently lost two men in a crash that has not been properly investigated but that has been explained as a "fight against the paramilitary drug dealers from Colombia". Paramilitary is now Chavista code for right-winged, ergo close to the whole of Venezuela's opposition. Chávez had bought 24 Sukhoi 30 in 2006-2008 (here in Russian) and spent over 13 billion dollars in weapons until 2012. Purchases were reduced in the last couple of years but that was from an all-time record. In 2012 Venezuela was at position 13th worldwide and the first in Latin America as importer of conventional weapons (See SIPRI report for 2012). In 2013 there was a short stop, which was used by the Chavista propaganda to announce Venezuela had seen the sharpest decrease in military spending...the kind of pieces of pseudo-information useful idiots abroad hasten to publish. See here for their grasp on reality.

Intermezzo

A university professor in Venezuela doesn't earn enough to rent a small one-room flat in a working class area. That is why universities are going on strike now. If you try to calculate salaries based on one of the official currency rates, bear in mind almost no one can get dollars at that rate in Venezuela. If you want to understand what the Venezuelan exchange rates area mean, you can check out this article by Bloomberg, which is an outdated version of what is happening now: the black market dollar is currently at over 700 Bolívars.

Divertimento

Russian foreign minister Lavrov was set to visit Venezuela this Saturday on a stopover before going to New York. At the last minute, he decided to skip that stopover and go to New York directly. He met foreign minister Delsy Rodríguez (she is there basically because of her brother, current mayor of Caracas) and Nicolás Maduro and they discussed, among other things, "how to coordinate foreign policies" (in Russian here). They also signed a joke of an agreement whereby Venezuela avows not to use weapons in outer space. Considering Venezuela's technological development has been abysmal and it is much worse right now, considering that Venezuela is even failing to assemble cars, you have to be cynical to announce Venezuela is renouncing the use of weapons in outer  space.

Coda

Tomorrow Venezuela will receive 630000 barrels of Russian oil that it will process in Curacao. Oil swapping has always taken place but since Chavismo has let the national oil company PDVSA crumble down, the Venezuelan government has been forced to import more and more oil...something dramatic for a country that does nothing but export oil.

Schon wieder stürzen Militärflugzeuge in Venezuela ab

Zwei Sukhoiflugzeuge der venezolanischen Militärs sind gestern in Apure, Westvenezuela, abgestürzt. Die Regierungserklärung, wie erwartet: sie haben gegen die "narcotraficantes" gekämpft.

Die Flugzeuge wären abgestürzt, nachdem ein fremdes Flugzeug in den venezolanischen Luftraum eingedrungen sei. 

Beweise? Danke schön. Seit Wochen protestiert die kolumbianische Regierung, weil venezolanische Militärs die Grenze überquert haben sollen.

Heute demonstrieren Tausende Venezolaner in der ganzen Welt für Menschenrechte in Venezuela und insbesondere für die Befreiung des Oppositionsführers López.

Diosdado

How powerful is the military honcho Diosdado Cabello really?

He obviously has a lot of support from the military. The military caste is the one that tells Maduro to give Diosdado his share of power.  Diosdado heads the National Assembly, his brother is the minister of Industries and his wife is the minister of tourism and he is said to be behind the Soles Cartel. He obviously has a lot of clout. Still, we know the vast majority of Venezuelans dislike him a lot.

For how long is his current position going to last?

I will be analysing this character in upcoming posts.

The Venezuelan military caste and drug trafficking

Journalist and fellow blogger Setty tweeted about this Spiegel article on cocaine traffic and the Venezuelan military. I re-tweeted it to several opposition politicians who usually re-tweet stuff I send them - I don't send them just about anything - but this time there was no reaction. I don't want to speculate much but chances are few in Venezuela will dare to ruffle Chavista feathers by discussing about this open secret in public.

The article - in English - is about how an European pilot unwillingly got involved in a cocaine transport organised by the Venezuelan revolutionary soldiers at Arturo Michelena International Airport, in Valencia.

