Our clown in Moscow (updated)

look for "red Lada Priora" in Russian and you get Chávez

I read in Russian Lenta how today in Moscow Venezuela's military president has just set up the foundation of a new monument for - sigh- Venezuelans' semi-God, Simón Bolívar.

Our clown arrived to the place driving a Lada-Priora which, of course, had to be red.

Yesterday, the Russian and Venezuelan governments announced something I had written about last month: the Venezuelan regime has finally sold off its 50% share in the very important German Ruhr Oel refinery centre (Lenta news here). Russia gets a very useful asset in Germany and Venezuela...well, Venezuela gets apparently some money to invest in a Russian bank that will become a Russian-Venezuelan fund. Venezuela's oil production is still stumbling and the PDVSA guys may also want - for pseudo-ideological reasons - to look for help with Russians and Belorussians only.

The state TV in Venezuela shows here how the current president's ninth visit to Russia (and subsequent trips to Belarus, Syria, China, Iran and Portugal) are "for the benefit of the Venezuelan people". When does German/Swedish/Spanish/British media have to explicitly say the prime minister is traveling "for the benefit of the people"?

Anyway: among the things the military coup monger of 1992 is going to do in Belarus is to talk about how Belarus will help Venezuela to build a few thousand houses in Venezuela. I wonder why Venezuelan engineers and workers are incapable of doing that job perfectly well and efficiently in the XXI century. Wasn't the military president talking about getting off oil dependency? About supporting other sides of our economy? Before 1998 governments would build more social houses in a year than this government has done in any year during this longest and most importnat oil boom Venezuela has ever had.

One last thing: I have a strong hunch the "communications agreement" that is part of the agreements with Russia now will help the military regime's SEBIN in a meaningful way.

Ps. here you can see who is travelling with the military head of state. The article in Russian has the silly title "HeroeS of Latin America". You see Hugo kissing his current companion, you see Eva Gollinger also traveling at the expense of Venezuelan children who could be using that money for books or the like.

Chavistas can't drive a blue Lada less their solid ideology foundations become compromised