Deliberate chaos: the first post modern cashless society. Not!

There are so many things that need to be discussed but my lifestyle, so to speak, forbids me to find the time for the blog. Yet tonight I must write to describe what is probably the most unjust, craziest, measure the regime has taken to date. And they did take a lot of those in the past.  But this one will hurt so many poor people that the mind reels at the idea on how a regime intentionally for the people has become now a regime against the people.

Today's bomb shell is the demonetization of the 100 tender in Venezuela.  Why, oh why?

The governor of Aragua, famed drug trafficker suspect cum links to Hezbollah and what not says it is a conspiracy from the US treasury to steal all of our 100 Bs, bills to provoke economic chaos.

Presidente @NicolasMaduro denuncia operación mafiosa dirigida por el departamento del tesoro de EEUU para robarnos los billetes de 100bs.

— Tareck El Aissami (@TareckPSUV) 11 de diciembre de 2016

I, for one, think that the US has much easier ways to achieve this. Actually, the US does not need to do anything, just sitting and watching is enough to implode the regime.

This being said, it is quite possible that there are hoards of 100 bills here and there. After all, not all drug traffic receipts can be stored in USD crisp greenbacks. Black market also takes its share of the 100 notes.  But in both cases any hoarding is temporal: drug traffickers, black marketers and Colombian mafias are business people, admittedly in their own sick way. For them it makes no sense to hoard a currency that loses a couple of  %  value points A DAY!

And then there is that:

Remember the $100s of millions #Venezuela spent importing 100-bolo bills? They're all being taken outa circulation. https://t.co/0p1Ji4xUHp

— Kejal પ્રવીણ Vyas (@kejalvyas) 11 de diciembre de 2016

With the amounts of bills the regime has printed how many tons of paper money do you need to hoard to shoot a hit at the Venezuelan economy?  Corruption and mafia traffic cannot be an excuse. Unless....  this is being used for some inside chavismo to hit others inside chavismo since chavismo is by itself now no more than a mafia.

Since there is no logical explanation and that the truth will eventually emerge, let's focus on the consequences, dires according to serious economists already on record.

As of tomorrow and as long as the replacing currency is not provided these are the things that will be very difficult to do, because there is not enough low denomination bills (2, 5, 10, 20 and 50 which itself is worth barely a penny) to pay for routine cash stuff. You will need to carry wads of bills, if you can find them, for the following:

• Gas for your car, newspaper, candies, anything that is not attached to a ATM or cash point or whatever accepts your debit card (never mind that these devices have been collapsing recently due to the lack of paper money, by the way).
• Services like the grocery bag boy, your cleaning lady, parking, small tips, etc. are not possible as of tomorrow. Note that the recipients of these cash payments are in the lower economical ranks of the population and are taking a direct hit in their ability to purchase their food....
• You cannot buy in the informal market food items that you cannot buy at the store because either it is out of such sundries, or you were at work and could not take the time for the 1 to 2 hours requirement of standing on line at the grocery store. "bachaqueros" or small time black marketeers sell for cash.
• Never mind that the re-sellers, who make a living out of it, will not be making a living. They will simply hoard whatever they have until the new banknotes arrive. More scarcity, and of course higher prices to compensate their losses when they start selling again.
• You cannot buy bread if you do not have an ATM card, for whatever reason you do not have it. Then again bread is getting scarce these days so the problem may actually be worse than the lack of cash.
• Some businesses will take a direct hit, the more so we are in  the holidays season. Folks like the newsstand guy will see sales near zero for days.
• Whole classes of people will be affected and stand to lose money outright. The most vulnerable are retirees that only hold a savings account and who work on cash withdrawals from the bank. Many do not have or cannot operate or are afraid of debit cards that in some case only work for their bank ATM machines I understand (mine works for all but I understand that this is not the case for everyone). 
• Never mind the ill informed that will not think about exchanging their 100 bills on time. Outright robbery by the state out of the most vulnerable people.
• Purchasing cheap medicine will become difficult for many people.
• Etc. you get the picture.

In short, the measure to suppress the 100 bill without a mechanism for speedy exchange in an impossible to fulfill timetable is, well, a truly inhumane measure, a gross attack on the human rights of the Venezuelan people. Of course, boligarchs may be somewhat inconvenienced but not affected. El Pueblo? Fuck El Pueblo!

Yours truly is not one for conspiracy theories, but I am starting to think that maybe the regime is seeding chaos on purpose. Let's count: the killing of the recall election, the killing of the dialogue, the inability to replenish shelves for the holiday season, the removal of cash from the hand of people, etc....  The combination of all of this is already turning the country into an administrative chaos. Can this be truly done on purpose? After all chaos is a good excuse for people not to talk about the real issues, and then if they do talk about that chaos may justify repression.

The triumphant failure of the dialogue in Venezuela

I suppose that there must be somewhere a grand design to all of this. That we are asked to swallow hard because it is all for the best. That we should trust the Vatican envoy when he is in ecstasy about the progress made. Or is it that he is claiming victory as he is on his way to the airport to leave once and for all?

