Die da sollen Venezuela schützen!

Roter Bulle

Wir lesen in Tal Cual, dass die venezolanische Polizei vor Chávez 83% der Fälle löste und nun weniger als 10%. Das überrascht nicht, wenn man den CICPC unter der Lupe nimmt. Der CICPC tut - bzw müsste das tun-, was in Deutschland Bundeskriminalamt zusammen mit allen Polizeiuntersuchungsgruppen tun. Die venezolanische Organisation hat dafür aber nur 4200 Beamten. Diese Beamten müssen alle kriminalistischen Untersuchungen in einem Land mit 30 Millionen Menschen durchführen - es müssten zumindest 25000 sein. Diese Beamten haben nicht mal eine Lebensversicherung! Während die Chávez-Regierung jede Menge Geld für die völlige Automatisierung der Wahlen vergeudet -im Gegensatz zur Niederlande, zu Skandinavien oder Deutschland-, hat Venezuela weder ein automatisiertes Fingerabdruckidentifizierungssystem noch ein automatisiertes Waffenidentifizierungstem.

Was der CICPC schon reichlich hat, sind Chávez-Anhänger. Die sind nicht bloss überrepräsentiert, sie sind übermegarepräsentiert: über 80% aller CICP-Beamten sind Parteigenossen der PSUV.

Kein Wunder, dass Venezuela die höchste Mordrate Südamerikas hat.

Seltsames Land...das soll Sozialismus des 21. Jahrhunderts sein.

More on environment destruction in the Land of Grace

You must read this interesting article on BBC now. I will later post more details on that.

Let me just tell you something: land use in Venezuela is a complete mess. Nobody really knows who owns what. Most documents are to be found in isolated registries, getting dust. 

Huge extensions are owned by a few, many of which are military honchos. Only the others face expropriations. A lot "state-owned" spaces are run by the military as hunting ground for themselves and their friends. Most farmers have no clue about environment issues. There is no sense of sustainable environment in the country. Environmental laws - in principle very stringent - are only decoration for books.

The Crocodylus intermedius: when Humboldt came to Venezuela, they were abundant. Now they are on the verge of extinction

When even the Chinese complain

Updated

Some days ago the Chinese in the Venezuelan city of Barquisimeto marched to protest the lack of security in the city. They had been the target of numerous kidnappings and other crimes for quite some years now but the murder of Jian Kong Zhen, a young entrepreneur, was the last straw.

Those Chinese are usually people who do not find their way in places such as Shanghai or Guandong and look for opportunities abroad, whether it is in Lesotho, in Venezuela, in Spain or Sweden. The Chinese government usually keeps a low profile when it comes to its citizens abroad. Chinese expats tend to build upon very close networks and solve their issues without too much publicity. It really has to be pretty bad for them to protest in a foreign country. We are talking not about Venezuelan citizens of Chinese origin but mostly Chinese people who have been just some years in the country. Even they got fed up and decided to protest.

And now notorious minister for tourism, Alejandro Fleming, says there is an international campaign to create a negative image for tourism in Venezuela. In his "Bolivarian-military" logic, the fact US citizens are among the most frequent foreign tourists to Venezuela is paradoxical.

A Chávez honcho does not seem to understand the US is the most populated country in America, its population has a high income level and it is absolutely normal then that it would represent one of the main sources for tourism in any American country. What Alejandro Fleming does not seem to grasp is that US tourists - or German tourists or tourists from most of the world - are less likely to visit Venezuela than almost any other South American country. 

It seems Alejandro Fleming hasn't taken a normal bus after 8pm in Venezuela. Actually: I don't think he ever took a bus in safe Europe, where he was driven in a nice Mercedes while he stayed there as ambassador for Venezuela.

If Mr Fleming took a bus in Venezuela after 8pm or if he really were to walk around after 8pm without his bodyguards he would know why even the Chinese are protesting in Venezuela.

How to destroy the Land of Grace

I was there. The place really feels like some sort of Paradise, some part of the First Time. No wonder it inspired Doyle's Lost World. Once I was taking some water from a river, the Paují river, and a wonderfully blue humming bird started to fly closer and closer to me. I had to move my head rapidly for it to fly away. It had apparently never seen a human being before. If you have met humming birds before you know how generally shy they are.

This place is close to the Equator, and yet it is not as warm as the surrounding Amazon forest. The reason is that it is located on a huge plateau, the Guyana shield.

This is one of the regions with the highest levels of biodiversity on Earth. If you ever manage to ge to that region, you will soon realise it has some of the most impressive landscapes on Earth.

Well: that place is being destroyed right now. El Paují is a small town to the west of Santa Elena de Wairén, close to the Brazilian border. Pemon Indians and criollos live there. Whereas some people live from tourism, from honey production and from subsistance agriculture, more and more  work in gold extraction. To get the gold they drill holes in the jungle, they change the curse of rivers and they pollute the whole river basins with mercury and other very poisonous chemicals. Because most of them have little education, they sometimes  believe they are doing no harm or if they do believe there is some harm, they think it is only to themselves. They don't see how the mercury destroys life on a long term. They don't have time to follow up the consequences of isolated actions on an ecosystem few really understand. And even if they do realise what they are doing: what else can they do?

Right now there are about 12 "washing machines" along the Paují River.  Each one of those machines gets at least 100 grams of gold a day. 380 Bolívares are paid for every gram right now. Right now nobody wants to work for anything in El Paují but for gold. They are also eager to buy anything visitors bring. And the military, who have several posts around that area, pretend to keep an eye on security and environment protection when in reality they just play along.

