And now in Greater Valencia (II)

Different sources - including friends of mine - are reporting many red buses that were supposed to be used for general public transport are being used right now to bring committed Chavistas to vote in Greater Valencia. The government had imported over 200 of those buses at the beginning of this year and they were mostly stored without being used. People were protesting about that. Well: now Chavistas can use them to vote.

Public, for the extreme left, like for the extreme right, are only they. The others are Untermenschen or, as the late caudillo Chávez used to call us, escuálidos.

Wenn Ausländer nicht mehr nötig sind im Sozialismus des 21. Jahrhunderts

Die Maduro-Regierung versucht, den freien Fall in Hinblick auf die Wahlen der Nationalversammlung Anfang Dezember zu vermeiden. Dafür hat die Regierung die Grenzen zwischen Venezuela und Kolumbien im dichtbevölkerten Bundesstaat Táchira geschlossen und Tausende Kolumbianer ohne gültige Aufenthaltsgenehmigung des Landes verwiesen.

Dieses Foto ist noch von den Zeiten als Chávez noch lebte: "Kinder von Scheisseinwanderern: raus!" Gemeint sind vor allem die Kinder vieler Europäer, die mit der Chávez-Regierung nicht sympathisierten

Nun häufen sich Berichte über wie die Militärs Illegale anderswo festnehmen. Hier kann man zum Beispiel lesen, wie die Guardia Nacional im Groß-Caracas-Gebiet 21 Ausländer ohne gültige Aufenthaltsgenehmigung festnahm...einige von ihnen sollen "privates Eigentum besetzt haben". Man wusste schon seit vielen Jahren, dass es überall Menschen gab, die illegal Wohnungen besetzten und es sind nicht nur Ausländer: es sind Menschen, die leer stehende Wohnungen, oft Wohnungen, die noch nicht fertig gestellt waren, besetzen und diese dann an andere Menschen "vermieten". Dies hat Chávez toleriert, ja befördert, da seine Regierung nicht schnell genug Sozialwohnungen bauen konnte (er hatte weniger Sozialwohnungen pro Jahr gekauft als die Regierung Caldera II, die nur ein Bruchteil der Petrodollars erzielen konnte). 

Nun werden die Ausländer unter den Okkupas+ gezielt als Kriminelle identifiziert. Wahrscheinlich wird man auch sagen, dass die USA-Regierung und die Opposition diese Menschen nach Venezuela gebracht hat.

Diese Maßnahmen der Regierung können in die Hose gehen. Einerseits kann sie die Ausländerfeindlichkeit einiger Gruppen benutzen. Anderseits gibt es jede Menge Venezolaner, die die Ausländerfeindlichkeit ablehnen oder selbst Einwanderer ersten Grades sind (wir sind alle schließlich Einwanderer).

Fast Plünderung in Makro, Valencia / Almost Looting in Makro, Valencia

Saqueo en Macro en Valencia pic.twitter.com/9lAU2yA98j

— Nerida koller (@NeridaKoller) August 4, 2015

That's the mood in Venezuela. A few days ago the looting took place in San Felix, Guayana.

Things got under control...sort of.

La Guerre au Vénézuéla aux temps du Chavismo

If you speak French, you should listen to this. If you don't but you know French speakers  who want to know about Venezuela, send them the link, please.

Thanks to Alexandra for tweeting that and to Julien, in the first place, for that excellent report.

Parliamentary elections in Venezuela: it doesn't get shoddier than this

The head of the very Chavista National Electoral Council just said the parliamentary elections will take place some time in the last 3 months of 2015. It couldn't be fuzzier than that. The elections had to take place this year, they have to be announced 3 months in advance and the "primaries" of the different parties, obviously, had to take place before that. Last but not least, even the parliament of our big neighbour Brazil, had already warned Venezuela's government should set the date for the elections.

The CNE already "reduced" the population of six electoral districts where the opposition had the clear majority and increase more than expected population in very Chavista areas of the same states in order to reduce the amount of deputies the opposition could get and increase those of the regime. Gerrymandering as in 2010 is not enough anymore.