So let's look at what I think is a dismal result for two weeks of expectations. I never hoped for much but this is, well, words fail me. Let's see if I can try to explain it by doing a positive and negative spin to the 5 "points of agreement" reached today.


1- ---acordaron trabajar de manera conjunta para combatir toda forma de sabotaje, boicot o agresión---Agreement to work together against all forms of {economical} sabotage, boycott or agression---

Positive spin: the regime will accept to take measures to change the economic system so that production will improve and we will have less scarcity.

Negative spin: unfuckingbelievable!!!!  The opposition buys the regime's theses that the economic crisis is not its fault but that of external factors sabitaging. In short the opposition accepts to share the blame of a crisis that is entirely of the regime's making.  And I cannot even charitably conceded that it is in the aim to silence the propaganda of the regime: just you wait!

2- ...superación de la situación de desacato de la Asamblea Nacional... overcoming the situation of disobedience of the National Assembly...

Positive spin: the regime acknowledges that there is an impasse and that something must be done. For this it will allow a repeat election of Amazonas representatives and name the 2 electoral board members whose term expires in a few days (2 out of 5 in the CNE)

Negative spin: first the language puts the blame on the National Assembly for refusing to follow the clearly unconstitutional dictates of the high court TSJ. That it was about the Amazonas representatives is not an excuse: it is inadmissible that they have been suspended 11 months ago by the TSJ and that this one has not declared whether these elections were valid or needed to be repeated.  Nowhere in the world such a delay would be acceptable.

Equally detestable, the opposition accepts that the regime will get one of the two new CNE members to be named when according to the National Assembly composition it should get none. The CNE should now be 2 to 3 in favor of the opposition and the regime will now retain a 3 to 2, and thus control of the electoral machinery with all the advantages that this implies including the electoral abuses that have been amply described.

3- Everybody agrees on defending Venezuela's right on a chunk of Guyana called Essequibo.

Positive spin: WTF?

Negative spin: WTF!

4- A "live together in peace agreement" has been approved.

Positive spin: Let's all sing kumbaya

Negative spin: wasn't there a constitution and rule of law to take care of that? OR is it now that we will live in peace because the regime decides it so? Where is the evidence of that intention?

5- Mumble jumble about organization of future conversations

Positive spin: we are still talking, nobody slammed the door.

Negative spin, the regime gains a few more precious weeks


I mean, this is bad.

In addition we learn that the next general sit down is December 6 which is an insult to the opposition as it is the one year anniversary of its landslide 2/3 majority which has been reduced to paltry negotiations so it can still breathe some. To add insult to injury the psychopath of Jorge Rodriguez is acting like the big bad Woolf enticing those in the opposition to see the positive results and thus to depose arms and join the dialogue.

What conclusions can we take, minimally?

First, the recall election is now dead. Even if December 6 were to produce the miracle of such an election there is no time to collet signatures and run it by January 10. RIP opposition main claim.

Second, the MUD is playing into the hands of the regime to accelerate its division. How can anyone think that Voluntad Popular will sit down with such paltry results? VP could possibly be talked into postponing Leopoldo Lopez release but in exchange for something big, at least a Recall Election BEFORE January 10.  Amen of other players like Maria Corina Machado.

Third, unless the MUD come up with something convincing like, now, we can only conclude it has started to cave in the regime and offer it a transition to its own measure. Why? Who? The army? The Vatican? Obama? Generic Fear?

One thing is certain, any good will at the OAS or Mercosur is likely to fade fast, if you ask me. By the time the opposition decides to hit the streets again all will have forgotten and all the work will need to be done again.

Only the regime is gaining so far. Prove me wrong.

So? Can we all agree on the D word?

This is kind of a melancholy post. For years now I have been calling this a dictatorship. It took sometime to start seeing it expressed in the foreign press. And even as I type there are some in Venezuela or overseas (I am looking at you, Zapatero just for today's denialist) that still refuse to use the D word, expecting who knows what leniency from who knows where.


For me the D word applies since Chavez closed Radio Caracas in 2007. Or if you want a more material date you can use early 2013 when the constitutional coup of the moment allowed Maduro to become Chavez successor. And many other moments you may prefer. It really does not matter much, the dictatorial nature of the regime has been obvious from the start, from the very first social program of Chavez "Plan Bolivar 2000" that established the Venezuelan army as a discretionary manager of public money, and thus corruption.

I remember it all. Try me.

This year the dictatorship has been forced to become more frontal, more classical. Until this year the excuse that Venezuela was an autocratic regime and not a dictatorship was that the opposition did manage some electoral victories, that there were still an opposition paper here and there, albeit on trial. Etc. But all those were mere excuses. For the left there was no way that the beloved populist could have generated such a monstrously corrupt and inefficient system.  For the right it was that declaring Venezuela to be a dictatorship would mean taking action for which democrats seem to have lost the taste for, and for quite a while now. The last outrage and successful international take, if I remember well, was against Fujimori who in my book is not any worse than Chavez, and certainly less calamitous for the general welfare of the people. Honduras and Paraguay were mere side shows where the changes eventually prevailed because, well, these changes had a true legal foundation.

