Oil addiction, Venezuela 2011 and growth

The first chart shows growth rate for Venezuela's oil and for Venezuela's economy since 1996. I did a little trick: I placed oil growth rate of year X in the column for year X + 1., where the GDP growth for year X is. The reason is that petrodollars take some time to have their effect - all things being equal. In reality, petrodollars don't take a full year to start "doing magic". Their effect depends on several factors, from contract details to a million other things.

You also have to consider oil price increases do not have the same impact when you have just enough oil to pay state employees or when you have enough oil to pay those and more state employees and Cuban dictators and Russian or Spanish weapons dealers.

Now: that chart 1 is about rates. In 1998, when Chávez was elected, the country was suffering from a meaningful drop in oil prices for 2007. Worse still: the actual oil prices had been at record low levels for quite some years already. In chart 2 (which I have used in earlier posts) you can see actual OPEC price evolution since 1996. Oil prices started to climb in 1998 big time and this should have lead to a boom already in 1999, but that was not to happen because the military were just "getting to know how things work". In 2003 there was the big oil strike and Chávez sacked 20 000 PDVSA employees. All in all, after that GPD has grown at a rate that is a bit under oil price rise.

The problem with Venezuela under the pseudo-revolution is that its oil addiction has become so rabid that growth started to shrink actually in 2009 due to the exceptional oil price drop at the end of 2008 and even if oil prices for the whole of 2008 were still higher than expected. This year we still were in red numbers even when the rest of Latin America was doing very well.

The Chávez government predicts growth for next year. Concecomercio, a chamber for independent and small companies, predicts recession will continue. I am no economist, but my bet is Venezuela will have pro forma a very small positive growth. Oil prices for 2010 were about 26% higher than in 2009. In view of such hikes Venezuela should actually have a very strong boom next year. That won't be the case. Why? Because of corruption, because of sheer incompetence, because of waste. The government will have a lot of extra cash, as it has devalued the currency once more -by eliminating one of the two exchange rates-. Those Bolívares the government will get from the devaluation and will use for some projects won't lead to more than a small growth if anything. Even so, I am sure Chávez apologists abroad and the propaganda machine in Venezuela will announce any growth as a triumph for the pseudo-revolution over capitalism. Never mind most other Latin American countries will keep growing faster and beyond population growth and a couple of them will even be moving towards sustainable development.

Venezuela? It is absolutely addict to ever higher doses of petrodollars. The tragedy is that no one has the cojones to tell Venezuelans the truth.

Civic-military dictatorship in Venezuela

First military districts to be created..."to give security to the people" and "use the potential of the area"

How is the Venezuelan strongman and his team preparing Venezuela for a long-time dictatorship? They are doing it in many ways: creating laws that are completely against the constitution, taking away from the elected governors and mayors to give them to "councils" they claim are the people but will become in reality PSUV tools, spending hundreds of millions of dollars in permanent propaganda and attacking the very few media outlets that are still critical of the regime (I will go back to this last point in another post, specially on a "paper" written by long-time Chávez apologist Weisbrot).

One of the key points now is to make sure Venezuelans get used to the concept of "civico militar". They are repeating that more and more. If you google a bit, you will find most "civico militar" refer to Venezuela's military regime.

"Military is good.
Military men save Venezuela.
Venezuela without the military is lost.
Chávez is the jefe supremo.
Chávez's friends are the ones to help you."

So it goes. This is not so difficult to put through as Venezuelans, spite of the 40 years between 1958 and 1998, was ruled in the XX century only by military strongmen. In the XIX century Venezuelans were ruled by civilians only for 7 years. Venezuelans don't even know how much the military have taken hold of their country. A third of all 350+ municipios are called after military caudillos and many of the states.

Take the irrational idolatry many Venezuelans feel towards a mythological Simón Bolívar. Take the century-long use of that Bolívar image by Venezuela's military. Add to that the fact Chávez is a military man and almost all the big jobs he has are occupied by military men or by guys from the extreme left plus a couple of younger gun-totting men as minister of agriculture.




And now Chávez announced the creation of 10 military districts in "border areas". More will be created close to urban areas. The regime claims it is to help the people...always the people...Of course, the regime is going to say now "look, the opposition does not want us to help the people". Well: how come the military need to do this in Venezuela? What has happened after 12 years of Chávez's rule that we need this? Only in Cuba and in Burma do they have such a role...and in China before it abandoned its dictatorial attempts to become socialist during Mao's time for just fake socialist dictatorship with one-party system.

In the last map you see in dark green the states with a governor who is also a military man, mostly a coup monger. The only one with the yellow spot has passed over to the opposition, sort of. The ones in light green are ruled by governors with a very close relative being a military coup monger (Barinas' governor is Chávez's brother, Falcón's governor's relatives are military). The state with the green G is ruled by a man who was a guerrilla during democratic times. The states in yellow are the ones "ruled" by the opposition (even if the regime has taken away almost all competences).

The alternative parties have to go out, not tweet from their cozy homes, but actually go out to places all around Venezuela and tell people this is not normal, that the military are taking over Venezuela's future. The military should never take a bigger role than any other sector of society. Otherwise, a country is lost.

Pluralism, Venezuela and Chávez's regime

"ONE GOVERNMENT ONLY
ONE PEOPLE ONLY"

"Socialist government of Venezuela"




If that poster is not a joke against political pluralism and a violation of the constitution, what is it?

What is it nobody asks publicly to all high Chávez officials and to Chávez himself what they think about pluralism, about multiparty democracy and about the time Chavismo becomes the opposition?

Today the puppet National Assembly is introducing new laws to use soviets (councils or consejos in Spanish) pretending to be "the people" to take away further competences from the elected governors and mayors.

Venezuela's economy, update

GDP growth according to The Economist, 2010










I wrote a post about economic growth in Venezuela. I put up a chart above. You can read the post here.