Die Nordkoreanisierung Venezuelas

Zur Zeit findet der Dritte Kongress der Sozialistischen Einheitspartei Venezuelas oder, wie die Linken in Wikipedia übersetzt haben, um böse Assoziierungen zu vermeiden, der Vereinigten Sozialistischen Partei Venezuelas, statt. Das ist die Regierungspartei, die vom Caudillo Chávez gegründet wurde.

Die 73-jährige Abgeordnete María León schlug vor, Hugo Chávez Frías zum Ewigen Präsidenten der Partei zu erklären. Da Herr Chávez seit 2012 nicht mehr spricht, ja seit April 2013 tot ist, schlugen sie und andere PSUV-Politiker vor, Nicolás Maduro zugleich zum Präsidenten der Partei zu ernennen. Also: der eine ist der ewige Präsident und der andere ist einfach der Präsident der Partei. Seit letztem Jahr sagen die Chavistas, dass Chávez nicht tot, sondern "im venezolanischen Volke gesät sei". Die meisten Venezolaner sagen nun mit Humor, wenn etwas im öffentlichen Leben schon wieder nicht funktioniert, dass Chávez da gesät wurde.

900 Delegierten werden bei den Diskussionen dieses Kongresses auftreten. 363 von ihnen sind delegados natos. Das heißt: sie sind "angeborene Delegierten". Sie werden nicht gewählt, sondern sind schon da: es handelt sich um die alten Bonzen.

Genossin León - eine dieser angeborenen Delegierten- erklärte, man würde unter anderem diskutieren, wie der Chavismus eine anti-imperialistische, sozialistische, bürgerlich-Militär- und feministische Doktrin" sei. 

Norway versus Venezuela, the Ministries

Norway and Venezuela have some things in common.

• They both have oil and gas
• They both have beautiful landscapes
• They both have a minority of "First Nations" (Even if Sami and Native Americans had different interactions to the majority of the population, they also have many similar concerns)

Even so, as any visitor to both countries can tell you, these two countries couldn't be more apart. You can see wealth in Norway. It is, indeed a rich country. Venezuela is a poor country that insists it is rich because of its soil. Venezuela's population does not realise a country is only rich when the population has the productivity, the education and the organisation to use that soil or to generate wealth from other means, as Japan or Switzerland do. Norway's population reached many decades back levels of education - literacy and numeracy, for instance - that haven't been attained in Venezuela to this day.

The murder rate in Norway is about 1/60 of what Venezuela has now (1/19 of what Venezuela had in 1998). There are no shortages of electricity or other goods in Norway (unless you count the sun as a good). Tourism is well organised in Norway. In Venezuela tourist infrastructure is extremely bad.

Most importantly, Norway has a rule of law and separation of powers.

Here I try to compare bureaucracy in both countries. I try to compare ministries in Norway and in Venezuela. This is a hard task. Many things that a ministry does in one country are the tasks of other institutions in the other. In some case, there are ministries in Norway that do not exist in Venezuela but that is the case for a few only: Fisheries in Norway is something more or less carried out by 2) in Venezuela. The Ministry for Government Administration is something that is not quite available in Venezuela, although Planificación used to do a bit of that. The Ministry for Regions is not existent in Venezuela, although it is  something carried out by a couple of the 111 viceministries Venezuela has.

Chávez came to power promising to reduce the number of ministries. He increased them and no one dared to tell him what a liar he was. The number went from about 10 to 31. The number is now between 30 and 33 depending on how you count. Even ministers in Venezuela are not sure what is a ministry anymore.

Venezuelans have a ministry for Women, another for Youth and another one for the First Nations when those things are the matter of one ministry in Norway: the one for Children, Equality and Inclusion. Notice that Norwegians don't say "Ministry for Women" even if women in Venezuela and even many countries in Europe can envy the position women in Norway have.

Venezuela has a ministry for Sports even if it does so poorly in sports. Norway has that as part of the Ministry of Culture, but also of Health and Education.

Norway has a ministry of Education and Research, like Venezuela before Chavismo, but now Venezuela has a ministry for Education, one for University Education and another one for Research...even if research in Venezuela - very limited - has almost totally collapsed since the military and boligarchs are in power.

Venezuela under Chavismo has a ministry for Trade and a different one for Industries, even if industries have gone down the drain.