But never was Chavez to be sternly criticized until Argentina's Macri made it to office. And yet, with more bark than bite so far.

But now things have become unacceptable and Venezuela is preparing to be suspended from Mercosur in a little bit more than a month while the OAS may suddenly decided to make a concrete Democratic Chart application. Only Erdogan receives Maduro.

Since last December the regime has proceded to the following:
*Using the judicial power to block almost all actions from the National Assembly
*Rule through a state of emergency system bypassing any legal control
*Go through a wave of arrestations and creation of political prisoners without any legal supervision, with "evidence" planted directly by the people performing the arrest
*Sue the last two remaining national daily papers
*Block any control activity that the National Assembly has in the constitution
*Suspend any election, going as far as saying that elections were not an important right
*Dispose of national assets to find fresh cash
*Decree that all remaining private companies must sell 50% of their production to the government
*Etc...... including heavy intelligence insulting propaganda to pretend that all is fine and dandy in Venezuela

But the latest was in my opinion a fatal mistake for the regime. Maduro decided that the National Budget would be approved by decree law, with the support of course of the Judicial Constitutional Court. Now, I am not going to go into the unconstitutional and illegal ways in which the regime decides taxation and how it disposes of the funds through appointed folks.Trust me, the case is clear against the regime.

Since "No taxation without representation", and we know how that ended, it has been the rule in any and every democracy that the budget must be validated by a parliament. Even if that parliament is elected under fraud, but there must be a Parliament Act. Why is such a parliamentary act a requirement? Because it is the contract symbol that the state is the guarantor of the money lent or borrowed. Failure to do such an act means simply that the only responsible party is the guy in charge and that his mere death slipping at night in the bathtub is enough to question whether his successor has any obligation in fulfilling previous commitments.

In short, if you lend money to the Venezuelan government as of today, you have zero guarantee, LEGAL guarantee, that you will ever be paid back (that we are broke and unable to pay our debt is another story, but I digress). And considering that the guy in charge, Maduro, is an ass, with a shaky hold at best, I wonder who will bail the country out...

There are two implications here.

First, obviously, that taking over discretionary disposition of all the nation's income is the most naked act of dictatorship a regime can do. Never mind that in the same ceremony where the "budget" was signed Maduro already decided that he would not give money to any opposition district which by law he is forced to do, even if he has way to deliver less than the survival requirements of such districts. Thus now we are free from having to discuss over and over the dictatorial nature of the regime. All understand money, all understand that Maduro has officially privatized the budget. Even commies understand that.

The second consideration is that we are in big trouble. If the regime has resorted to such an extreme move it is because it feels that its end is near, that too many inside the regime are about to meet their legal destiny in some court. Since it has been proven amply that the regime could not care less about the welfare of the people (starvation cases, distressing lack of heath care for which I can personally vouch for as my SO has been left without chemotherapeutic without the possibility of legally buy it overseas) then it has been easy for them to take the final decision.

By privatizing the national budget the regime grabs directly whatever is left of the country resources to use them to support Cuba and the repression machinery needed to remain in office. That is right, there is not enough money for the rest, it will all be used to sustain the repression and ensuring a minimum of popular support to be able to recruit enough of those that will do that repression. I will note that the forced sale of 50% of production (that will probably not be paid on time, if at all, and after having lost all relevant value due to inflation) represents about what the regime can physically manage in that legal robbery handling, and what it needs roughly for its CLAP distribution system (who not surprisingly in the beggarly nature of chavismo support has allowed Maduro to get back to 30% in polls). Never mind that by forcing such sale the regime acknowledges that all the expropriations made under Chavez have only yielded a cemetery of once food producing businesses.

So there it is, the regime has played its last card.

The regime could not possibly care less about what the fate of the country and its people may be. There is no other card to be played, there is no expropriation that can be done which can satisfy the needs of the people, unless looting of homes is next. Expropriation of banks is useless when inflation is scheduled to be 4 digits next year. Nothing left for populism, not even borrowing as no one will be foolish enough to lend a penny to the the regime now. All has been wasted. There is only the little bit of food produced by the private sector and a worthless budget which can at least pay for the criminals that are needed for public order.

The opposition MUD alliance great political victory

There is no way around it. Today the opposition political umbrella alliance MUD scored a brilliant victory. Here is why.

It resisted all sorts of terrible pressures to prevent the meeting in Caracas, from blockade of people going to Caracas (Sometimes even robbed by soldiers) to the jailing of half the leadership of Voluntad Popular  (And some of other parties for good measure).

In spite of all of this pressure it managed to hold at least three major gatherings in Caracas. The safe one where I was in Cafetal/Chiao. The less safe but of expected higher output along the Miranda Avenue. The definitely riskier one from Western ex Chavez-strongholds which gave us the better video of the day when a small group of forlorn red shirted creeps could do nothing against thousands walking in white.