Below you have the OPEC basket price evolution since 1999. As you can see, the pseudo-revolution in Venezuela is based on nothing but oil price increases in the international market. Prices have been going up year after year but for a light fall in 2001 (which contributed to the 2002 crisis) and a fall on the second half of 2008 and start of 2009 (which were mitigated because Chávez managed to get some quick cash from the Chinese for cheap oil for a decade). The economy takes several months to feel increases or decreases in oil prices. Still, Venezuela should have got out of recession in 2010. It did not. Venezuela will probably show GDP growth in 2011 at last, as oil prices keep going up again. Still, we keep getting farther away from sustainable development.

GDP growth




Ps.1 The huge hikes between 2001 and 2003 in GDP were due to the oil strike and Chávez later sacking 20000 people who took part in that strike.

Ps2. There is an old German troll who promotes Chávez's regime and hates her country and Europe and everything that rejects the military regime in Venezuela like nothing I had seen so far. As she hasn't got a life, she keeps scoring "boring" on all posts of mine now as she keeps trolling in all blogs and forums of Venezuela without bringing in arguments, just writing stuff like "hasta la victoria siempre" and "socialismo o muerte". Be it. You won't see any scoring possibility in the blogs of the last useful idiots supporting the military regime...oh, you can see a scoring among one of the boliburgueses: Jesse Chacón had a blog where he once asked readers to choose whether
"Chacón's electoral campaign is better than that of others" or
"Chacón is the only one who really has an answer for the Sucre municipality".

On CAP and more

Miguel wrote an outstanding post about former president Carlos Andrés Pérez. If you want to know a bit about Venezuelan history of the last decades, you have to read that.

Meanwhile: what did Chávez manage to say about the deceased politician? The military man said Pérez's family was allowed to bury Pérez in Venezuela, as if he -the current president- were the king of Venezuela and not just an employee of the people who has no business in deciding whether someone can or not be buried in his native soil. The military strongman also kept nagging about Pérez, even if he himself is getting the country into much more trouble than Pérez managed to do (which was a lot).

Miguel said almost everything I could say about Pérez, but I will just add here a couple of points:
I disliked and rejected very much Carlos Andrés Pérez's policies. I marched as a student - peacefully - against Pérez's policies. I wrote in newspapers criticizing those policies. Pérez did not know about economics one way or the other and he lost track of the social impacts in Venezuela. Pérez did not take Venezuela towards sustainable development. He was co-responsible for the crimes during the 1989 riots of El Caracazo. Still:

- The Chávez military men killed in the 1992 bloody coups many more people than what the military killed in the Caracazo when Pérez was president
- Much more has been stolen since the pseudo-revolution came to power than during the two separate terms of extremely corruption led by Carlos Andrés. Think Pudreval, think Jesse Chacón's brother, Arne Chacón (apparently Jesse did not know anything).
- Now Venezuela is much farther away from sustainable development than 12 years ago.

I hope one day soon Venezuelan pupils will get to read history books written by real historians, not by brain washers with one or the other (pseudo-)ideology in mind.

Letting kidnappings go up as a strategy to get rid of the opposition?

What do you think?

I hear more and more reports about kidnappings...and the government does nothing real and people cannot report anything less their loved ones get killed.

The Boliburguesía? People like supreme court "judge" Luisa Estela Morales Lamuño? The one with threats to journalists? (don't mess up with me as I have my "thorns"). They have enough bodyguards, they don't have to worry as "non Revolutionaries".

Ps. Daniel has a good post in Spanish about Ms Morales (what a family name!)

Feliz Navidad

I want to wish my readers a very nice Christmas time. Venezuela has gone through a tough time for quite some time now and things will be tough again next year. Still, let's hope for and try to contribute to a peaceful return to democracy and let's hope Venezuela finally gets on the path of sustainable development soon.

If you haven't tried hallacas, you have to do that before you die. You may even want to postpone dying just to eat more hallacas.

Guarimba versus Protest

Bolivarische Militärs verteidigen sich und ihren "Kommandant-Präsident"


Als ich an der Universidad Central de Venezuela Student war, hielten wir ab und zu unsere Proteste. Sie waren fast immer sehr friedlich. Sie wurden aber fast immer von Linksextremisten infiltriert: sie mischten sich trotzt unserer Aufrufe unter uns und fingen an, LKWs und selbst PKW ganz normaler Menschen an der Plaza Venezuela zu verbrennen bzw Geschäfte zu randalieren und Molotovs an Polizisten zu werfen. Wir, die Studenten, mussten unsere Protesten aufgeben und uns entfernen. Weil die Polizisten in die Universidad Central de Venezuela nicht reinkommen durften, haben die Extremisten sich hinter den Toren unserer Uni verschanzt und lieferten sich eine wahre Schlacht mit der Polizei. Es war sehr frustrierend für uns, denn wir wollten mit Gewaltaktionen nichts zu tun haben und diese Aktionen hatten die entgegengesetzte Wirkung. Und so ging es immer wieder, diese Schlacht zwischen Linksextremisten und die Polizei, die auch gar nicht koscher waren.


Im Jahr 1989 kam der Caracazo: Carlos Andrés Pérez hat eine Reihe von Massnahmen angekündigt, die von der IWF angeordnet waren und das ohne Aufklärungsarbeit und ohne Vorbereitung. Mein sehr naives Volk hatte ihn ein paar Monate davor gewählt, weil es der Meinung war, Pérez konnte die Boomjahre von 1973 zurückbringen, als Pérez der Präsident war. Der Erdölpreis lag aber 1988 (und bis 1999) sehr niedrig und es kam kein Petrodollarstrom wie 1973 oder jetzt, sondern Spassmassnahmen. Den Plünderungen, die am 27.2.1989 stattfanden, erfolgte eine brutale Repression von Polizisten und vor allem von Militärs, die schnell aufgerufen wurden.

