Making the impossible in Venezuela

Lots of Venezuelans have been trying to get rid of a damaging regime since at least 1999. Time after time efforts failed.  Lots of opportunities were lost because the democratic forces let corrupt or undemocratic people take the lead or because there was no union or planning. Sometimes we were let down by countries we helped in the past. The longest oil price boom we saw in the last few decades enabled Chavismo to consolidate power until division of powers was completely over and the judiciary and electoral authorities became complete tools of the regime.

Now people are desperate but they are also tired. Probably up to two million Venezuelans have emigrated in the last decade...many were among the best qualified the country has. And yet we cannot stop. We need to make sure Venezuela does not turn into another Cuba, Somalia or worse.

It won't be easy. It won't be easy because even among those who have always realise what an aberration the Chavista ideas were, even those who saw the criminal or psychotic record of Chavista leaders and the psychological games played do not often recognise some key socioeconomic realities...things like the fact Venezuela was never really wealthy, not in a sustainable way. Most Venezuelans do not have an inkling of what political debates actually are...the closest they have seen are US debates, which are a particular thing.

Let's start. And let's see how some of those ideas can go into the Spanish Venezuelan sphere.

Chavista honchos have a lot to lose. They will do anything even if that involves all kinds of criminal acts in order to remain in power. A lot of people have discussed about the need to pardon these criminals like democratic forces did in South Africa or Chile. The thing is whether we are dealing with people that reason like the autocrats of South Africa and Chile or those of Zimbabwe and Cuba.

We also keep hearing about Chavista criminals who call US intelligence agencies and cut a deal in order to run away before total collapse, confess in the US and leave a life of obscure safety and no more tension. We have seen already dozens of these characters. Leaving the main criminals alone hasn't done so much much to change the game.

I won't go into the "what to do with the criminals" just yet. I am not sure, I have to own up. I do think we need to talk about what we must do now to get them out of power whether there is some "amnesty for criminals" or a stronger stance towards them.

Rodrigo Linares is one of those Venezuelan bloggers who try to be constructive and discuss peaceful resistance. He analysis in his last post the exaggerated optimism of a specific Venezuelan commentator and he briefly mentions at the end we need to target 2018's elections from now on. I do hope he goes into more detail about that...from now on and we are able to get the debate going in our language, Spanish.

Chavista honchos think ahead and have a plan B, C, D up to Z. The Venezuelan opposition leaders have been mostly thinking very short term or, in any case, in a not very clever way.

I believe we need to openly discuss - and explain to the whole world - how Chavistas will block anything, how exactly they will do. We need to be creative and think what Chavistas will produce...and then openly - just as openly as possible - say how those actions can be averted no matter what.

I will go into that in a post this week.

Alexander von Humboldt and the environment

Alexander von Humboldt was born one day like today in 1769.

Here you have an interesting article - in Spanish - about global warming and Humboldt.

I wish scientists could carry out the same kind of experiments in Venezuela as they did in Ecuador now and see what level of environment destruction has taken place in what he visited 215 years ago. Unfortunately, Venezuela is now a complete failed  state so that it is almost impossible to carry out scientific work without getting mugged or worse. 

Oh, Alexander! If you saw how much Venezuelans have managed to destroy their environment!

Productivity in the US, Germany and Venezuela

I was reading Juan's post on Caracas Chronicles and then remembered this.

Think about that and think about how that could be applied to Venezuela once Chavismo is over.

GDP per capita for Chile, Colombia and Venezuela

Venezuela's GDP is bound to drop significantly between this year and 2015. The data you see here speaks for itself. Of course, Chavismo will say Venezuela has now the best GINI coefficient in the Milky Way. That doesn't seem to compute very well with the fact Venezuela has the highest murder rate in South America and crime is provoked, to a big extent, by inequality.


Source: IMF

The tomatindex, onionindex and chickindex in Venezuela

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sources:

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

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

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

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

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

Price per kg, Bs

Item                             1998              2014

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

Housing in Venezuela and the current crisis

Most people outside Venezuela don't really know how badly the housing situation in Venezuela is. In Venezuela, on the other hand, everybody knows the situation is very bad but most don't even imagine how poorly Venezuela compares to most of the American continent. If they knew, they would be much angrier.