The pictures are clear, a flood of people reaching at least a million walked. Probably more than in 2002 with way more threats than then.

In many places inside Venezuela rallies were held. Even one in New York Saint Patrick.

In spite of all fears the rally/marches run smoothly except for some localized incidents that for all that I know where caused by undercover chavista agents.

But the best evidence is the reaction of the regime. We had all sorts of desperate counter propaganda clearly destined to the remaining lumpen chavismo,  because charitably I cannot find another way to express it.

Of course, the regime called the rally a failure, but claiming that there were at most 30,000 people when the whole world is putting, sometimes in front pages, specific local shots that by themselves show more than that number?  Diosdado  Cabello went one further by posting a possibly altered picture of a Chavez rally at Bolívar Avenue in 2012 as it were today when not even the cameras of state TV could hide the low turnout of Maduro there this afternoon (with a heavy dose of light brown shirted militia to fatten up attendance). What has been more amazing is that in spite of a quick refutal  of the fraudulent picture many governors and chavistas posted it as true, even in far distant Bogota where ex mayor Gustavo Petro made once again a fool of himself talking about Venezuela.

But the most telling moment of the opposition success was when Maduro announced that he was planning to lift parliamentary immunity so as to put straight to jail any opposition member he does not like. As in all one must assume. Assorted with truly vulgar insults that should be censored on TV. The democratic option  is not in chavismo plans.

There is no arguing the success of the MUD today. The question now is what next.
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I am not putting links for lack of time tonight but a lot of it can be found in my time line on tweeter 

1S coverage by VN&V

Since last night post things got worse. A bevy of journalists have been barred from entry in or outright expelled from the country (useless unless they also expelled those that are already installed as fixed correspondents). Human Rights organizations count already 37 arbitrary arrests in the last 48 hours. Access to Caracas is nearly blocked. Threats from the regime have reached a new high pitch. Etc.

Still, I think that this is absolutely counterproductive and for anyone that will stay home scared, a newly pissed off one will decide to hit the streets tomorrow.


I, for one in a million, I hope for, will be there. But the sector where I am supposed to stand in the "taking of Caracas" is not the most glamour one, nor scenic. The objective of the event is to have a sea of people stand in the three main road axis of Caracas besides the main one, the central autopista. Mine from El Cafetal is the Rio de Janeiro avenue that follows the right bank of the Güaire river. Next to the smell of the open sewer that Chavez promised years ago to clean up so he could take a swim with Evo.

I supposed that one advantage will a be less crowded network usage so I may be able to post things real time on Twitter and Instagram.  In normal marches rallies closer to downtown some times you cannot even send a text! You have on the right side of this blog the links to both. Keep in mind that I am the last one of the historical bloggers still reporting from Venezuela in English. And who knows for how long...

Also if you have something to share send it to me. If I can download it and put it up I will. Or at night tomorrow.

That is all for tonight, going to bed hoping to forget for a few hours all the crazy going on,  including dangerous remarks by Maduro, remarks that by themselves would get him a spot on one the The Hague benches. It is that crazy for these creeps...

See you tomorrow starting sometime after 9 AM , maybe, depending on how the country wakes up.

Revocatorio, Brexit and other assauts on democracy

This past week we got dramatic examples on the limits of democracy. Let's dispatch Brexit fast as the "revocatorio" will require some details.


Some claim that Brexit was an exercise in Democracy and sovereignty. But this week has shown that it was anything but. From the quick collapse of Boris Johnson to the obvious intentions of a few in the Tories to remove Cameron at all costs, without forgetting Corbyn's naked intent at turning Labour into a British version of PODEMOS (or is that English now?) we can see that the voters interests were, well, accessory. Now Scotland is veering fast towards a new independence vote while the idiots that did not bother voting are now marching in the streets of London. And never mind the flow of racism that opened after Brexit, showing clearly what the vote was for some.

The saddest part of all this is that not only the UK voter took unnecessary risks to exert their "esprit de clocher" (podunkness?), but they are dragging Europe down with them, breaking up a peace zone that was so difficult to build up. Now that I think of it Europe should also have been voting as to whether keep Britain in. Things would be clearer today, for better or for worse.

The revocatorio in Venezuela is quite another expression of the limits of democracy, but with cruel fascist political garbage to boot. The objective here is that 20% of the electoral body can sign up, under certain conditions, to ask for a recall election of any given elected official. This may work out in countries like the US where people are used to register with a political group and where the given political group can never take for granted the amount of people that claim intent to vote for them.

But in savages country like Venezuela, a recall election is a sure way to destroy the secrecy of vote. It happened in a really bad way in 2004 with the Tascon list (yours truly was denied passport for a while for having signed up to recall Chavez, to give you an example). But now, without Chavez and with a group of renegades on top with too many crimes to confess, a recall election is out of question and any, ANY pseudo-legal trick will be tried to avoid such an election.