Paradoxerweise hat der Militär Chávez diese Ereignisse benutzt, um seinen blutigen Coup 1992 zu rechtfertigen. Tatsache ist, dass Pérez mitverantwortlich für die Todesopfer und Repression war. Tatsache ist aber auch, dass viele Militärs auch schuldig sind und man hat bis jetzt keine unabhängige Untersuchung durchgeführt hat. Die inoffiziellen Daten sprechen von bis zu 3000 Tote (manchmal mehr). Ein Mord ist zu viel, aber diese Schwankungen zeigen, wie unseriös man mit diesem Thema umgegangen hat. Fast alle Venezolaner haben einen Identitätsnummer. Fast alle haben Familien. Die Gewalt fand vor allem in Vargas, in Caracas und anderen grösseren Städten statt, nicht im Urwald. Man kann im Norden Venezuelas - im Gegensatz zu Kolumbien- nicht einfach so in einigen Tagen 3000 Menschen verschwinden lassen. Die jetztige Militärregierung gibt die Schuld nur an Pérez und an seine Freunde, obwohl die meisten Gewaltanwender Militärs waren.

Was man im Ausland kaum weiss, ist dass diese Proteste von 1989 keine spontane Aktionen waren. Sie wurden von Linksextremisten organisiert. Sie dachten, das wäre ihre Möglichkeit. Sie hatten auch jahrelang die Militärs infiltriert. Bestimmte Gruppen der Militärs wiederum haben diese Gelegenheit benutzt, um mehrere dieser Linksextremisten zu liquidieren.

Wie ich in einigen Posts auf Spanisch geschrieben habe, haben die Linksextremisten viel Erfahrung mit Infiltration, Sabotage und Vorbereitung "spontaner Volksaufstände". Und deswegen denken sie, dass die Opposition auch dasselbe tun wird. Deswegen sprechen die Militärs ständig von "guarimbas" (venezolanisch für chaotische Aktion) der Opposition.

Es gibt sicher bei jeder grösseren Gruppe der Bevölkerung Menschen, die Gewalt anwenden wollen. Die allermeisten Vertreter der Opposition sind aber -im Gegensatz zum blutigen Putschist Hugo Chávez und zu den Linksextremisten, die zu meiner Unizeiten LKWs verbranten und nun Minister der Pseudorevolution sind- nicht daran interessiert, Gewalt auszuüben.

The National Empty Eggshell is Born

The National Assemby from 5.1.2011 onwards

Chávez's deputies approved yesterday a new rule for the National Assembly that will turn it, as we said many months ago, into an empty eggshell.

Chávez's deputies had already approved an Enabling Law for 18 months for Chávez with the excuse of "handling the consequences of the flooding" that lead to the death of 40 people last month. Chávez had already used a similar law after the much worse flooding of 1999 and on a couple of other occassions.

The regime approved an unconstitutional law that forces deputies to vote only for what their party says. If they do not do that, they are expelled. This has no parallel in any democratic country.

And now there is the new regulation, approved yesterday: as they are giving power to the "legislative people" (i.e. the Soviets or Councils which will turn out not to be the people but the thugs threatening the people), they are taking power from the elected deputies.

Until now the Assembly was working usually twice a week. Now it will work once a week. They also reduced the time speakers can talk and they will reduce the permanent commissions (now 15).

The thing now for the democratic forces is: how to prevent the Councils becoming what they became in Russia in the early XX century? Not by tweeting.

Welche Auswege gibt es?

Blogger Francisco hat es auf den Punkt gebracht. Ich versuche es kurz auf Deutsch zu erklären.

Die gegenwärtige Nationalversammlung oder Asamblea Nacional Venezuelas, die fast nur aus Chávez-treuen Abgeordneten -der Opposition von 2005 sei schuld- besteht und die nur bis zum 4. Januar im Amt ist, hat ein verfassungswidriges Gesetz verabschiedet, das ein Verfahren gegen den Abgeordneten oder die Abgeordnete und vor allem seinen/ihren Ausschluss aus jeder politischen Position vorsieht, wenn er/sie

"1) gegen die Grundsätze des Regierungsprograms abstimmt, im Sinne des programmatischen Inhaltes (sic) und der politisch-ideologischen Orientierung
2) Inhalte und politische Positionen unterstützt, die gegen das Angebot des Regierungsprograms stehen, das dem Nationalen Wahlrat vorgelegt und den Wählern und Wählerinnen während der Wahlkampgane vorgestellt wurden.
3) die Seite von politischen Kräften nimmt, die den sozialen Bewegungen und politischen Organisationen konträr sind, welche das vor dem Nationalen Wahlrat vorgelegte Regierungsprogram unterstützt haben.
4) sich von der Parlamentsgruppe der politischen oder sozialen Organisation trennt, die ihn oder sie nominiert hat, um sich einer anderen Gruppe anzuschliessen oder eine neue Parlamentsgruppe zu gründen, die eine Meinung vertritt, die konträr ist zum Regierungsprogram, das dem Wahlrat vorgelegt wurde."

Das ist völlig verfassungswidrig und zwar nach Artikel 201 der Verfassung:

Die Abgeordneten der Nationalversammlung sind Vertreter des ganzen Volkes und der Bundesstaaten als Ganzes. Sie sind keinen Befehlen oder Weisungen gebunden und nur ihrem Gewissen unterworfen. Ihre Abstimmung in der Nationalversammlung ist persönlich.

Der Obergerichtshof Venezuelas ist zur Zeit in den Händen der Chávez-treuen Richter.

Was bleibt uns übrig?

← 26 September 2010 →

Alle Abgeordneten der Nationalversammlung ab 2011 Wahlbet. 66.45% Partei PSUV MUD PPT Vorige Wahlen 139 6 5 Abg. nun 98 67 2 Verän. 41 61 3 Stimmen 5,451,422 5,334,309 354,677 Anteil 48.20% 47.17% 3.14%

The Military Going Bananas

I'm busy now. Daniel Duquenal and Miguel are covering the latest events in Venezuela pretty well.

What I will say here:

• The outgoing deputies of the National Assembly, almost all pro-military junta, are shamelessly approving all kinds of laws that are anything but constitutional. They are making the work of the democratic forces as difficult as possible, approving several laws a day without any consultation or real discussion. They have up to 4th January to do that.
• Among other things, there is a weird law approving a one-entry point for Internet in order to "protect against pornography" and other things, but in reality to try to control the information flowing to the big public, just like in China and Belarus now. The "vice president for Science and Technology" of the Military Regime, an old communist with an extremely good salary not just for Venezuelan standards but for Europe, declared, among other things, that "there is not only Internet, Internet is just one means, there is also Mozilla and..." This is the kind of preparation military and former guerrillas (against democratic governments, mind, not like in Brazil or Argentina against dictatorships) have. No wonder the Finance minister, as Miguel wrote, is an fan of the North Korean model.
  