It also has a ministry for Tourism even if there are no decent public offices of tourism (the opposite of Norway and most other countries without such a ministry), a ministry for Housing even though the housing problem becomes worse and worse than it ever was, a ministry for Communication that is nothing but a Propaganda Ministry, a ministry for Communes and Social Protection, another one for Jails, one for the "Revolutionary Transformation of Caracas" and, last but not least, one for electricity.

My thanks go to S.H. for his input about Norway's bureaucracy. 

Office of Prime Minister	1) Despacho de la Presidencia y  Seguimiento de la Gestión del  Gobierno
Agriculture and food	2) Agricultura y tierras
	3) Alimentacion
Fisheries and coastal affairs
Children, equality and inclusion	4) Mujeres, igualdad de género
	5) Juventud
	6) Pueblos indígenas
Culture	7) Cultura
	8) Deporte
Defence	9) Defensa
Education and research	10) Educación universitaria
	11) Educación
	12) Ciencia, tecnología e innovación
Environment	13) Ambiente
Finance	14) Economía, finanzas y banca pública
Foreign affairs	15) Relaciones exteriores
Government administration, reform & church affairs	$) Planificación
Local and regional government
Health and care services	16) Salud
Justice & police	17) Relaciones interiores, justicia y paz
Labour	18) Trabajo y seguridad social
Petroleum and energy	19) Petróleo y minería
Trade & industry	20) Comercio
	21) Industrias
Transport and communications	22) Transporte terrestre
	23) Transporte acuático y aéreo
	24) Turismo
	25) Vivienda y hábitat
	26) Comunicación y la información
	27) Comunas y protección social
	28) Servicio penitenciario
	29) Transformación Revolucionaria de la Gran Caracas 30) Electricidad

Here you see the GDP growth of both Norway and Venezuela across decades.

This year you will see the red line go under the zero level once more. Chavistas will say the cause is capitalism and the "Economic War". We know it is not. Norway's GDP will grow less than in previous year but Norway is not likely to enter into a major recession. Norway has always tried to develop policies for sustainable development. Venezuela is quite the opposite and this attitude has been at its worst since Chavismo is in power.

Murder in the Land of the Pseudo-Revolution: United Nations' Report

 Here you have the latest UNODC report on crime in the whole world. The key part on page 35:

"South America now has the same homicide rate as in 1995, which is the result of very different trends at the country level. For example, Colombia’s homicide rate has been decreasing since 1996 but remains at a very high level, while the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is the only country in South America that has had a consistently increasing homicide rate since 1995. Other countries in the region have quite stable homicide rates, but at different levels: Brazil’s homicide rate is quite stable and high, while hom- icide rates in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay are stable and lower, which gives them homicide pro- files closer to those of European countries. " 

Also take a look at this here (from page 38 of the same report):

GDP, Venezuela, Nigeria and Norway

Sycophants for the Venezuelan regime, people like Mark Weisbrot in the USA, often talked about the impressive GDP growth shown in the last decade or so. Of course, such impressive GDP rates are no longer present. But: did they ever mean something, at all?

GDP growth is, at most, a faint indicator of something. It can hardly be used to compared countries with different population rates and levels of actual development.

 Look at the following chart. It shows simple GDP growth according to the World Bank for three oil-exporting countries: Nigeria, Norway and Venezuela. As you can see, Nigeria supposedly "outperformed both Venezuela and Norway during most of the last 20 years. The Nigerian government didn't have the same amount of propaganda consultants as Chávez's regime. Few if anyone was talking about development there. 

There is another thing you can notice: both Venezuela and Nigeria show a very unstable growth. Periods of huge hikes switch to deep falls. Norway, on the other hand, remains smoothly just over the positive line.

Positive and negative years don't balance each other. What gets destroyed is gone. You cannot build on destroyed value. It is obviously much easier to show a rise if you firstly fall but that rise means almost nothing. You don't really have to be an economist to understand this.

The data reaches only up to 2012. Last year Venezuela grew by only 1.2% and that growth was based on a massive spending of loaned money. There was hardly any investment. It was money to buy food and appliances and a little bit of housing - but hardly enough - for yet a new couple of election rounds, elections that are supposed to show Venezuela has a democracy even if there isn't the slightest remain of rule of law. 