The latest one is that after an arduous process to collect 2% of preliminary signatures (not because of the lack of will of the voters to sign up but because of all the political pressure exerted by the regime to block the signature drive) rumors are that the regime will toss away these signatures anyway. The argument? A handful of signatures were ill collected and thus none of the million + is valid. Never mind that the electoral bord, CNE, supposedly did its job by filtering and rejecting already 600,000 signature including some of those from opposition leaders that signed in public, in front of news cameras.

What we see here is the profound anti democratic reasoning of chavismo. Since this one has had no convincing argument, for years now, their only debating strategy is to negate all because of one. That is, you can advance 100 solid arguments, if one is slightly shaky this will be used by chavismo as a proof that the other 99 are worthless. Self exempting themselves along from sustaining their own arguments, by the way. Note, such systemic reasoning is not exclusive of chavismo as we could see in some of the comments in my previous entry, quite similar to those of chavismo in the days where they infested all opposition blogs.

Thus in addition of the Venezuelan high court preparing itself to destroy the will of the people, we already see the regime creating a new version of the Tascon list with those poor sols that signed over a month ago. And the victims are the 8% that signed, even though the CNE "rejected" a good third of them. For apartheid, they are suddenly all valid.

As a I wrote, thus went away the secrecy of vote in Venezuela. The remarkable thing is that in spite of this, in spite of incredible regime pressure, 8% managed to sign. And this is duly noted when even Obama getting out of his reserve, forgetting for a while his tractations with Cuba, clearly stated that the recall election should go in Venezuela (timely this year, according to may others as a 2017 a recall election would be useless according of the shitty constitution of Chavez).

Churchill said that democracy was a messy system of rule, but that no better system had yet been invented. And probably will not. So we are left to try to improve the workings of democracy. Direct people rule is showing its limits fast. Even Athens, the copy right holder, succumbed to its excesses. With visceral reactions on twitter, facebook and other such easy access media people vote more and more through their gut feeling, electing the like of Chavez, or finding easier to bring down worthwhile instituions rather than reform them because of too many pakis.

For all what is worth, nothing pretty much, my provisional solution is to reinforce representative democracy. Shorter terms and strict term limits on executive positions should be installed to avoid the need for recall elections. Federalism should be increased. As for referenda, mandatory vote should be required, or at least that results are only binding if 50% of registered voters approves the question.

One can always dream, no?

The evil that circles us

Today Leopoldo Lopez had an OpEd piece published in the Washington Post. The piece may seem short on specifics for us here in Venezuela but we are not the audience. The audience is the US political class in its time of trial during primary season, to let them know that on inauguration day the worst problem in the Western Hemisphere awaiting them will be the humanitarian crisis that is starting in Venezuela this past few weeks. The silence of the US has helped a lot Venezuela become a failed state as Lopez letter implies.

Whether Bernie Sanders will burnish his break from ideologies credentials by condemning the Venezuelan regime or Trump will develop an interest about Venezuela besides the beauty pageants remains to be seen. I'd rather use that editorial to muse on the evil that surrounds the people of Venezuela.

Let's start with Leopoldo Lopez in jail now for two years and condemned for a trial that we now know was based on forged evidence. He is not the lone political prisoner though now he is the best known, a cause in himself. The new National Assembly is trying to pass an amnesty law that is targeted at freeing these people and you should hear the vituperation from the regime's as to that law, announcing without a shade of self doubt, no beam in their eyes,  that it would promote crime in Venezuela.

But we could pass on that, perhaps, on politically motivated vindictive. The problem is that evil sneaks everywhere in the regime. I suppose it all started with the Tascon list of 2003 that split Venezuela in two type of citizens, those against Chavez having from now on a second class status. That list built by killing the vote secrecy is still in use today.

We can remember the multiple violent expropriations, the worse ones in the country side where often people were not even allowed to take their personal belongings. By then the totalitarian nature of the regime's soul could not be hidden anymore.

Then crime went up and up, and jail roles went down and down until the regime allied itself with the jail gangs who operate from the "safety" of the jail for all sorts of racket.

Should I even bother mentioning Venezuela becoming a narco-military regime or is that just a form of business?

But the worst evil was saved for the end, when all of us, chavista voters or staunch opposition alike must suffer lack of food and lack of medicine and the concurrent crime wave.  While the fat high ranking of the regime in all selfishness prove everyday their ignorance of the situation, it is made worse by their denial, and even worse, that they do not care about it. The question is simple and should be asked by anyone; if the regime actually cared about the plight of Venezuelans, would we be in the dire straits we are today? If you have an ounce of integrity you know what the answer is.

Today president Maduro launched in great fanfare a new plan of urban agriculture that is supposed to provide within 100 days 20% of the food intake of the 8 major cities of Venezuela. That this plan is launched at a time of major water shortages in Venezuela cities has not been detected by Maduro and his entourage, Or at least they did not care about it. Failure is certain, the more so in a country that does not like much veggies, and less to work for them. Pretending, in the XXI century, to present an agricultural construct that is a mere throwback to a primitive XIX century in Venezuela when actually privileged people who could lived off their backyard garden is an insult to our intelligence. Now becoming a failed state is an achievement.