An average school teacher in Venezuela of today earns around 5,556 Bolivares.  The government always  tries to use the most favourable official exchange rate it has to express that in its propaganda. If we were use that rate, that teacher would earn around 655 euros a month. In reality, most things cannot be calculated using that rate. We could try to see how to use other rates, but that is a gruesome and unreliable exercise. 

Instead, we should better consider the purchasing power as how much of your salary is needed to get some basic things, like housing. 

Too few, too slow, too badly

If you wanted to have a flat of 49 m2 - not precisely your favourite penthouse - in Valencia, the third largest city of Venezuela, you would have to pay about 16,000 Bolívares. That is: the whole salary of a normal school teacher is just a third of what needs just to live in a small flat in Venezuela.

Cops earn less. Most people earn less.

In spite of all the talking Chavismo has built less social houses than the previous governments, which had less petrodollars for that. A

According to the promises Chávez made in 2011, the State and the private sector would build in 2013 380,000 housing units. Instead, it managed to build 164300. That's a way below expectation. And now the government is really running out of  money.

Most of the housing units built now have been constructed without any proper permit and without any provision about new schools, hospitals, green areas around.

And this is one of the many reasons why people are going to the streets now. This is a huge huge time bomb, even if most Venezuelans don't know a teacher in maligned Spain or the US or even Chile can actually afford to rent a flat and even buy food with his salary!

Venezuela's non-oil sector 15 years after the military came to power

Boligarchs have a lot of chutzpah. They have repeatedly talked about the need to diversify Venezuela's economy, which is hugely dependent on oil prices. They have done so from the very start and the reason is that they knew they had to do it. And their followers nodded and said "how right our leaders are". That's the way to go. That's how Arturo Úslar Pietri said we should go already back in 1937.

Of course, it has all been hot air, like everything this regime has promised.

This chart, produced with data from the Central Bank, shows the dollar value for export of goods from 1997 until 2012. In green you can see the goods related to oil (mostly crude oil). In yellow you see everything else. The share of "alternative" export sources went from 31% of all exports to 4%. That is quite dramatic. One could say this was unavoidable, as OPEC oil prices rose from 12 dollars a barrel in 1998 to something around $104 today. But then even the total amount of dollars from non-oil sources has dropped. We went from exporting 5541 million dollars in non-oil-related goods to exporting 3694 million dollars fifteen years later.

The Venezuelan government is made up of utterly incompetent people whose only skills are 1) their ability to create new dirty tricks to remain in power in a pseudo-democracy and 2) their ability to become rich while ranting about how terrible the capitalist, fascist oligarchs are.

Maduro is replacing ministers and other high ranking functionaries at a faster pace than the deceased military caudillo ever did. He tried one economist as president of the Central Bank from August until January but went back to a mathematician with no clue about economics. He appointed an economist to be the new Minister of Trade in mid January but replaced him two weeks later for a geographer who had been environment minister for some months before.

This is the mess Venezuela is in. This is not new with Maduro but its whole scope is starting to unravel rather fast.

How we eat compared to the others (Oxfam dixit)

Oxfam has a new report explaining us how well people in different countries are eating.

In South America Venezuela is again at the bottom: even oil-less Bolivia is a little bit better off than Venezuela when it comes to food. The Oxfam people basically compared things such as "enough to eat", "availability of food", "quality of food" and "unhealthy diet". The land ruled by the military since 1999 particularly struggles with food availability. Of course, the Ministry of Truth will again say this is all a capitalist fib.

La verdadera riqueza, la inteligencia y el futuro de Venezuela

Cada día la riqueza de un país se define más y más por el nivel de productividad y de educación de sus habitantes. La innovación es un elemento crucial para el desarrollo sustentable de toda sociedad.

 Aquí pueden ver una comparación del número de patentes registradas por habitantes de 5 países latinoamericanos y sus nacionales en el extranjero. En el primer gráfico están Brasil y México. En el segundo gráfico solo muestro los otros tres países.

Dos cosas principales notamos: 1) Brasil le está sacando la delantera a México  pese a que su población es solo 54% mayor que la del mayor país de habla española y 2) Venezuela está actualmente por el piso. Recuerden algo: Chile tiene poco más de 17 millones de habitantes, mientras que Venezuela tiene unos 29 millones.

Sería interesante saber también quiénes fueron los que presentaron esas patentas relacionadas con Venezuela. ¿Chinos en Venezuela o venezolanos que huyen del desastre socioeconómico de un país que se cree rico por tener petróleo, oro y playas bonitas, aunque cada vez más contaminadas?