• Some of the key "opposition" leaders seem to be - as usual - on vacation, even though we expected the regime to go into offensive mode during Christmas time, as it usually does.
• The military are taking over some of the most fertile lands in the Banana Republic of Venezuela...supposedly to give it to homeless people but apparently to build fincas to grow bananas for the Russians! If you read Russian or want to use a machine translation software on it, go to the Ria page. I have no time to go into all the details, many of which are about projects that will never take place or that make no sense. I will just mention this: apparently, Medvedev told Hugo the Coupster that the banana plantations could produce up to 20 000 jobs. Medvedev also told Hugo that Russia could invest millions of dollars there. And Hugo goes for it. The guy speaks for hours a week about how previous governments sold off Venezuela, but the way he plans and negotiates everything seems worse than the way our Indian ancestors negotiated gold for broken glass. Of course, the regime won't touch the lands of the Chávez clan, the lands of the Ramirez Chacín clan or the lands of many other boliburgueses.
  

Sorry, no more time. Bet on this: Chavismo will try to keep tension so high that National Assembly sessions will become a show. And most of Latin America is overtaking Venezuela and Venezuela is sinking in its self-inflicted "Bolivarian" nightmare.

Дурак дурака хвалит, asinus asinum fricat

Three guys with less and less useful idiots by the day. Still, the remaining idiots will tell you you are a CIA agent if you criticize them












Yesterday, Europe's last dictator once more won the elections. He claims to have won with 79.67% of the votes. You can read it from the Belorussian and Lukashenko-loyal press here or you can read a different story from the German press here or from the British one here.

Relevant for a Venezuela-Europa blog is what the Venezuelan military regime -they style themselves as "civic-military"- says through the state media.

"The head of state won over a list of nine candidates who wanted to defeat him and stop his administration, an administration that is already 16 years old and the product of being elected three times."

"The elections were marked by protests in the country's capital by a group of opponents denouncing a supposed fraud. The anti-riots police intervened at about 17H30 GMT to break up a protest of some 200 people".

Of course, the Venezuelan and Belorussian media did not show the videos I did see on German TV, videos that showed many more than just 200 people. They did not show how Belorussians were voting in the countryside many days before the elections - something that is allowed by law, but which is disquieting as there are no independent observers. They did not show how the main opposition leader was beaten up for hospital.

Does this look like 200?

There are significant differences between the regime in Belarus and Venezuela. For one, Lukashenko does count with a much larger popularity than Chávez. Chávez does not have the majority anymore, even if he could get the most seats through anti-constitutional gerrymandering and some other tricks. Lukashenko is a far better manager than the Venezuelan military caudillo. After all, the Belorussian dictator had already some good experience as a Kolkhoz administrator during Soviet times. Still, Lukashenko very likely won by far less points than announced. He just can't afford to let that be seen because it would show there is indeed a significant proportion of citizens who are not happy. And that would have a domino effect in a place that has never known democracy. Venezuela did have democracy and freedom of press, even if the democracy was very dysfunctional and freedom of press always on fuzzy ground.

Chávez has an advantage: he can use and misuse vast amounts of oil and there are many governments that want Venezuela's oil or petrodollars.


Ps.
Increased Internet censorship in Belarus

Enteignung für die Gegner, nicht für die Chávez-Bonzen

Ihr könnt hier "Landwirtschaftsminister" Juan Carlos Loyo während einer der jüngsten Enteignungsaktionen in Südzulia sehen. Die Hälfte der Leute sind bewaffnet, auch Loyo. Wie Daniel Duquenal schreibt, sieht Herr Loyo mit dem Che-Guevara-Hemd eher wie ein Volkskommissar aus als wie ein Minister für Landwirschaft oder Entwicklung. Zu Sowjetzeiten benutzte man das Wort Volk ständig, obwohl diese Beamten ziemlich wenig mit dem Volk zu tun hatten. So ist es mit den Chávez-Bonzen: sie greifen auf das Wort Volk bei jedem Satz und behaupten, sie seien die wahren Vertreter des Volkes. Die Welt weiss aber mittlerweile: je mehr eine Regierung das Wort "Volk" benutzt, desto inhaltsleerer wird dieser Begriff und desto wahrscheinlicher ist es, dass diese Regierung nur ihre Macht missbraucht. Extremisten wie die Chavez-Bonzen verwenden das Wort einfach nur, um ihre Aktionen zu rechtfertigen und um zu versuchen, Gehirne zu wäschen. Und was wird aus diesen Ländereien in zwei Jahren? Wieder Wildnis, wie sonst anderswo bei den früheren Enteignungen?

Diktator Chávez - und ich sage Diktator mittlerweile mit absoluter Sicherheit- Lukaschenko wird ja heute die Wahl gewinnen und zwar mit viel mehr Unterstützung als Chávez und die ganze Welt sieht ihn schon lange als Diktator- Diktator Chávez hatte vor kurzem gemeldet, dass man 43 Haciendas mit insgesamt 20000 Hektar in Zulia enteignenen würde. Das macht 464,11 Hektar pro Stück. Viel Land pro Eigentümer? Nicht, wenn man sich Ländereien anschaut, die nicht in den Händen des Volkes und auch nicht in den Händen anderer "Kapitalistenschweine", sondern in den Händen der "echten Volksvertreter" sind.

Vielleicht müsste man fragen, wem gehört die Finca La Malagueña in Barinas. Wem gehört La Chavera und wie gross ist sie wirklich? Wem gehört die Finca El Cristo, auch in Barinas? Wie haben sie das gekauft? Und wem gehört La Martinera? Wem Finca Santa Lucía, auch in Barinas? Darf man die Fragen stellen oder ist das nun in Venezuela ein Verbrechen, wie vielleicht der "Verfassungsexperte" Escarrá sagen wird?