To add insult to injury, that new wonder does give birth to a new bureaucracy: National System for Urban and Semi-urban Agriculture that will include a Venezuelan Corporation for Urban and Semi-urban Agriculture. Which gives a new meaning about selling the Tiger hide before killing it....

The ultimate stage of evil is when the torturer starts making fun of its victim. We have reached that stage.

Electricity shortage horrors

Before mentioning that I was victim last Friday I am going to mention briefly the last electricity horror shortage.  A few years ago, on account of El Niño, Chavez started an ambitious, no expense spared, plan to generate enough thermal electric energy to save us from the vagaries of the Caroni river from which, if well managed, we could get more than three quarters of our electricity. He went on one of his many idiocies implying that too many dams would dry down the "poor" river as an excuse for all the immense delays on the magnificent planning left by previous governments.

The only result of all of this was a stupendous corruption that created the fortunes of people like Derwick and associates and left us today, believe it or not, with an even worse crisis than 5 years ago, and this starting with LESS industrial product than we had then. Read anything from Alek Boyd to convince yourself.

Last Friday it was quimo for my S.O. and the treatment place is in a specialty clinic that occupies a whole story of a building associated with a commercial center. The regime has decided that malls and the like would have mandatory rationing of electricity and would have to close down AC, elevators, escalators and even water pumps for a few hours a day, including during lunch breaks. Just like that.

Unfortunately for us the clinic is attached to a mall and is treated as such, regardless.

We should have realized it would be different when our customary time slot was advanced to 11 AM. When we arrived we were told that any food should be purchased by 12:30 as the elevators would be shut down until 3 PM. Any physiological necessity should also be taken care off by that time because within minutes the pipes would empty and there would be no more running water until sometime after 3 PM. In a medical facility.

Even though we were late due to frantic traffic, which I guess in retrospective was probably due to people trying to get things done before noon, we managed to get the S.O. hooked up before 11:30 and all the sundries and my sushi set in place by noon so I could eat it watching the drip... Note; I always get sushi because I think that for the other patients it is the least offensive food, visually and olfactory. After all, some of us need to last for several hours.

They had to open the windows but the day not being warm we could manage. Otherwise everything else went normally except for the lack of water. We were done a little bit past 2. They had an elevator called. At least one elevator is available on demand, manually operated for the clinic only. Everybody else on foot. Important as, even if valid, most patients are always somewhat shaken after quimio, which was our case. We reached ground floor but surprise, there is no elevator to go underground to the car. And there was no way the SO could walk down in the dark all that distance... After some discussion I finally left him at one fo the exits, going down only one of the escalators (more difficult than stairs I have you know for a sick person).

The parking was closed. All in the dark except for some of the emergency lights. You discover that the lack of replacement batteries have made parking lots a major hazard in Venezuela in case of fire: there is simply no way to find the exit!!!!!!! At least they disposed several attendants with flashlights but in case of fire?  Of course I was in the last basement. An attendant offered to accompany me but there was enough twilight and I am used to that parking enough that I declined. Unfortunately the last ground had no light. None except for a very distant corner tiny energy light dimming fast. It was not even enough to see my hand! What to do?

With one foot I slowly found what I knew to be the last step. Then, on flat ground, since I knew my car was not too far I hoped for the alarm signal to reach the car. It did and lit up inside the car. I could go slowly to my car but the light was not enough to show any obstacle (and I nearly was done in by one).  Once inside I could drive with my head lights in full and make my way to the toll booth. But the problem came next: the exit I planned to take to pick up my S.O. was closed until 3! And down there was no cell phone signal. And I was not going to have him walk all across the mall to pick him up. Followed a heated argument with an attendant.

Eventually he let me pass though the blocked way letting me know that the electric gate above may not work until 3. But that was not the worst. He explained that the whole ordeal was not a lack of planning from them, that they had no say in what to close down. It was the government itself that came on the first day and started to bring down the breakers themselves!

That is, they did not come and say "listen guys, you are consuming 100 a day. You have to bring that down to 50 a day. You have a week to manage that. Your problem".

They just came the fascist way, turned down whatever they wanted to turn down and that was that. I think that it is in small examples like that, examples that speak by themselves, that you find the real reasons why these people must be expelled from office.

I wonder how one elevator managed to escape altogether. Maybe attendants hid that particular breaker? Maybe one official has a relative on quimo there?

The regime has decided to formally annul the National Assembly of Venezuela

Taking advantage of the half week (after Carnival holidays), that tomorrow there is no session in the Assembly, the high court , TSJ, decided that the vote to reject the Emergency decree of last January was not valid and thus the decree has been valid since January 14.

Voilá!

You are going to need a lot of pennies for my thoughts.  Let's get going.


First, the factual aspect of it. Clearly, as you will understand in the second part of this post, this is a political move of the regime, a dangerous move that can only hurt itself. See, by downgrading the Assembly to nothing the regime will assume the full cost of the political and economic crisis which is getting worse by the minute. Then again, at this point the regime is beyond caring.