Venezuela's GDP is likely to stay very low in the coming years and the actual GDP per capita will keep going down as long as Chavismo is in power. Chavismo and its sycophants abroad will blame it on capitalism or some US embargo. Norway is likely to keep its humble but steady growth.

Further Cubanization when Cuba is trying to un-Cubanize itself

A few days earlier, the government came up with a new law forcing landlords to offer on sale "at the fair price" the houses they have been renting for twenty or more years. They have 60 days to prepare the whole paperwork and then offer those houses. Evidently, the Boligarchs who own real-state usually own new buildings, so they won't be affected. A lot of middle-class people coming to nothing will lose their livelihood. The "fair price" is something Maduro's regime decides on its own. This is its solution to its failure in building social housing. The Chávez government was less capable of building flats and houses for the poor than the government of Caldera II, even if Chávez had over 500% the money and 300% the time Caldera had. The Association of Landowners is trying to have this law repealed, but we know how justice goes in Venezuela.

The government is also introducing the ration card for its Mercal supermarkets. People will have to give all kind of personal data and, most importantly, their finger prints. The government says this is to "make the system more efficient". In reality, it is because it doesn't have enough money to finance so much food under market prices. The ration card will aggravate the already bad shortage situation in less poor areas. 

It goes like this:

A large proportion of the poor work as illegal  street vendors to survive - curiously, the government counts them as "employed", so that Venezuela has a 7% unemployment figure when in reality about 50% of the population are street vendors and illegal taxi drivers and the like who more often than not live much worse off than the 26% who are unemployed in Spain.

These people often queue up in shops to buy products at regulated prices and resell those products at a much higher price - usually more than twice -.

Since last December, street vendors have had to spend more time queueing up to buy more products at controlled prices so that they can sell them at a higher price in order to be able to pay off for more and more expensive non-regulated products.

As there are not enough products at regulated prices in the Mercal centres, they spend more and more time in the middle class areas, making shopping there a nightmare for locals...by nightmare we are talking about queues of more than 200 people and frequent rows, actual fighting.

Tension will escalate.

Maduro's disarray with the Musical Chairs

We got used to Chávez constantly changing ministers. That was how he infused fear and kept his followers tame. Some of the ministers he removed never came back. Some became opposition or simply outcasts. Some others went to embassies or national institutes. Some kept returning. There is the incredible case of one of his fellow coupsters, Jesse Chacón, who between 2003 and 2013 became, among other things, minister of the Presidency, minister of Telecommunications and Informatics, minister of Science and Technology, minister of Communication and Information (twice) and minister of Justice. Chacón did a couple of other things then as well. He didn't occupy more positions because he had to keep a low profile while his brother Arné Chacón was in jail for a while for becoming billionaire too fast and showing it off too bluntly. Arné is again a free  man and Jesse Chacón is minister of Electricity.

Maduro hasn't been president for one year and yet he has made a couple of rounds of musical chairs. Now we got what might be considered a record: on 15 January he appointed economist and former union leader José Salamat Khan Fernández as Minister of Commerce. Yesterday Maduro announced - using US Twitter- that he wished José well and that he was appointing as new minister Dante Rivas, a geographer who had been minister for the Environment for some months only. 

Call me a sentimental, but I had to capture the moment. Yesterday we had this:

and today we have this:

What do we see apart from the fact he got 20 new followers? Well...yesterday we had

"Minister of the Popular Power for Commerce"

and now:

"Today we have Fatherland. Make no mistake! Today we have Nation. Make no mistake! Chávez lives"

I leave it to psychologists and discourse analysts to ponder on those words. I think there might be something about the fact José realised national production had to increase...and that is not going to happen as long as Maduro is in power. Or am I reading too much into one of his past tweets, when he said he wanted national production to increase?

The way Maduro handled that ministry is just one example. Now, if you want to read more about the new minister that will promote trade (we have lots of other ministers for economic matters), you can read some rubbish in Spanish here or simply look at this picture: the geographer has a Chávez puppet in his (current) work desk and a painting of Che Guevara on top of his sound box.

As for Venezuela's trade and economy in general: I'll write about it on a later post.

Justice ministers in Venezuela and elsewhere: what are they made of?