Letzte Woche hat Chávez von der sich verabschiedenden Asamblea Nacional ein Ermächtigungsgesetz für 18 Monate bekommen. Damit wird er viel mehr Enteignigungen durchführen und mehr Geld von den Regionalregierungen, die nicht von seiner Partei regiert werden, umleiten.

Amazing Venezuela

The Bufo marinus is one of the largest toads on Earth. It comes from South America.

Mr Carlos Escarrá is one of the best known deputies for Chávez's Party, the PSUV. He comes from Aragua. He was recently interviewed by the CNN on the suspension and penalization of deputies who vote against what the party says.

You know a country is run by thugs when

You know a country is run by thugs of the worst sort when you see something like this:

A journalist from a foreign news channel -CNN- asks a key deputy of the ruling party - Carlos Escarrá- why the outgoing National Assembly approved a law to permanently expel from the National Assembly -not just the party- someone who votes contrary to what the party and leader say. He retorted saying that such a thing is normal in every country.

One thing is to expell someone from a party and another to inhabilitate that person for her job as a deputy. That second thing is not only not normal, it is against the Venezuelan constitution, the same constitution Chavismo initially hailed as "the best on Earth" but a constitution the regimes keeps changing through referendums and Enabling Laws.

The journalist asked again why a deputy can be penalized and expelled from political activity at the National Assembly. Escarrá, who is supposed to be a lawyer specialized in the constitution, said she was being disrespectful and that she was not asking a question but giving a statement. As usual for a man in an authoritarian regime, he asks her name. I have seen Chávez honchos doing this time after time: when they don't like something you say, they ask your name as a way to intimidate (something is going to happen to you, who are YOU?).

Mr Escarrá shows the worst Venezuela has to offer. He shows how some people in Venezuela are still in a set of mind of Colonial Venezuela or Venezuela in the times of the War of Independence, when real debate was something unthought of, when questioning even about the most normal things was seen as an affront, when you had to obbey "porque me da la gana", because that's what I want.

Mr Escarrá, who is supposed to be one of the "leading figures" of constitutional law among the supporters of Venezuela's military regime, should know that in democracies a deputy can and sometimes changes her mind and votes against her party. That can be very hard for a party, that can be unpleasant, that can eventually lead to someone being excluded from that party if the situation is repeated (parties do avoid that) ,but that is part of democracy. Still, that deputy goes on being a deputy. When a deputy does that, she is, for better or for worse, using her conscience. That is something the military and pseudo-socialist Chavista honchos do not grasp.

Venezuelans can watch in the following video what real democracy is. Many Liberals voted against party lines and they are still representatives of the people. The same has happened with Conservatives, Labour and others across history. This is normal.

By the way: coup monger Chávez said before getting elected he was not a socialist. He said a lot of other things. So? Which is which?

Here you can read how - once more- a representative of an NGO for Human Rights was attacked by Chávez thugs. This has to change.

No helicopter can beat him

This is one of the many hummingbird species we have in Venezuela. I really love watching these creatures when I go to nature in South America. Watching them live is just a wonderful experience.

New enabling law - Neues Ermächtigungsgesetz

I wrote a post in Spanish on the new Enabling Law. You can read it here. Every historical evolution is unique. Equating Venezuela's current situation with any other is ridiculous. Only certain common patterns can be compared. Still, compared they must be. The recognition of those patterns should be a call for action.Venezuela needs pluralism and real debates. Instead, yesterday we got several steps closer to full-fledged autocracy.

Ich habe einen neuen Post auf Spanisch über das neue Ermächtingsgesetz. Ihr könnt ihn hier lesen. Jede historische Entwicklung ist einzigartig. Eine Gleichsetzung der jetzigen Situation in Venezuela mit einer anderen ist dämlich. Nur gewisse Muster können verglichen werden. Verglichen müssen sie aber schon. Die Identifizierung solcher Muster muss ein Aktionsaufruf sein. Venezuela braucht Pluralismus und echte Debatten. Stattdessen ist Venezuela gestern einer absoluten Autokratie einen Schritt näher gekommen.

How to transform Venezuela into a developed nation

Venezuela needs to take a lot of steps to get on the path of development: attain real democracy, introduce open debates and much more.

Education will always have to come among the first steps. My proposal for the deputies of the alternative forces at the Asamblea Nacional: demand from the ministry of education to let Venezuela take part in the PISA programme for academic evaluation of public schools. So far the ministry of education refuses to allow transparency into the evaluation process. It prefers to tell fairy tales.

Take a look at the latest results for reading and comprehension for some countries for the PISA programme. All OECD countries and many more are currently taking part in PISA. On the Y axis you have the score (the higher, the better). The yellow rows are just a selection from Western Europe. Finland is, as usual, the best. The average EU pupils does a bit better than the Spanish pupil. The countries in blue are Latin American countries. The countries in green are other American countries. Dark red is the country with the worst results for reading and comprehension. For more information on the PISA programme, visit OECD's site.

Chile is really on the path of becoming a developed nation within our lifetime. When will Venezuela follow suit? How would Venezuelan pupils score the first time they take part in the PISA programme?


Ps. My guess is Venezuela would score now close to Kyrgystan if not below it. That would be embarrasing, but we need to find out. Else, we won't ever improve the situation. What is the Venezuelan self-styled "revolutionary" government afraid of?

Geschichte, die nicht vergeht

Gestern morgen starb frühzeitig Manuel Caballero, ein renomierter Historiker und Journalist Venezuelas. Er war immer ein resoluter Kritiker der Politiker, die Geschichte missbrauchten und verabscheute Dogmatismen jeder Art. Er versuchte unermüdet die Geschichte zu erklären für ein Volk, das statt Geschichte nur Mythen und das Hic et nunc kannte. Er war ein sozialistisch ausgerichteter Denker, der von jedem respektiert war. Seine deutliche Kritik am Chavismus war ein Dorn im Auge für die useful idiots der venezolanischen Militärregierung. In den letzten Jahren hatte Caballero immer wieder vor der Geschichtsverfälschung des Chavismus gewarnt und ganz deutlich erklärt, warum man Chavismus nicht als Revolution ansehen konnte. Irgendwann wollte ich ihm einen Brief schicken, um mich bei ihm für seine ausgezeichneten Bücher zu bedanken. Es kam nicht dazu. Wenn Du auf Spanisch lesen kannst und ein bisschen über Venezuela verstehen willst, kann ich Dir seine Werke nur empfehlen.