So, which are the facts? A technicality. According to the court head, the assembly should have voted down the decree within 48 hours and not within a week. It is on TV record that the chair of the Assembly verified about the week delay and the government did not object to it, and agreed to send the ministers to present their case. They did not, but that is not the point. That they agreed to show up and then did not show up was a tacit admission that the week delay was valid and thus under no circumstances can the high court intervene to defend one of the parties who suddenly, AFTER the fact, may secretly decide to appeal a decision. In other words, this has been a conspiracy where no parts was asked to present its counter argument. The servile high court of the regime emitted the political decision that was requested and that was that.

Let's also add that the Assembly offered to discuss a new version of the decree if the government wished to do so, even the same one if the gouvernement had the courtesy to be more explicit on its proposals. We heard only chirps in the woods.

Before we go into consequences and speculations let's discuss as a second item the political message in that decision.  From the preexisting laws Maduro and his regime could pretty much do as they pleased on the economic front. The decree was merely to project the image of "doing something" about shortages, and probably justifying blocking access to savings to try to control inflation somehow, and establishing ration cards, amen of creating absolutely idiotic and absolutely corrupt food distribution schemes like the ones already tried out in Yaracuy. Thus the decree was a provocation from the start to please the bruised ego of the radical left after the dramatic loss of December vote. It was also the start of some plan but that one was not quite congealed as we can deduct simultaneous from the very vagueness and extremism of the decree. Part of the information required to develop that plan was study the resolve of the Assembly, the reaction of the country, and how the crisis was going on (I suppose).

Clearly the Assembly was going to do its work, was not breaking down, was going to put its pressure on the regime slowly but surely. A clear message had to be sent and that the ruling of today IS the message. The TSJ will turn down ANY mesure the regime does not want, on ANY pretext. Legality has nothing to do with it. In case you do not quite understand this, it is the very last step before a "auto golpe" or self coup, where the executive power takes over all the powers of the Assembly in particular the ones from the purse (economy and the like) and control (hearings of ministers). In short Maduro has announced tonight that, together with the president of the TSJ Gladys Gutierrez, he will decide what of the Assembly will go and what will not go. He has created for himself a veto power that does not exist in the constitution and cannot be voted down because, well, it does not exist. Il suffisait d'y penser!

By the same token any attempt at modifying the Constitution will also be voted down by the TSJ... Even a consultative referendum.  And forget about reviewing old laws if the regime does not want to. A dictatorship, let's say it so.

And so we reach the third part, the why and what next.

Let me start by the what next because it is fast. Clearly this requires a strong response as it is unacceptable. We will wait for the Assembly leadership for that, it is their job. For example the idiotic Samper has announced a trip to Venezuela to bring his happy findings of December. He should be put to task. The National Assembly can go as far as requesting an emergency meeting of the OAS. It can vote a motion to censor our girl Gladys. Etc...  But what will probably happen may be quite different. The reaction of the TSJ is not quite a surprise. I am surprised in that it came this way and relatively late, but a reaction was coming. After all, I think already when I left on a trip I heard some ranting from Cabello to that effect. Or just when I cam back, or I forgot.

The regime is playing chaos as a strategy for survival (wait for an upcoming post) so we should count this ruling as bad but with a very nice silver lining: the regime is taking full political responsibility for all the economical, food and medical implosion taking place right now, under our eyes. The Assembly lone power now is to do its job, to act according to ethics, to grind its teeth and to keep telling to people that the regime is wrong and that there will be consequences for their actions and for the people that apply these actions.  The economic crisis will do the rest when hungry crowds start looting and the army finally has to step in to fight the gangs of thugs that support the regime coordinating these looting actions.

Finally the why (to be expanded this week end).

The country is imploding. I saw that myself, with my own eyes, after only ten days away (rep. intended).

Yesterday they changed the chemotherapy schedule for my S.O. because the mandatory electric shortages demand that patients are all rushed up faster than what normal care demands because of where the clinic is located and the time they are forced to shut down AC..

I have a new bachaquero. He charges between 2 to 4 times the official rate according to X. But I get, occasional,office delivery of significant supplies, let's say for me, my S.O., his mother, my house keeper in San Felipe (where the situation is way worse than in Caracas), my cleaning lady in Caracas, all people that cannot stand in line and who I do not charge full price. In fact I do not charge them, I pay their work with it, and they are way happier than with money. My S.O. and Mom I charge them less as their health bills are getting high so it is a discrete form to help them I found. They are simply out of touch, for obvious reasons, about the reality of the country. We all have our crosses.

Water comes only twice a week now. But I have a large tank, So in protest I water my lawn. If the regime had made maintenance as previewed, if it had made the investments that were requested and scheduled for 2010 we would not be suffering from the consequences of El Niño. which is a mere excuse as all the money spent in electrical generation through Derwick et al. seems to have been for naught.

Today I tried a new scheme to have "crucial" medicine sent from Europe at a horrendous price and through difficult loops: need to be European, need to have insurance over there, need to prove you cannot find it here, need to prove it is life threatening, etc... The paper work alone could kill you. And I do not know if it will work out, and I feel awfully guilty for those that cannot apply and I am doing this for my S.O. with my savings as his own ones are now gone.