Venezuela, Spielzeuge und die Mentalität einer Bananenrepublik

Der General Hebert García Plaza ist seit April Minister der Volksmacht für Wasser- und Luftverkehr. Dieser Mann ist nun auch Leiter des Oberorgans für die Volksverteidigung der venezolanischen Wirtschaft. Darum hat er nun einen Tweet geschickt, um dem venezolanischen Volk mitzuteilen, dass 600000 Spielzeuge im Hafen von Puerto Cabello angekommen sind. Die Spielzeuge sollen aus Panama kommen. Ob sie zum Teil dort oder nur in China hergestellt wurden, weiß man nicht. Der venezolanische Staat beschäftigt sich aber jetzt damit, diese Spielzeuge zu importieren, denn im Dezember gibt es Wahlen und Weihnachtszeit.

Wenn man dieses Spielzeug in Venezuela einführt, wird es "sozialistisch" werden

Es sind diese Nachrichten, die bezeugen, wie die Regierenden in Venezuela eine nicht-nachhaltige Wirtschaft führen und wie das Land ein echtes Cargo-Kult zum Opfer gefallen ist.

Da die Regierung diese Spielzeuge im Ausland kauft und ansonsten nur privilegierte Importeure Zugang zu vom Staat subventionierten Dollars haben, können die anderen Spielzeugsverkäufer nur Dollars auf dem Schwarzmarkt kaufen. Einheimische Spielzeuge gibt es kaum: mit einer extrem überbewerteten Währung ist es fast unmöglich gegen chinesische Waren zu konkurrieren. Die Spielzeuge, die der Staat dann in den staatlichen Läden verkaufen wird viel billiger, als das, was die anderen verkaufen können. Die Regierung wird nun von "sozialistischen Preisen" reden.

Viele Venezolaner werden nicht begreifen, dass diese Spielzeuge die nationale Industrie zerstörten und zwar viel schneller, als alles, was man in Industrieländern sieht oder in solchen, wo es keine überbewertete Währung gibt. Sie werden nicht begreifen, dass die Petrodollars, die für die staatliche Einfuhr von Spielzeugen nicht für Investition, für Bildung oder Gesundheit ausgegeben werden können. Sie werden aber höchstwahrscheinlich am 8.12 die Kandidaten der Militärs wählen.

Cargo cult and the pseudo-revolution

You only need to check out a picture in Twitter to see how screwed up the Venezuelan society is. There, a government supporter shows Venezuelan who is proud new owner of a Chinese "free-standing" cooker. The cooker was produced by the Chinese corporation Haier and the Venezuelan government probably acquired it through dollars destined to FONDEN, the Fund for Sustainable Development. The government has spent hundreds of millions in providing not just Chinese cookers but Chinese refrigerators, Chinese blenders and last but not least, Chinese TV sets, flat screens included. The pro-government Twitter user wrote: "only in revolution can we have happiness in Venezuela, with Mercal. Long live the revolutionary government". Mercal is the place where people can get cheap, heavily subsidized products, to a great part imported from all over the world. It's certainly long-term happiness for the Haier corporation, not for Venezuela's collapsing economy. If there is one example of real cargo cult in the world, it's Venezuela of the early XXI century.

Haier says "xiexie" to Venezuelan TV watchers 

On the other side, you see what is happening in Venezuela's health centres. Only one of the X ray machines of the Henrique Tejera Hospital, Valencia's only general hospital, is working right now. Patients have to queue up for hours.  The Dr. Miguel Pérez Carreño Hospital, the only public hospital for oncology in Valencia, couldn't offer radiotherapy for months because all its machines for such treatment were conked out. It's only now that it is re-opening its services.

Venezuelan (lack of) innovation

I write in my Spanish blog about the latest World Innovation Index and Venezuela.

Venezuela is really sick: deaths on the road

It is simply amazing how Venezuelans as a whole and the government in particular manage to get so many things wrong. 

In the chart above you can see the chart of deaths on the road per 100,000 inhabitants for South American countries according to the latest WHO report. You won't see this kind of chart in Venezuelan newspapers because somehow journalists in my country think Venezuelans are idiots and can't read such a simple chart.