Venezuelan tongues

The vast majority of Venezuelans speak Spanish as mother tongue. That has been the case for over 300 years. We have hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Europe outside Spain, from the Middle East and from other regions apart from South America but Spanish is our main language by far. Our Spanish varies from region to region and across social strata and yet one cannot talk about dialects in the same way as one talks about dialects for English, German, Norwegian, Dutch or Italian. People on the coast speak with a more Caribbean accent, people from the Western Venezuelan Andes speak more like Colombians from the Andes, people in Margarita have their way and people in the Llanos or in Guayana speak differently...but just so much. We also use words Spaniards took over from the native American languages and a few taken over from the languages spoken by African slaves. They refer mostly to food and the local nature: arepa comes from Carib/Karina (Carib proper), chinchorro (a sort of hammock) from Chaima (an extinct Carib family), onoto from Tamanaco (another extinct Carib language).

I have always found very revealing to talk to Spaniards who had never been to Spanish America. I discover time after time how some of the expressions I thought were Venezuelan turn out to be Andalusian or Galician or from some other region in Spain...or how some meaning I have was normal in Spain centuries ago, but not now. Nowadays Andalusians and Venezuelans or Galicians and Venezuelans use words people in Madrid do not use, even if they are almost always understood without problem. My dad's mother, an illiterate lady, would use expressions considered "wrong" by traditionalists who follow some prescribing grammar, but as a teenager I started to discover many of those expressions were used by, among others, the Marquis of Santillana, one of the best known Spanish poets of the XV century. People from the "Guaro area", one of the first centres of Spanish colonization in Spanish America- still use verbal forms identical to the ones used by the Spaniards in the XV and start of the XVII centuries: the most traditional voceo. People in Argentine and other American regions also use a form of voceo, but they differ more: "vos amáis" in XV-century Spanish and "Guaro" Spanish, "vos amás" in Argentine Spanish.

About 2% of the population belong to our First Nations. Even though a large part of them speak Spanish, they also speak one (or two) of the some 29 American languages still surviving in Venezuelan territory. We are not talking about dialects, but rather about clearly distinct languages (I won't get here into the language versus dialect issue). Those languages belong to several languages families that are as different as the Romance family to the Germanic one or even as different as the Romance family to Semitic languages. I will talk about some of them on another post.

Above you can see a mind map (in Spanish) representing the main native American languages spoken in Venezuela.

Several of those languages are going to become extinct in the next decades.

Die roten Schafe und das neue Ermächtigungsgesetz

Die Abgeordneten der Sozialistische Einheitspartei Venezuelas (oder Vereinigte Sozialistische Partei Venezuelas, wie die deutschsprachigen Chávez-Anhänger sie nennen) sind jetzt schon wieder dabei, ein neues Ermächtigungsgesetz für den Militärführer, ehemaliger Putschist und seit 1999 amtierender Präsident Chávez zu verabschieden. Chávez weiss, dass auch wenn er aufgrund des verfassungswidrigen Gerrymanderings über die Mehrheit bei der Asamblea Nacional verügt, eine öffentliche Debatte mit den alternativen Kräfte sehr schlecht für seine Regierung wäre. Deswegen will er so schnell wie möglich und vor dem 5. Januar mehr Macht an sich reißen und die Asamblea Nacional wie eine leere Eierschale lassen.

Und was tun die alternativen Kräfte soweit? Sie denken, die Asamblea Nacional sei ein Ort, um ganz kurzfristige Zustände auf lokaler Ebene zu diskutieren (siehe -auf Englisch- Juan Cristobals sehr berechtigte Bemerkungen hier).

So viel Zeit hat die jetztige Asamblea Nacional:
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27 28 29 30 31

January
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Wikileaks and media in general

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Julian Assange: To Catch a Somewhat Pasty Predator
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
International Manhunt for Julian Assange - Daniel Ellsberg
www.colbertnation.com

The New York Times published some Wikileaks that came as a surprise to many people, specially in the English speaking world. One of the items was about the "Yemeni situation".

Here you can watch one of the many videos one of Germany's state channels broadcasted months ago about the situation in Yemen. That channel, ZDF, is not news-only. Still, you will find more in-depth news there about foreign countries than at many 24-hours a day "news channels" in other regions.

And here you can read in a well-known German newspaper an even older article about the drones and the children and the women killed in Yemen and how the Yemeni president "pretended" (don't know who believed it in Yemen) they were the ones who did it (my translation):

"the government in Sanaa tried to cover up with the own air force attacks the latest attacks of US drones against supposed separatist South Yemenite provinces of Abian and Schabwa, which in December led to the death of dozens of people. And it's that the fact Saleh lets the US Americans act in his land makes him incredibly unpopular. Defence minister Rashid al-Alimi was criticized in parliament for the death on those attacks of 40 women and children."

I am not saying German media is out of this world. It is not and you will find a lot of problems there as well. I do think journalists abroad spend a little bit more time asking normal people (not politicians with some interests) in their languages and have a little bit more knowledge about the recent and general history of the countries they are working in. And I would say the average citizen has a little bit more exposure to those ideas.

And about the Wikileaks proper? I tell you: I don't see the sense of indiscriminately publishing about anything. That can put innocent people in difficulty. Now: who can be against publishing material that reveals crimes of war or violations of human rights? What about corruption in Nigeria? What about cover ups of crimes under any jurisdiction? Where do we draw the line? How can the world learn something out of this all?

Sanah

The thing about the Wikileaks, the weapons and the misery

I was puzzled by some articles announcing as big news details about the purchase of weapons by the Venezuelan military junta.

