Chavez a step closer to Mugabe

Yesterday Hugo Chávez threatened again regime-critical TV channels (Globovision) and newspapers (El Nacional, El Universal and a couple of other minor ones). He also announced a new wave of land expropriation in Barinas. As I have written earlier, expropriations of all kinds will increase in the measure Venezuela's economy deteriorates. It is incredible how we have come to this point even though the oil price is still a couple of times more expensive than in 1998, when Chavez was elected.

The Barinas strongman won't expropriate lands of his political fans, much less those of his family, which is one of the biggest landowners in Barinas. He will just go for those who oppose him. The interesting thing here is how he declares the amount of acres that need to be expropriated, which shows how little he cares for legality: 10.000 hectares have to be taken over.

Expect professional squatters and his military people to end up with the best of those lands.

The picture below shows the entrance to La Chavera, property of the Chavez clan. The president's family has much more than that hacienda, but most other properties are under the official name of front men.

Eurodeputies concerned about Venezuela or 4% against 0.148%

The European Parliament has just approved a resolution condemning the Venezuelan government's latest political persecution. You can find the motion here.

Antonio García, Venezuela's business representative to the EU said 'this was a maneuver of the right and extreme right" and the parliamentarians did not represent even 4% of the Parliament's representatives". What García does not say is that all European deputies get to know well beforehand what is going to be debated and they all can vote. Also: most votings at the European Union take place with just a tiny fraction of European representatives. If what the Chavez regime calls "extreme right" just made it to less than 4%, the "extreme left" (or actually, the Chavez fans) are many less. Actually, there were 27 euro-deputies who voted for the resolution and only one who defended Chávez (I will find out who that one is...perhaps Sarah Wagenknecht, the German Eurodeputy who mourns the SED dictatorship?). So: 4% against 0.148%.



Here in Spanish

Getting to know you a wee bit better

As you probably know, a blogger can find out a lot of interesting things about readers just by looking at the basic statistics of visitors. Still, there is something I would like to know and browsers cannot tell me: what is the main national background of my readers. I want to find out, for instance, what the Venezuelan/non-Venezuelan ratio is among readers outside Venezuela.

You can select multiple origins.

Thanks for your cooperation!

Little people with white faces

One of the many animals you can find in Venezuela's nature is the white-faced Saki (pitaecia pitaecia). This primate lives in the Venezuelan jungles and in those of Brazil, Guyana and Suriname.
The IUCN has not classified it as threatened, but that is primarily because it never knew how numerous these sakis were. This species was never very abundant.

The Venezuela-Europe drug connection - II

Thanks to Bridge we got a Dutch article about the recent detentions in Curacao.

I won't translate the whole article. Just some highlights:

• More than 250 police officers were involved in the action
• The cocaine was in shipping containers to West Africa and Europe or in couriers going from Curacao or Aruba to the netherlands.
• The organization was probably responsible for import and export of at least 2000 kilos of cocaine per year
• The suspects were investing drug profits in real estate in Colombia, Venezuela, Lebanon, the Dominican Republic
• The organization had contacts with Hezbolla in Lebanon; they were supporting Hezbollah
• Lebanon uses the money to buy large amounts of arms from South America (where there exactly?)
• Basically the route is from Colombia through Venezuela to Curacao/Africa/Europe
• The ships went from Venezuela to West Africa and from there to the Netherlands, Lebanon and Spain.
• Money couriers went from Curacao to Venezuela mainly
• 17 people were arrested. They were from Curacao, Venezuela, Colombia, Lebanon, Suriname and Cuba. There were 4 women and 13 men.
• The police action was done in cooperation with the judiciary in the Netherlands, Belgium, Colombia, Venezuela and the US
  

My questions:

- was the judiciary in Venezuela really involved?
- what route was taken from Colombia through Venezuela and what can Venezuelan authorities do about this?
- would they really want to do something about it?

The Venezuela-Europe drug connection

AP reports 17 people have been arrested in Curacao "for involvement in Hezbollah-linked drug ring". There were Venezuelan, Colombian, Curacao and Cuban citizens involved. The ring would be involved in sending cocaine produced in Colombia (and now Venezuela?) via Venezuela and from there through Western Africa to Europe. The proceeds would in part help to finance Hezbollah and also provide arms from Venezuela to the militias in Lebanon.

I have been reading news source on how drug dealers use now the Orinoco, specially the Delta, as a base for drug transports to Western Africa. I want to post on that in an upcoming post on the Orinoco.

How far are Venezuelan officials involved in this problem?

I had written a couple of things on this already here and here:

Chavez supporters and the swine flu-Rumsfeld connection

It is such a nice distraction for the semi-literate in Venezuela. While the Chavez government is illegally taking over hospitals, schools and other installations that were under the control of municipalities and states where the opposition won in the 11.2008 elections, while the Chavez government is trying to prosecute every single known opposition politician under charges of corruption, Chavez's supporters try to call attention to a new conspiracy theory.

According to the government's Radio Mundial (also to be seen in Chavez's fan site Aporrea), and "based on news from Colectivo Periodístico in California", the cause of the current swine flu pandemic is nothing else than the Pentagon.

They say former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld could earn a fortune now as he is co-owner of Gilead Sciences, Inc. a company that has the rights to produce "Tamiflu", a medicine that would cure the influenza. Well, according to Wikipedia (which refers to CNN), "Federal disclosure forms indicate that Rumsfeld owns between USD$5 million and USD$25 million in Gilead stock. The rise in Gilead's share prices from USD$35 to USD$57 per share will have added between USD$2.5 million to USD$15.5 million to Rumsfeld's net worth". From there to developing this new strand for earning some extra cash is a big shot.

What these conspiracy theorists have is a series of weak links, but they would never like to have a real discussion about their incredible statements. They just need a better smoke screen as now "Chavez quiere ser amigo de Obama". Chavez supporters are trying to divert from the fact that:

• the Chavez regime reduced the percentage of money that goes to all states and municipalities (situado constitucional) and is now diverting extra money to the local regions and state institutions not controlled by the opposition (some pseudo-legal trick to financially suffocate the opposition)
  
• the Chavez regime took over havens, airports, motorways and much more from the opposition states and with all that a huge chunk of taxes
  
• Chávez took almost all power from elected mayor Ledezma (who got over 700000 votes) and named one of his most fundamentalist pawns, Jacqueline Faría, as "head of the Capital District"
• Chávez officials are taking over more and more farmlands "in the name of reform" but only farmlands of people who do not support Chavez (the Chavez clan and several of the high "socialist revolutionaries" being big landowners themselves)
• Chávez's government has taken over hospitals and schools that were managed by opposition governments (in several cases it prefers to let hospitals and other public services collapse than to let the opposition show it can manage them)
  
• more and more students are being violently repressed by police forces
  

Expect in the coming months more land to be taken over by the Chavez regime. They firstly went for the bigger landowners (as long as they were not pro-Chavez), but they will go for the smaller ones now.

Expect more buildings and companies in the hand of Chavistas. Expect professional squatters to thrive more than they have done so far.

Expect more repression as the oil price drops make the crisis be felt in Venezuela.

And still European politicians like this person support Chávez.