If you speak Spanish, you should read Morelia's post on that.

Latest from the Captaincy General of Venezuela

If there is one thing that astonishes me is the way how history is so present in Venezuela. I mean: history is present everywhere, but in Venezuela old habits die really really hard. We have the iPhones, we have the jeans, we have the music that ever listens to. We deal in a more relaxed way with regards to ethnic issues than other people. Still: socio-politically speaking we are still repeating almost the same patterns we showed in our past.

Three opposition governors - those of Miranda, Lara and Zulia - were meeting to "plan a strategy" to get the resources that by law are due to their administrations. Why do they need to do that?

The current national caudillo, military strongman Chávez, is awashed with petrodollars. That  money belongs to the nation, but as a military caudillo, Chávez does not see any difference between the State, the government, the nation and himself. There are very specific laws about how oil revenues must be distributed: some money must go to the national government, some to the regional governments and so on. The budgets are calculated according to expected oil revenues, or so the law says. If oil prices rise, they have to be re-adjusted. This is a matter of law, it should not be subject to the national caudillo's whims. The Chávez government did adjust the budgets when oil prices went down, a couple of years ago, taking away a lot of money from the local governments and thus from some of the opposition forces. Still, oil prices went up and up, they reached the previous levels and kept climbing and now they are over 100% the prices to which the budgets were calculated and yet the national government does not want to give the money to the regions. It wants to use it all to make Chavismo stay  in power forever. Venezuela's inflation is still the highest in America. Local administrations from the alternative forces have more and more trouble trying to provide for services when the Chávez government is taking away resources for them.

Fortunately now some of those local forces are trying to work together. Still: how can they  do that effectively if they represent local parties? 

Take a look at this: Miranda's governor is from Primero Justicia. Lara's governor is from Patria Para Todos. Zulia's governor is from Un Nuevo Tiempo. We are talking about parties that only have the majority in one small region of Venezuela.

Those governors talk about working together but they do not really share much of logistics and they represent very local interests, whether they like it or not.

The only difference with the past is that now the Western Llanos has a much larger influence...what formerly was the Provincia de Barinas is home to Chávez and his power and most of his governors are military men from the Llanos.

Venezuela is a weird country. The military have a much higher rolle than anywhere else in Latin America. They make themselves as the true representatives of some heroic but not very historical past. Their only caudillo is now Chávez. 

The opponents are local civilian caudillos who are still struggling to create parties that are more than personal groups and represent concrete ideas and projects.

The saddest part is that most of these people don't even realise how they are repeating the same evils that have plagued Venezuela for centuries.

We have the same caudillo-driven spirit we had in Venezuela since it was called Venezuela.

Philipp von Hutten, like Georg von Speyer, Nikolaus Federmann and Juan de Carvajal worked above all for himself, not even for a commercial house and much less for any  nation

Or should I have used rather this painting to represent what still haunts Venezuela?

Lope de Aguirre

Bolivarian numbers and the opposition's impotence

The Chávez government has had since 1999 several times the amount of petrodollars the governments between 1987 and 1998 had at their disposal. Still, it has proven to be a complete failure when it comes to social housing. Rory Carroll from The Guardian wrote an excellent article on that.

Now Chávez realises this can become an issue for his next re-election in 2012. The military caudillo is thus promising a new housing programme that will deliver what the IV Republic/the Spaniards/the Welser was suppose to provide. 

Below you can see the houses the government has built on Q1 of this year and how many houses it has to build in the next quarters and years in order to fulfill its plan. As you see, it really has to speed up.

Chavista deputies at the National Assembly are saying  Venezuela would need more than $150 for each oil barrel in order to "solve its problems" (not "to develop", this seems to be a very complex concept). Because the oil barrel is "only" at $110 they are going to make Venezuela incur into more debt. The repercussions will only be felt after 2016, of course.

Unglaublich aber wahr: die vorigen Regierungen werden immer schuld sein

Francisco Sesto, Minister für den Wiederaufbau des Groß-Caracas-Raums^ChavezMark sagte am vorigen Samstag, was die Opposition seit Jahren geäussert hat: es fehlen mindestens 2 Millionen Wohnungen in Venezuela. Anscheinend hat die Militärregierung das erst jetzt herausgefunden.

Sesto meinte, es handelt sich um ein historisches Defizit.

Der Einwohner dieser armseligen Hütte denkt, die Schuld seiner Eleng ist in der Vergangenheit zu suchen

"Es ist eine unglaubliche Zahl. Es zeigt, wie schlecht das Volk jahrelang von den vorigen Regierungen gehandelt wurde." Anscheinend regiert Chávez nicht seit Anfang 1999, sondern seit gestern.

"Ich habe mit dem Präsidenten Chávez telephonisch gesprochen und ich sagte ihm: Herr Präsident, die Zahl wird bei weitem die 2 Millionen überschreiten, vielleicht wird sie fast 3 Millionen sein." Der Präsident sagte: "es macht nichts. Auch wenn es sich um 4 Millionen handelt [jemand weiss nicht, ob es sich um Wohnungen oder Menschen handelt]: wir werden ihnen das Problem lösen und wir werden ihre Wohnungen bauen. Je grösser die Herausforderung, desto besser wird unser Wille und desto schöner wird die Arbeit sein."

Das ist Venezuela. Unglaublich, oder?