Further sources:

La Nación (Spanish) 2014

Normal military and Guardia Nacional have special priorities in Venezuela

Venezuela's military, November 2014

The Maduro regime has appointed Wilmer Barrientos ambassador to Canada. Wilmer Omar Barrientos was born 14 June of 1959. He went to the military academy and graduated in the same class as Hugo Chávez. 

Barrientos was active in the bloody coup of February 1992. He was one of the officers who took over the Paramacuay military base located north of Valencia. You can read more about that here (in Spanish).

Lucas Rincón Romero, another military, is Venezuela's current ambassador to Portugal. The ambassador to Russia, Juan Vicente Paredes Torrealba, is another military honcho. Molero Bellavía, former defence minister and one of the worst students of his class at the military academy, is ambassador in Brazil. Military man Alí Uzcátegui Duque is ambassador in Austria. Arévalo Méndez Romero, another man of the guns, is the ambassador in Chile. Hugo García Hernández is the one in Mexico. There are many more like that. Basically if you are a military and you got close to Chávez, you have chances of becoming an  ambassador even if or particularly if you are an idiot.

A large amount of Venezuelan diplomats at the embassy in the UK are military, not just the military attaché. 

Meanwhile, Venezuela is getting $72.8 for each oil barrel it exports. That's a drop of over 25 dollars per barrel compared to 2013.

The FARC-supporting Colonel and Aruba: the Netherlands answers

Our friend Alpha placed a link with the answers to several questions the foreign minister of the Netherlands had to answer with regards to the Carvajal affair. It seems one of the opposition deputies in the Netherlands did ask the two questions I posted earlier. There are three pdf documents here (in Dutch). 

The Dutch are well-known for their role in Sebrenica. Here a picture of Dutchbat

Minister Frans Timmermans admits the Netherlands has declared Hugo Carvajal persona non grata but based on the article 23 paragraph IV of the Vienna Convention a government is not obliged to explain why it has declared someone persona non grata and it won't explain why in this case.

OK, Mr Timmermans, you don't want to tell us why you are declaring Hugo Carvajal persona non grata but we know why. We just wanted you to write to the world you won't explain it.

Now the Venezuelan opposition needs to spread the word in Venezuela: Hugo Carvajal has been declared persona non grata in the Netherlands and Venezuelans should investigate why exactly.

I will later comment on the rest but if you are impatient and you don't speak Dutch, you can simply copy and paste into a machine translation engine to get some approximation in English.

The documents don't really say much that is new. They just show the usual diplomatic wobbliness. One can read a little bit between the lines, that's it.

We Venezuelans should also ask the Netherlands how far it will go to collaborate with the current regime in Venezuela. From now on we will keep a much better eye on what the Netherlands is doing towards Venezuela. This regime won't last forever and the Netherlands should know what that means.

Personenkult in Venezuela: Chávez' Geburtstag

Die venezolanische Regierung hatte den Mercosur-Gipfel in Venezuela so organisiert, dass das Ereignis mit dem Geburtstag des Caudillos Chávez zusammenfällt. In Caracas und anderen Städten Venezuelas werden Feierlichkeiten organisiert - inkl. Feuerwerke-, weil der gewaltsame Putschist, de im Jahr 2013 starb (oder Dezember 2012, wir sind noch nicht sicher) heute vor 60 Jahren geboren wurde.

Und so werden nun Mujica aus Uruguay und Vertreter anderer Regierungen Lateinamerikas den Geburtstag dieses toten Militärs mitfeiern müssen. Natürlich sieht man dies anders in Uruguay: ihre Vertreter gehen nach Venezuela, um am Mercosurgipfel teilzunehmen, wie man das hier auf Spanisch lesen kann.