Wikileaks has provided indeed some interesting details about several topics and some journalists have known how to explain things through, but a lot of the information expressed in most of the articles worldwide are about things you can find out yourself if you just follow up German or Russian or Arabic media and try to make sense of what you can, all with a pinch of caution.

I just browsed for a couple of minutes on a well-known Russian site, Lenta. Below you have some of the hits. I am sure there are more details if you just search a bit in the Net.

2008

Venezuela wasted 4.4 billion dollars in Russian weapons between 2005 and 2007. Among other things: 24 Sukhoi-30. 500 million dollars went for 20 helicopters Ми-17-В5, 10 Ми-35М, 3 Ми-26Т, 3 Ми-172-3 and 2 Ми-172.

12.2009
Venezuela got credit for 2.2 billion dollars to buy weapons. 92 tanks T-72 and some missile systems from the type Smerch (apparently $22 million for each complex). You just have to do the maths if you check out the average price for a T-72.

There is actually a reference to Associated Press about the Igla-1S and reactive grenades that the military junta also bought.

4.2009

Here you find out Venezuela is buying from Russia weapons for 5 billion dollars. They say that includes the credit for 2.2 billion dollars. If I understand well, it is thus 2.8 billion more.

And so it goes.

But meanwhile Venezuelan patients are suffering a lot because of lack of basic medicine, in spite of the propaganda you can watch in the state (i.e. Chávez) media. And millions of Venezuelans are living in primitive houses like the one you see at the start of this post...and some even keep believing in the man on that poster. Perhaps the great disparity between hope of some and reality is the reason why that military man ordered his employees to stop using his image.

Kudos for Norway! Shame on China's current government

Today the Nobel Peace ceremony will take place in Norway. Liu Xiaobo won't be there, as he is jailed for promoting democracy (some Chinese nationalists say "for trying to destroy China and transforming it into a Western colony again). His wife won't be there as she is under house arrest. His friends won't be there because China has not allowed them to leave the country...or rather the Chinese apparatchiks who think they know what's best for China haven't allowed them to leave the country.

The Chinese government has behaved like a hysterical creature and has shown how out of touch it is with the world. It has used the cheapest Chauvinism to try to derail talks about human rights and freedom.

Apart from China, there were a group of countries with leaders that have no cojones. One of them is Venezuela. By the way, read if you have some time Francisco'sinteresting post about how the military regime in Venezuela is further curtailing freedom of expression.

Ps. some Chinese readers wrote me earlier saying Europe would not allow someone to say what Mr Liu was saying, about changing the constitution, etc. Rubbish. The European Union has European parliamentarians saying much more.

Kudos also to Ai Wei Wei, who talks here:

Moving autocracy towards full-fledged dictatorship in Venezuela

Hugo uniform A) The green-clad military in action









Hugo uniform B) The multi-coloured friend in forced message to the nation

Hugo uniform C) The red-red party leader

The Puppet Supreme Court

The current National Assembly has only a few weeks' time and it is now in permanent session to maximize power for Chavismo.

As they do not want a National Assembly with representation of alternative forces to elect judges for the Supreme court, they have been carrying out a series of actions to replace the current judges - very pro-Chávez - with even more pro-Chávez people: first they changed some laws, then the current judges asked for early retirement so that the new ones would be elected by the current National Assembly and now that National Assembly -red all red- appointed the new judges, who are either outgoing deputies or some other very loyal Chavez lacays. The new judges will be in their jobs for 12 years unless some special Constituyente is organized. That is very unlikely as Chavismo changes the rules of the game all the time.

So now basically the ones who are going to say whether Chávez or a politician from an opposition party are doing something unlawful or not are to a big extent well-known Chávez politicians. Daniel wrote quite a lot about that here. Miguel wrote a bit here.

Doing and undoing something


Chávez ordered the takeover of 43 haciendas with a total of 20 thousand hectares as some sort of "measure to provide those affected by the floodings". You can read about that from official sources here. 20000/43 gives you 464,11 hectares per landholding. That is quite some land, but landowners like Chávez's pal Ramírez Chacín have several thousand hectares of land at the very least -now in the name of Ramírez's daughters- and they are untouchable.

As I have previously said, chances are the Chavista deputies are going to make thousands of dossiers about corruption disappear before 5 January.

Pseudo-socialist soup I

I will briefly mention something I want to discuss in detail later on is the way in which Chavismo is shifting gears in its propaganda tactics: socialism all over the place.

The military regime is wasting millions of petrodollars in state propaganda like this one. There you see a guy who is "obviously from the opposition", saying we have to get rid of Chávez in any way and stating now everything is so expensive and one cannot pay for the health services. At the same time, he is seen in a "Centro de Atención Integral", which is free and were everything is spotless and works perfectly. My foot. There are many more of those videos there. That is part of the daily broadcast of state TV and that is the only TV every Venezuelan can watch.

In reality there are Centros de Atención Integral where people get mostly pills and the like. In reality real public hospitals -which were for free well before Chávez came to power- are falling apart. In reality the new personnel does not know what a surgical tape or a scissor is (I know this from first sources). In reality the government appointed hospital directors are plundering the hospital resources and most of the time patients have to buy the most basic medicine because there is nothing left. In reality physicians are scared of working now because armed robberies are the daily routine.

Pseudo-socialist soup II


Since 1999 we have had a lot of shameless propaganda about how great Chávez is, how close he is to Simón Bolívar, how Bolivarian - an empty term with loose images- we are becoming and so on. The "social" and "socialist" came more or less often, but that was about it.

Almost every single noun with some positive connotation has the adjective "socialist" attached to it. They really should rename the Ministry of Information (now once more led by the hyena-man Izarra) Ministry of Truth.

Many Venezuelans haven't known anything but this regime: they were too young. Many who are older have no idea what is going on outside their country. They certainly hear the superficial things, but have no idea about how Venezuela's murder rate is compared to that of other countries, education, corruption, civil rights.