Now some useful idiots abroad will say: "the high death rate is because Venezuela is becoming so prosperous" or, alternatively, "it's because Venezuela hasn't arrived to the socialist stage just yet".

As an extra reference, here the rates for other countries outside South America:


Germany 4.7
Spain 5.4
Italy 7.2
USA 11.4
Portugal 11.8
Mexico 14.7
and at the very top, along Venezuela:


Nigeria 33.7
Iran 34.1
Thailand 38.1
Dominican Republic 41.7

Only Thailand and the much smaller Dominican Republic have worse rates (and Niue, but that is statistically meaningless)

Venezuela's children and development

Venezuela is the third country with the highest incidence of under-age pregnancy in Latin America and the Caribbean. Only Honduras and Nicaragua have a higher proportion of adolescent mothers. That's what the United Nations Population Fund said today.

That is sad.

And what do you expect from the Chávez regime? For the moment, nada.

Later? Perhaps Chauvinistic statements from the caudillo and pseudo-revolutionary lingo from the others.

And what do we expect from Primero Justicia? I don't know, but my suspicion is some of them would prefer to talk about whatever the Pope says.

And what about the others? Not their topic.

The Destruction of the Land of Grace (Barinas chapter)

The National Forest Reserve of Caparo stopped being a natural reserve years ago. This area, of 140 square kilometres, has been largely destroyed since 2004. There is little left there. If you speak Spanish, you can read about it here.

They used to live there, there are very few left now in that area

A little bit of history in a nutshell (but I really recommend you to read the whole article if you read Cervantes' language):

• Established in 1961
• Until the eighties the forest was still kept.
• Between 1982 and 1989 the State allowed the extraction of wood by private and state companies. This was done with less and less control. According to the Universidad de los Andes (ULA), for the year 2000 there was only 49% of the forest left
• In 2001 the new minister for Environment, Osorio, allowed the "control of forest by the communities", which simply meant that the squatters were allowed to run amok. Between 2002 and 2004 70000 hectares of primaeval forests disappeared.
• There are now 14000 hectares left, half of them protected by the ULA and half of them isolated pockets bound to disappear very soon.

The ULA has some proposals to try to rescue what is left...but it has hardly any money. Meanwhile, Venezuelans at large haven't got the slightest clue about what is sustainable development. They are destroying their nature at an ever faster pace.

Lastly this video. One thing that calls my attention is how even the university people basically stress above all the fact THEY are losing the wood resources for research. It seems the loss in biodiversity and the purpose of an actual natural reserve are not very much in their priorities. It is also sad that other people from the state of Barinas and Mérida didn't seem have a voice and didn't come with initiatives to stop this destruction before.

Arms trade...what for?

There are few books have been written exclusively about the arms trade and that may surprise many. There are plenty of articles out there, there have been some films like The Lord of War, which slightly touch the subject in a Hollywood way....but real books? Not much out there.

And here you have one. It is really good. And it is frightening. And it is what your government and my governments support and thrive on.

Defence, security? Defence and security my foot. It's about profit. 


Below you can watch Andrew Feinstein, the author's book, giving the general picture at this year's Oslo Freedom Forum. It starts to get interesting at minute 4. Go for it. And remember: Venezuela has given Russian arm traders over 9 billion dollars for weapons. It doesn't matter if the arm traders are Russians, Chinese, British, Spaniards, Brazilians or US Americans: they are the ones who get the money that should go to my compatriots' schools and hospitals and research centres.

Most of the money does not come from the Defence department through the national budget approved by congress but through FONDEN, the Fondo de Desarrollo Endógeno, the one that should be used for Venezuela's sustainable development. Yesterday, Chávez told the military that Capriles hates them.

Preguntas para un país

¿Qué esperanza hay para un país cuyos actores más influyentes - gente en el poder o en la oposición, de supuesta izquierda o de supuesta derecha - tienen una mentalidad profundamente medieval? ¿Cuándo se enterarán de que en Venezuela jamás llegó la Ilustración, de que hay que traerla, de que no bastó con repetir consignas que jamás se analizaron?

¿Cuánto tiempo tiene que pasar para que surja un movimiento que promueva el debate real en todo el país y no monólogos paralelos?

¿Cuándo llegará un político conocido y con carisma que sea capaz de decirles a los venezolanos que el país no es rico, pese a todos los recursos naturales que tiene, y que solo será rico cuando el ciudadano promedio tenga un nivel de educación y productividad igual o superior al de la media mundial?