So was haben wir fast

Hugo Carvajal: persona non grata in the Netherlands (updated)

Hugo Carvajal is back in Venezuela. Why did the Dutch foreign minister Timmermans decide to release Carvajal on a Sunday night, very late in the Netherlands, when his functionaries and the judge in Aruba had said on Friday the detention was legit and Carvajal did not have immunity? Why so soon in spite of the request for extradition by NATO partner USA? Did Carvajal have immunity even if he presented a false passport? Were the US over-reacting thinking that false passport would be enough to get Carvajal or was it fair to consider the Dutch should have sent the man to the USA?

Timmermans

The Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf says that according to an officer in Oranestad (Aruba) the order to liberate the retired general came from the foreign minister Timmermans himself. So: the man in charge of the foreign relations for the  Kingdom of the Netherlands took the decision to liberate a man who

1. came in with a false passport, 
2. had over $20000 with him and had not declared that money
3. had not received the placet to become a consul, 
4. was accused by the US of having tortured and murdered two Colombian officials, of having helped a terrorist organisation and being responsible for cocaine trafficking.

Why?

According to the Aruba officer Timmermans departed from the position of his functionaries based on "new information". Timmermans took the people in Aruba by surprise.

Venezuela's regime flew Carvajal directly to Caracas, where he was received by Maduro like a hero in front of masses of Chavistas gathering for the PSUV Congress. The state TV in Venezuela said "the Netherlands has recognised it violated the Vienna Convention".

The Venezuelan government hasn't said Netherlands has declared Carvajal persona non grata. He had to leave Aruba as soon as possible and that he will never be welcome in the Netherlands.

Some hypothesis:

• The Netherlands only wanted to send a message that they didn't want a man with the history of Carvajal as consul. But: why the whole trouble?
• Netherlands is afraid of what the mafiosi could do in the ABC islands 
• Any other hypothesis? 

If you read Dutch, Alpha has collected some general information about this case.

Dutch in Sebrenica

Hugo Carvajal, a perspective

In January 2014 one of the best known Dutch newspapers, De Telegraaf, published an article about  the retired general Hugo Carvajal. A few of the issues it stated were:

• Aruba is worried about the nomination of Carvajal, a general suspected of being involved in drug dealings as Venezuelan consul
• Carvajal has been linked to the torture and killing of two Colombian military men
• The US had him in the Clinton list since 2008 in relation to drug trafficking and the FARC

The Aruban Parliament had been discussing this back then. Opposition deputy Evelyn Wever-Croes from the MEP party had demanded from the Aruban government an explanation. The government responded it was up to Den Haag to decide whether to accept or not the man as a consul. 

Maduro had signed that nomination 16 January of 2014.

There are lots of Venezuelan "diplomats" in the Netherlands and in the ABC islands and it seems incredible none of them read that article. Why was Carvajal going to Aruba at this stage in a private airplane?

Hugo Carvajal was born in 1960. There are two versions about his birth place: Puerto La Cruz, Anzoátegui or Viejo Fresco, close to Maturín, in the Western Llanos (not far from where Diosdado Cabello was born). I believe the right location is the latter. His sister, Wilma Carvajal, is the mayor of the Cedeño municipality, close to Maturín. She won over Pedro Emilio Briceño. I mentioned Briceño's clan in another post about gangsters from the Maturín region. Nepotism was always an issue in Venezuela but we keep reaching new levels.

Back to Hugo Carvajal: he finished his military studies in 1981.

In February 1992 he took part in the bloody coup led by Hugo Chávez. Carvajal was called "the other Hugo" and he was in the same prison with the caudillo until president Rafael Caldera set them free in 1994.

He worked for the Venezuelan Military Intelligence (DIM) from 2002 and he became its head in 2004. In April 2002 he was in Russia for training when the coup against Chávez took place and he came right away from Moscow. He arrived in Caracas and, handling a machine gun, asked everyone he met in the state buildings who was against Chávez. He was one of the first who got into the Miraflores building. He became colonel and vice-head of the Military Intelligence. 2 years later, in 2004, he became the head of the institution. He remained there until 2011.