In the tables below you can see the list of ministers for Interior and Justice of Brazil, Chile and Venezuela since late 1998, with their professions. For Venezuela I added a star sign next to the name of those who very openly fell out of love with Chavismo - i.e. had a very public quarrel with Chávez. Brazil has serious problems with violent crime but the situation is better than it was in the nineties. Chile has violent crime levels that are so low as to be the envy of all of Latin America. Venezuela, on the other hand, is one of the most dangerous countries on Earth now. The murder rate of Brazil is about a third that of Venezuela. Just in case: I am not making big judgements on the value of a university degree for becoming a "Minister of Justice". I have heard quite some rumours about Venezuelan El Aissami and what he did when he was studying. He was the only one who studied law among Chávez's ministers in this field. But those are rumours. I hardly know anything about the different ministers in those other countries. Still, I think there is a pattern here. We need to remember this now, when in Venezuela Maduro is again talking about a stronger "civic-military" union.

BRAZIL
Renan Calheiros	“Politician”	1998
José Carlos Dias	Lawyer	1999
José Gregori	Lawyer	2000
Aloysio Nunes Ferreira Filho	Lawyer	2001
Miguel Reale Júnior	Lawyer	2002
Paulo de Tarso Ramos Ribeiro	Lawyer	2002
Márcio Thomaz Bastos	Lawyer	2003
Tarso Genro	Lawyer	2007
Luiz Paulo Barreto	Economist	2010
José Eduardo Cardozo	Lawyer	2011
CHILE
Raúl Troncoso Castillo	Lawyer	1998
José Miguel Insulza Salinas	Lawyer	2000
Francisco Vidal Salinas	History	2005
Andrés Zaldívar Larraín	Lawyer	2006
Belisario Velasco Baraona	None	2006
Edmundo Pérez Yoma	Arts,Entrepreneur	2008
Rodrigo Hinzpeter Kirberg	Lawyer	2010
Andrés Pío Bernardino Chadwick Piñera	Lawyer	2012
VENEZUELA
Luis Miquilena*	"Politician", union leader	1999
Ignacio Araya*	International Relations	2000
Luis Alfonso Dávila*	Military	2000
Luis Miquilena*	"Politician", union leader	2001
Ramón Rodríguez Chacín	Military	2002
Diosdado Cabello	Military	2002
Lucas Rincón Romero	Military	2003
Jesse Chacón Escamillo	Military	2004
Pedro Carreño	Military	2006
Ramón Rodríguez Chacín	Military	2007
Tarek El Aissami	Lawyer	2008
Néstor Reverol	Military	2012
Miguel Rodríguez Torres	Military	2013

Der Ministeriendschungel im bolivarischen Venezuela

Sehr verehrte Leserinnen und Leser,


Hier haben Sie eine Übersicht über die 30 Ministerien und 111 Vizeministerien, die Nicolas Maduro schaffen oder umgestalten will. 

Als Maduros Vorgänger und Idol, der Caudillo Chávez, an die Macht kam, versprach er, die Ministerien der "4. Republik" drastisch zu reduzieren. Stattdessen wurden es mehr. Schlimmer noch: Chávez wechselte die Minister durchschnittlich jedes Jahr, manchmal schneller. So hatte seine Regierung in 14 Jahren 12 Innenminister. Die Mordrate Venezuela ist in dieser Zeit um über 300% gestiegen.

Maduro will diese Tradition fortsetzen. Ich habe in Gelb die Vizeministerien gezeichnet, die ich besonders albern finde. Unter diesen Vizeministerien zählt man das Vizeministerium für das Höchste Soziale Glück des Volkes und das Vizeministerium für die physische Aktivität.

Eine der interessantesten Stellen ist die des Vizeministers für Soziale Netzwerke des Ministeriums für die Volksmacht der Kommunikation und der Information.

Man kann das Bild klicken und vergrößern!

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.

Nepotism in times of Maduro

Here you can see a very selective network of nepotism in Venezuela's government. The vertices in green represent those agents who were military coup mongers. I only put there the deceased Chávez because he was the leader of them all.

The vertices in pink are those persons who are working now in a high level position in government because they are the mothers or wives of someone else in the network. You can see the relationship of others by checking the different edge labels.

This is just work in progress. There are many more to be added and I will probably have to use another representation tool to show them all. Maduro and his wife have been particularly eager to reduce unemployment or badly paid jobs among their relatives.