¿Cuándo conseguiremos que se hable de la farsa que es la educación primaria y secundaria actual en Venezuela? ¿Cuándo querrán las mafias universitarias interesarse por lo que pasa en las escuelas públicas? ¿Temerán que sus nietos no puedan entrar en una universidad pública por la competencia que les llegue de las zonas pobres si la calidad de la educación allí comienza a aumentar?

¿Cuándo hablará alguien en Venezuela sobre la imperiosa necesidad de realizar un catastro completo de la república?

¿Cuándo hablará alguien en Venezuela sobre desarrollo sustentable e implicará con ello algo más allá de sembrar arbolitos?

¿Cuándo dejaremos por un lado el conformismo y por otro las ínfulas de grandeza y comenzaremos a discutir lo que necesitamos hacer para que el país se transforme en un país desarrollado, de manera sostenible, avanzado, de manera probada, e industrializado, de manera cónsona con el medio ambiente? 

¿Cuándo aprenderán los venezolanos su verdadera historia, la realizada por los civiles y pese a los militares? ¿Cuándo verán la imperiosa necesidad de convertir a la sociedad en una sociedad ante todo fundada sobre bases civiles y no militares?

¿Cuándo tendrán las élites venezolanas una identidad propia, una que le permita escribir primero en su propio idioma, que le haga ver la necesidad de insertar al país en un proceso de cooperación real con  todo el mundo hispano y que le haga asumir con naturalidad y sin complejos nuestros variados orígenes?

Son algunas preguntas que me hago y que le hago a mi país.

Macabre waiting or building bridges?

In the last months I have been observing how other bloggers take for granted Chávez's death or full incapacitation.

I am very worried. If that is what we need to win, we are in real trouble.

I know any opposition would have an extremely hard time in a country where the state (and thus the government) is getting a record amount of money thanks to high oil prices. That's the case in Russia, that's the case in Equatorial Guinea, that's the case in Kazakhstan and that is the case in Venezuela.

Still, we should be doing better in Venezuela. Why? Because Chávez's regime is squandering money so badly. How? We need to provide content. There is a big issue here: Capriles has to work hard on his oratory skills. There is no way around if he wants to reach more people. He needs to read books in Spanish, really. He needs to work on how to link ideas in a speech.

There are two major problems the opposition has to deal with:

1) There is not "a Venezuela". There are several Venezuelan regions, very clearly divided.

Most key political actors within the Venezuelan opposition are based in and come from Caracas, Maracaibo and Valencia. They haven't presented a clear development plan for each of the other regions. It's not that Chavismo has any plan in those regions apart from more control though the so-called "councils". It doesn't matter Chavismo is clueless: it has the petrodollars, you can only fight against that with well-developed plans, plans customized to your clients - the regions.

2) Venezuelans are basically deluded. They need to be informed about the real state of the nation if we want to defuse the socio-economic bombs that have been planted in the last few decades.

Venezuela is a pressure cooker. The vast majority of the population - the poor, the middle class and the tiny upper classes - hasn't got a clue about how fragile the economy is...Venezuela is structurally speaking in worse shape than other countries. Only oil prices keep us afloat - we still have much higher oil prices than in any previous year -.

The economy in Venezuela won't collapse this year. But the situation will become more critical in the next few years. Do we spend time now telling people about how unsustainable the economy is or we wait a little bit longer...yet again?

Kaufkraft in Venezuela: was die Linke nicht weiss

Die Kaufkraft der Venezolaner war zwischen 1950 und 1978 am höchsten. Deswegen haben viele Venezolaner Chávez beim ersten Mal gewählt: sie dachten, er würde entweder den Wohlstand UND Sicherheit zurückbringen, die sie während der Herrschaft des Diktators Pérez Jiménez - ein Idol des Chávez- erlebten oder den Wohlstand der Zivilregierungen von 1973-1976. Der Wissenschaftler Miguel Angel Santos vom Wirtschaftszentrum IESA hat jetzt jede Menge Daten analysiert und ist zum Schluss gekommen, dass die durschnittliche Kaufkraft des Venezolaners im Jahr 2011 die von 1966 entsprach. Das sagt uns El Universal heute. Die Produktivität der Venezolaner, sagt uns Santos, ist einfach so niedrig wie nie zuvor. Es wird nicht mehr in Kapitalanlagen investiert.