Carvajal was in charge with negotiating the liberation of Richard Boulton, who was kidnapped by the FARC.

In 2008 United States accused him of cooperating with the FARC. Chávez defended him.

In 2012 opposition deputy Ismael García wrote on his Twitter account someone told him Carvajal and a judge had left the country. This was false but: is there something about this?

24 April 2013 Maduro named him head of Military Counterintelligence, which is the new DIM. If you visit the site of that organisation you will see they don't even update the dates (2012 is the latest).

In 2014, when Maduro decided to send Carvajal to Aruba, he named general Iván Rafael Hernández Dala (born in 1966) the new head of the Military Counterintelligence. Hernández Dala had been colonel until mid 2013.

What game is being played here? What can Ismael García tell us now? Why did Maduro think it was a wise move to propose Carjaval as consul to Aruba? Or did he just sign something proposed by someone else? Who was that?

Maduro's message to the military caste

Maduro had announced a "sacudón", a sort of "economic and political shakeup. I didn't expect but a couple of announcements of totally insufficient measures to tackle the economic breakdown and a lot of palaver about the Empire, the imaginary economic war and how good socialism was. We got absolutely no announcement but a lot of palaver. At the end the state channels showed a special video about the love story of Nicolás Maduro and Cilia Flores. It couldn't get more surreal. 

There was one real message and that Maduro's message to the military. He started his boring speech with threats against those who dare "offend" the army. This came after the opposition criticised Vladimir Padrino, chief of staff, who declared soldiers should be political and the army was to take a political position. 

Since February 1999 the regime has done everything to turn the military caste into full political actors and the managers of everything, in complete opposition to the very constitution the regime leaders introduced. The constitution was nothing but a facade to the outside world.

In any case, Maduro now said the opposition would not be able to divide the army because "the army knew what happens to those who went along with the opposition". He even explained the generals who tried to "take sides with the opposition" (that is, to criticize the current system) not only didn't get jobs with a new government but ended up in jail. He is right. Below you have a list of the Defence Ministers since Chávez became president in 1999. I haven't been able to find reliable information about what some of them are doing right  now, but you can see the pattern.

The first defence minister Chávez had broke with him but he is now basically retired and invisible. The only civilian  in that list, the extreme left oligarch Rangel, is playing his usual role as state journalist.

Two former ministers are ambassadors. One of them, Bellavia, was one of the worst students in his military studies and that really showed every time he opened his mouth, not that the others were precisely rhetorical models.

Four other ministers are currently governors to different states. One of them is currently on a clinch with the minister of Interior, another military coup monger, so he may have to go soon.

Now Maduro was telling the military caste that any official wanting to belong to the Bolivarian coterie needs to be an active agent of the regime.

The executive is now bluntly cocking a snook at anyone who demands respect for the rule of law or a little bit of separation of powers. The government is  nervous because it is running out of money. Yesterday Maduro received the Chinese leader, Xi, and was so submissive to him as not even Venezuelan presidents during the 1958-1998 period were towards US presidents.

More and more people are scunnered with the government. At the same time, they are disappointed with the opposition politicians' behaviour.

In this context, Maduro's message was basically for the military. Other than that, he kept procrastinating. 