Ein Tag im Leben Venezuelas: von einer Deutschen erzählt

Hier könnt Ihr den Bericht einer deutschen Freundin über die Lage in meinem Land lesen.Viele Mitteleuropäer wanderten selbst vor 30, 40 Jahren nach Venezuela ein. Jetzt bleiben dort nur einzelne dieser Europäer. Sie verlassen das Land, wie Hundertausende Venezolaner es schon verlassen haben. 

Ihr könnt hier verstehen warum.

Wangelware in einem der früher reichsten Länder Lateinamerikas

Bin bei einer Freundin in einem anderen Dorf. Diese Freundin ist etwas älter und hat einige Krankheiten, ich habe also die Nummer für den Mercal-Einkauf geholt, ihr einen Stuhl hingestellt und selbst ganze zwei Stunden stehend gewartet bis wir mit unserer Nummer 83 dran kamen. Ich weiß warum ich mich nie in die Schlange stelle, ich war hinterher total fertig, bei dieser Hitze stehen, gehen wäre noch besser gewesen. Als wir fertig waren, waren 150 Nummern vergeben. Wir hatten Glück gehabt, um sechs klingelte das Telefon und wir wurden informiert, dass ein Mercal-Markt auf einem der Plätze aufgebaut wird. Als ich die Nummer holte, waren sie mit dem Aufbau noch nicht ganz fertig. Ein Packet Milch haben wir so erstanden, mehr durften wir nicht. In den normalen Läden ist Milch weder flüssig noch als Pulver nicht mehr zu finden und das jetzt seit mehreren Monaten. Dann konnte sie sich noch in eine andere Reihe stellen zur medizinischen Untersuchung. Sie hat Husten und ihr tut der Bauch weh. Es erfolgte noch nicht einmal eine Untersuchung mit Stethoskop, Antibiotika (aus Kuba) geschenkt und weitere Medikamente aufgeschrieben (zum selbst bezahlen) und das war es. Dafür hätte man auch keinen Arzt gebraucht. Wenn ich in Deutschland zum Arzt gehe und von Bauchschmerzen berichte, dann wird abgetastet und abgehorcht, mit dem Stethoskop, mehr braucht man dafür nicht. Was ich seltsam fand, war das eine Dame zunächst in ihrer Zivilkleidung ankam, dann kurz vor der Ecke an der der Mercal-Markt aufgebaut wurde, ein rotes T-Shirt aus der Tasche holte und es sich überzog und danach damit beschäftigt war den Ablauf zu kontrollieren. Klopapier im Osten Venezuelas kostet inzwischen pro Rolle 10 BsF, in meiner Stadt bezahlt man für 4 Rollen 17BsF. Also habe ich 6 Rollen Klopapier in den Koffer gepackt, als Mitbringsel.

Failed state Venezuela: what Cubans, Boligarchs and the Venezuelan military do to my country

If you want to know how screwed the economy of Venezuela is, you just need to read this list an European friend living in Venezuela sent me.

Butter, a luxury in Venezuela under Chavismo

There is Manchego cheese from Spain and good olive oil and black olives, also from Spain. There is French mustard. There is no maize flour [our usual maize], there is no wheat flour [our second choice], there is no margarine and no butter. Finally there is some milk and tooth paste are back. There is finally toilet paper now, available at a drugstore but only the rand Rosal, which is produced close by.

You might think life is not that bad if people in another continent can afford to buy Spanish cheese. But those foreign products that are available are very expensive for the  average Venezuelan and many of the others most people need all the time. 

 As you read: things like milk or tooth paste are only available sporadically. And you have to wait in line for hours to get many products, from tooth paste to chicken. Perhaps you can find expensive Buffalo meat somewhere if you have the money.

Almost everything that should be produced in Venezuela is not produced in the country in sufficient quantities, it is subject to price controls and almost everything that is under price control in Venezuela is scarce. 

Because production is collapsing the Cuban-military government in Venezuela decides to import as much as it can from its allied countries and even from the "evil-evil" United States. It imports from allied countries often at much higher prices than the international market prices. The Venezuelan (Cuban-military) government prefers to do so than give money to the ailing Venezuelan industry.