Venezolaner von heute sind nur so produktiv wie damals, trotz allerlei Maschinen , Verfahren und Kenntnisse im allgemeinen, die seit 50 Jahren eingeführt wurden

Die Ökonomen haben mehrere Erklärungen für den Produktivitätsschwund. Politische Entscheidungen spielen dabei eine grosse Rolle: Gesetze wurden nicht respektiert, Eigentumsrechte wurde verletzt, der Arbeitsmarkt geriet auch in Ungleichgewicht.

Mehrere Analysten nennen mehrere konkretere Faktoren. Die Währung wurde zB aus populistischen Gründen immer wieder überbewertet - so wie jetzt-. Zuschüsse wurden bedingungslos vergeben. Preiskontrollen wurden allzu oft eingeführt. Administrative Kontrollen wurden zu Last, gleichzeitig wurden Steuerausnahmen für politische Kunden ständig eingeführt. Die zunehmende Abhängigkeit vom Erdöleinkommen und die Schwankungen des Erdölpreises haben dazu geführt, dass die Regierungen extrem kurzfristig dachten und die Zusammenarbeit zwischen Politik und Wirtschaft einfach verschwand. 

Es gibt einige Faktoren, die ich vermisse. Sie erwähnen kaum die Tatsache, dass sie immer weniger in Humankapital investiert haben - nicht, dass es jetzt besser wäre, ganz im Gegenteil - russische Waffen sind prioritär. Im Artikel wird auch nicht darauf eingegangen, wie die Entwicklung eines Dienstleistungssektors so negativ sein kann. Der Tertiärsektor ist ja überall gewachsen. Was die Wissenschaftler - oder zumindest die Journalisten von El Universal - nicht sagen, ist, dass in Westeuropa, in den Vereinigten Staaten oder in China der  Sekundärsektor trotz zunehmender Bedeutung des Dienstleistungssektors immer effizienter wurde. Sie sagen auch nicht, dass der Tertiärsektor in Venezuela eine ganz andere Dimension hat als in Europa oder in Nordamerika. Sie sagen auch nicht, wieso Venezuela eine solche Abhängigkeit vom Erdöl entwickeln konnte, während die Norweger sich streng an Massnahmen hielten, die diese Erdöleinnahmen zur nachhaltigen Entwicklung einsetzten. Wieso, wieso?

Irgendwie habe ich also mehr Fleisch im Artikel erwartet...interessante Fakten gab es schon. Hoffentlich hat unsere zukünftige Regierung einige Ideen, um diesen Trend umzukehren.

Die Prognosen sind düster: zwischen 2007 und 2010 ist die  private Investition um 43.6% gesunken. Ich bin sicher, was die Chávez-Anhänger sagen werden: das geschieht, weil die Reichen ihre Münze horden.

How blind can Venezuelans be on sustainability and environment?

This is really tiring: having to tell this and knowing nothing is going to happen for the foreseeable future...

After our caudillo Chávez said the "intelligence" agency SEBIN and the courts should investigate the opposition for declaring our tap water was highly contaminated someone must have told him millions of people are indeed getting filthy water in their homes. Now, even if the military regime has repeatedly denied there is something wrong with the water, it is asking the Latin American Development Bank 149 million dollars for improving the water cleaning systems.

Now: that's all fine and dandy, the government had to do it, even if it could have instead used the billions it has wasted in Russian weapons. The problem is that the government will do nothing about the source of that pollution. 

The Chávez regime has let uncontrolled urbanization grow around the Valencia Lake and around the water reservoirs everywhere. The Chávez regime has also continued the tradition of allowing companies - private and non private- pour their untreated waste into our rivers and lakes.

Valencia Lake, almost ten years ago: it was incredibly polluted. Now it is just much more so.

Buying foreign machines to clean up stuff at the end of the chain is definitely easier than implementing a plan for closing sources of pollution. Still: if that is the only thing to be done, it is completely unsustainable.

Our caudillo also approved spending over 100 million dollars in the purchase of 2000 vehicles for the military. That's 50 thousand dollars per vehicle. What are those vehicles for? Will the officers be able to take their families to the beach on them? Or at least to the hunting areas Venezuelan military have been able to enjoy since time immemorial? Will they feel more inclined to say "Chávez, presente, siempre presidente"?