The alternative parties, very unfortunately, are not informing people. Perhaps the leaders - mostly frequent flyers - are not aware of how little the average Venezuelan knows about the outside world. That shows how disconnected they are with those people.

The National Assembly

Yesterday one of the most radical members of Chavismo, Iris Varela, declared they should take away the immunity from several new deputies because those deputies had received money from the US State Department.

In just a couple of weeks we have a showdown at the Asamblea Nacional. What do you think will happen then?

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January
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Chávez recently realised the hundreds of thousands of images of himself falling apart were counter-productive.
Notice here "Un Solo Gobierno, Un Solo Pueblo. Gobierno Socialista de Venezuela" (One Government. One People. Socialist Government of Venezuela)

So now they are telling tales and adding a lot of socialismo to every tale. Here, at the airport, "vivir en socialismo", live in socialism. The misiones are not really solving the huge problem of education in Venezuela, quality is very low and the regime refuses to accept our proposal to join the PISA programme)






My thanks to Dan for several of the pictures here.
I will later write more on education in my Spanish blog.

Inflation in Venezuela unter 1000%!

Die Zentralbank Venezuelas meldet jetzt, dass die offizielle Inflationsrate von Januar bis November (Achtung, bis November!) 24.9% beträgt. Im Februar sagte der Nordkorea-Fan und bolivarische Finanzminister, Jorge Giordani, dass die Inflation sich auf maximal 22% bis 24% belaufen würde. Leider hat ein Erdenjahr 12 Monate. Im Oktober sagte er, die Inflation würde am Ende des Jahres 27.9% betragen Wir sprechen natürlich nur über die bolivarische Inflation. Eine Diskussion über die reelle Inflation würde den Rahmen dieses Posts sprengen.

Hier kann man meine Kommentare zu Giordanis fantastischen Zahlen für frühere Jahre lesen. Langsam aber sicher lernt er. Wenn er das nur nicht als Minister tun würde...

Stalemate in a banana...

PSUV got this





UNT got this








PSUV got this










PP got this











For those outsiders out there (I mean you and you, not you): there were local elections in a few municipios in Venezuela and in Guárico, a Llanos state and Amazonas, the Southernmost state.


For the municipios, it went like this:

Municipality	State	organization	%
Achaguas	Apure	PSUV	58
Miranda	Carabobo	PSUV	52.24
Carrizal	Miranda	MUD	49.73
Arismendi	Nueva Esparta	MUD	55.47
Panamericano	Táchira	MUD	52.58
Boconó	Trujillo	PSUV	70.79
Miranda	Trujillo	PSUV	40.64
Manuel Monge	Yaracuy	PSUV	53.08
Maracaibo	Zulia	MUD	58.68
Nirgua	Yaracuy	PSUV	51.63

Guárico was won by the PSUV and Amazonas, the second largest state of Venezuela, was won by PP, a renegate, now "opposition" party.


No one lost or got a new municipio or state.

What we saw, though, was this:

• The alternative parties lost by a larger margin than expected in Guárico. Firstly: the PSUV had a rather decent candidate for Llanos standards, not the absolute caudillo so far. The opposition had an ancient paleolithic candidate from the old Acción Democrática party, Carlos Prosperi. He did not have the support of PP, which is one of the least weak parties in Guárico.
  

This has to change. The alternative parties think they can divide their areas of work in very feudal fashion (as almost everybody thinks in Venezuela, only that Chávez has the petrodollars and the electoral committee and the judiciary under his thumb). They let AD take over in the Llanos and Delta Amacuro, even if AD is out of touch with times, typical AD voters ran to PSUV there, AD 'leaders' have no modern view of how to make a campaign and they are stuck in the seventies but without money. Meanwhile we have Borges, who is a leader of a national party but never gets out of Caracas-Valencia. Meanwhile we have a national leader of UNT who never leaves Zulia.

• The feudal war between the Salas-Feo clan and Enzio Scarano in Carabobo goes on. Both are from the MUD, but the Salas-Feo clan prefers that anything goes to the PSUV than to a rival alternative candidate. This has become a constant problem. If all parties from the alternative forces had worked together in Miranda, Carabobo, chances are we would have taken over that municipio.

• Rosales' wife got less votes than he did in Maracaibo. It will take more than being the wife of a dubious "leader" in exile to expand
  

Other than that, nothing changes.

Oh, the military regime took over 20% of Globovisión's shares. In Spanish here

Die ersten Deutschen in Venezuela

En interessantes Video könnt Ihr hier sehen.

Ein paar Anmerkungen:

• Uramerikaner sind tatsächlich aus den meisten Regionen Venezuelas verschwunden, wo die Welser und die Spanier lange Zeit waren. Über die Hälfte der Venezolaner haben aber immer noch in ihren Genen einen "Stempel" - Haplogruppe-, der darauf hinweist, dass ihre Urgrossmütter ganz mütterlicherseits Uramerikanerinnen waren. Viel weniger (unter 6%) haben männliche Haplogruppen uramerikanischer Herkunft, denn der Hauptbeitrag bei weitem auf der rein väterlichen Seite war europäisch. Afrikanisch gab es auf beiden Seiten. Also Genetik zeigt, was unsere Grossmütter uns mal sagten: wir sind ganz schön bunt gemischt (auch wenn Mischung in jedem Land, bei jeder Gruppe, seit immer bestand).
  
• Museen in Venezuela haben dringend mehr Aufmerksamkeit nötig. Viele Sammlugen gehen zugrunde, viele historische Objekte werden gestohlen, viele archäologische Projekte werden erstmals nicht gestartet.
  
• Es ist schade, dass viele Leute Geschichte oft nur als eine Anzahl Ereignisse ohne Kontext kennen. Geschichte wird erstmal spannend, wenn die Leute anfangen, sich zu fragen, warum dies und das da und nicht anderswo passiert ist, was bleibt davon nun, was bleibt davon in uns, was wird davon später bleiben. Venezolaner denken immer noch, dass sie El Dorado finden werden. In Wirklichkeit ist El Dorado nur in ihren Gehirnen.
  

Wikipedia zu Coro
Wikipedia zu Quibor

Philipp von Hutten