And this is something you seldom hear from the people in Caracas: almost every other region in Venezuela is subject to constant blackouts because the electricity network is a mess. In the average city you can have a blackout every second day. Sometimes blackouts last for several minutes only, but every second time you are without electricity for two or more hours.

This seldom happened before 1998.

This is what a highly corrupt government controlled from Cuba and paralized by ideological zealotry does to Venezuela.

Governments such as Brazil won't lift a finger. They are having a wonderful time as the Venezuelan Boligarchs buy overpriced products and keeps a huge trade deficit with them.

Venezuela's infamous revolution and the sense of injustice

Some days ago Venezuela's strongman declared the country had seen a dramatic decrease in "the number of crimes". He talked about 20% reduction in Carabobo, for instance (here). There were no details about how that 20% was measured, how a "crime" is seen now or one year ago. That is absolute rubbish, though. Crime in real Venezuela goes on unabated. In fact, it just keeps getting worse and worse. Chávez didn't talk about the murder rate, of course. He knows murder is more difficult to re-define than a fluffy concept such as "crime", even if even murders are now counted in a more restrictive fashion.

An NGO published new stats about the clearance rate for murder in Venezuela. It stands at about 3%. Try to grasp what that means: from every 100 murders in Venezuela, 97 remain unresolved, the criminals remain at large. Look at the chart. In red you see the percentage of murders that have not been solved and in cyan you see what has been solved.

The clearance rate for Germany is around 96%...against 3 for "socialist Venezuela".

Latin America in general shows very high murder rates. Lots of people specially in the USA and Britain talk about the rampant crime in Mexico, the drug wars there. Indeed, Mexico is in a mess. Some useful idiots abroad mention the case of Mexico to explain Venezuela is not the only major country in America with a high murder rate. But if you put things under perspective, you will see Venezuela under Chávez is in a league of its own. Check out The Economist's interactive map of Mexico to get an idea and bear in mind:  Venezuela's murder rate is now around 70 murders per 100 000 inhabitants, twice as many as the second most dangerous country in South America, Colombia, and only slightly surpassed by tiny Honduras and Guatemala.

Juan Cristobal and other bloggers have been discussing for a long time whether Venezuela is still a democracy or not. Juan Cristobal is particularly depressed because of the surprise he seems to have got with last elections' results. It is as if he were telling us: "it is not so much a problem of democracy but of people's will and this is what most want". 

But the thing is this: democracy is by any means much more than elections. This is something even those Greeks opposed to Plato's model of democracy would agree with. Most Greeks understood 2400 years ago what most Venezuelans still do not get.

One of the key requirements to call a system democratic is the existence of the rule of law.

There is none in Venezuela.

L'Etat...c'est Chávez

If someone abroad wants to understand the unwillingness of Chávez and his honchos to differentiate between State and themselves, between national resources and Chávez's interests, he just has to analyse state news in Venezuela.

The National Electoral Council (CNE) is obliged by law to fine the government if this tries to use state resources for propaganda purpuses...but it doesn't except for one or two isolated cases because its directive is made up of Chávez' staunchest supporters plus one token opposition member whose comments are basically ignored.

Look at the site of the national Venezolana de Televisión:

You have Chávez's election slogan (Chávez: Corazón de Mi Patria), a link to more propaganda, a link to Chávez's site and to Chávez's twitter account.

Nothing new in the Bolivarian front (updated)

There was nothing new to report on the Bolivarian front. Just over 24 prisoners got killed during the last "disturbances" in the last couple of days in Yare prison. Dozens were wounded. Apparently, everything started when one of the prisoners accidentally triggered a rifle. Accidents can happen in Venezuela. 

The murder count for Venezuelan prisons is well over 300 this year and we are set to break a new record. Alexander von Humboldt, who complained already two centuries ago about the state of our prisons, would find it hard to grasp that  things are going back to the worst of the worst.

But then - Chávez's sycophants will say - we are just on the year XIII of the Bolivarian Revolution. Apparently, things have to keep getting worse for a little while...just a little while.

Ps. apologies: I first got the wrong prison name, mixed up  Yare with El Rodeo...but there have been some riots there as well recently, only that not as deadly as usual. The death toll in Yare is worse than initially thought, though.