Defence Ministers	Term	Current Status
Raúl Alejandro Salazar Rodríguez 29-4-1950	Feb 1999-Feb     2000	retired, critical of Chavismo
Ismael Eliezer Hurtado Soucre 30-1-1950	Feb 2000-Feb 2001	?
José Vicente Rangel Vale 10-7-1921	Feb 2001-Apr 2002	journalist (for the State)
Lucas Enrique Rincón Romero 1-2-1950	Apr 2002-Jul 2004	ambassador to Portugal
José Luis Prieto	Jul 2002-Jan 2004	? His nephew, a businessman, was married to one of Chávez's daughters
Jorge Luis García Carneiro 8-2-1952	Jan 2004-Jul 2005	governor of Vargas
Ramón Orlando Maniglia Ferreira 31-08-1952	Jul 2005-Jun 2007	?  Apparently owns a Cessna. Francia 2012
Raúl Isaías Baduel 6-07-1955	Jun 2006-Jul 2007	in jail
Gustavo Reyes Rangel Briceño 16-8-1956	Jul 2007- Mar 2009	in jail in 2010
Ramón Alonso Carrizales Rengifo 8-11-1952	Mar 2009- Jan 2010	governor of Apure
Carlos José Mata Figueroa 30-10-1957	Jan 2010- Jan 2012	governor of Nueva Esparta
Henry de Jesús Rangel Silva 28-8-1961	Jan     2012– Oct 2012	governor of Trujillo
Diego Alfredo Molero Bellavia 12-1-1960	Oct 2012 - Jul 2013	ambassador to Brazil
Carmen Teresa Meléndez Rivas	Jul 2013	current minister

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.

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.

Little things Venezuelan thugs use

I read the news today...yet another attack by Venezuelan thugs against police. Everything started after the security services killed three gangsters a few days ago.

Just one thing mentioned on the side: the attackers outgunned the police forces. The thugs were using AR-15. Do you know what that is?

Those things look like these:

Do you think they could have got them from the military?

Maduro, die Militärs und die Nationalversammlung

Maduro ist ein Zivilist. Er dankt seiner Macht aber Chávez, einem Militär und dazu Putschist. Er ist nur da, weil die Militärs es wollen. Darum will er immer wieder zeigen, wie sehr er diese Leute liebt. Zur Zeit spricht er immer häufiger über die Notwendigkeit, eine zivil-militärische Union zu verstärken. 

Morgen Mittwoch wird er vor der Nationalversammlung reden. In Venezuela braucht der Präsident nur einmal im Jahr vor der Versammlung zu erscheinen. Er muss keine Fragen beantworten, im Gegensatz zu einem Premier in einer parlamentarischen Demokratie. Von daher war es sinnlos, wie die Chávez-Apologeten die Abhebung der Amtszeitbegrenzung für Venezuela erklären wollten.

Maduro wird sprechen wie er will. Er kann sagen, bestimmte Oppositionellen sind Diebe und Mörder (schon gesagt), was auch immer: er darf das sagen, weil die Justiz in Venezuela ihm völlig unterordnet ist. Und die Staatsmedien werden seine Worte immer wieder wiederholen und die der Opposition nie, es sei denn, um sie zielgericht für Propagandazwecke zu benutzen.

Das ist die Regierung, die die Linksextremisten in Deutschland wollen.

"Ach, wenn Deutschland von Chávez gelernt hätte"

A bloody coup monger as minister of Interior, Justice and Peace...and other things from the Venezuelan fraud

I just write this to remind foreigners about who the people in power in Venezuela are.

Miguel Eduardo Rodríguez Torres, the current minister of "the Popular Power of Interior, Justice and Peace", was one of the coup mongers who attacked the Presidential House in February 1992. He lead a group of military who killed quite a lot of innocent people there.

He has been involved in the training of the paramilitary Bolivarian circles.

He has been in charge of the security services SEBIN.

And he is one of the many pseudo-revolutionaries who want to minimize the crime situation in Venezuela.

As Rocío San Miguel explains, this guy has now managed to increase his power. He can be considered as influential among the military strongmen as that other coup monger, Diosdado Cabello.

Yesterday Maduro ratified Rodríguez in his position and proceeded to change some ministers, as Chavismo so often does. Below you can see a chart of the new changes.

There is a bad singer who got the ministry of Sports as he was not elected as mayor last December. He replaced a woman who was at that position for just a few months. There is another former coup monger, Wilmer Barrietos, who now became head of the "Despacho para la Presidencia", a sort of Presidential Office - don't mix up with the Presidential Secretary.