And with all of the above, believe it or not, I still feel like a privileged because I can still afford it. I need to count pennies but I can still allot. So think about those who cannot. Today I helped someone by buying 50 euros at the full dollar today rate . Normally I do not do that but she needed to pay her kids school for the rest of the year.......

And that is the why. The country is sliding into the abyss. The regime knows that default is unavoidable now, if not they can read Nagel, and may be embracing the idea of it. But it is also understanding that there will be a heavy political price to pay. They are willing to pay for it because Maduro and Diosdado and Cilia and Tarek and a few generals know that regime change means jail for themselves. So they prefer to preside over the ruin of a country that they think they thus can control more easily. In their calculation there will be enough oil money for some very basic food items and aspirin, and enough drug money for their creature comforts. They cannot go elsewhere. Not even Cuba, too close from the US of A. And so they need to take out the National Assembly, provoke them into a crisis that justifies in front of "el pueblo" its dissolution and do away with direct suffrage, replaced by indirect suffrage, easier to control. They do not care what the word will think, they will be way too worried about the default to worry about Ramos Allup fate

And thus the actions of the regime these past weeks must be understood according to such parameters. They are aware that they will not recover the fervor of the people. Chavez bought that fervor though lot of goodies, some through real ideologization though outside of a core base some were also in for the money. They cannot count on that anymore. The time for fascism has arrived. Repression, destruction of legality, even their very own already deficient one. Use the distress of the country as an excuse to clamp down and see what happens. The hope for action is that military will cave in and accept to be the repressing agent. If not, then it will have to be the thug gangs that the regime has been promoting all these years that will do the job. They seem able and willing.

Will the whole strategy work?  It may. It may not. More in a coming post this week end..
----------------
Two notes added in proof-

1) In regard of the "why". The recent confrontation with Lorenzo Mendoza may have sped up the decision to procede with the decree. That Polar are the lone products available is a gaping hole in all the conspiracy theories of why the "economic" war is letting the country slowly starve. The expropriation of Polar is something that was a target of that decree and something that the regime needs to do, to bring down the last remaining independent institution in the country, a symbol on how failed the regime is. It also would suicidal but that is probably what the regime wants. Abject poverty for all.

2) And what about the Vice president?

I have a hard time to think that he is part in that show. He was having discrete and difficult contacts with Ramos Allup. Aristobulo Isturriz was named to try to find a way to work with the new Assembly and he knows that such negotiations last weeks and months, in the best cases.  We were even led to believe that some of the appointments of January were to reinforce somewhat the more "moderate" line of Aristobulo, to give it a name.

Clearly that TSJ decision sinks any discussion Aristobulo was trying to have. So two hypothesis.

1) he was making some headway and radicals did not like it and use the TSJ to blow at Aristobulo who will be forced to apply a decree that he knows full well will not work and that he will be forced to take the blame for it. If that is the case I will recommend Aristobulo to start a political crisis by resigning right now, at a press conference, convoked to announce new measures and instead to announce his resignation.

2) he was not making headway, or did not intend to so anyway. So these discussion were to gain time. As such he embraces the TSJ ruling and seals the final break up with the Assembly and walks straight ahead in the constitutional crisis.

I suggest Aristobulo to think carefully about his next move because he is being set up, no matter which is the hypothesis he is working on. But if I were to advise him, I would resign and create a scandal.

La mendacidad de Elias Jaua

Es con usted, diputado Jaua

Leo su respuesta a lo que usted llama "infame el editorial de El Nacional".

Yo no voy a entrar en el debate de si la diputada Tamara Adrian oyó lo que ella oyó. Ella sabrá defenderse; y muy bien lo hará porque ella no tuvo nunca los apoyos que usted tuvo y que le permitieron tirar piedras toda su vida quedando impune.

Tampoco voy a especular si la diputada Adriana D'Elia es una lesbiana. Eso es irrelevante, y ni me importa como a usted no debería importarle lo que la gente hace con su vida privada mientras no afecte a otros. Le recuerdo que su vida privada si afecta a otros cuando, por ejemplo, usted hace que la República cubra los costos de viaje de su niñera bien armada.

Le escribo porque leo en su respuesta a El Nacional estas cosas:

"los dueños de El Nacional otra vez desatan su odio sistemático contra mi persona"
"desarrollan sus prejuicios raciales y de clase en mi contra"
"No he proferido insulto, y mucho menos de carácter homofóbico,contra la diputada Adriana D'Elia a quien respeto como ser humano"
"Nunca he hecho uso de la palabra 'mariposones' acuñada [...]por el diputado Henry Ramos Allup para referirse a los dirigentes del partido Primero Justicia. ¿Quien es el homofóbico?"
"mi reconocimiento, basado en el principio constitucional de la igualdad ciudadana, a sus derechos pero sobre todo en el valor humano y cristiano [...] que profeso"

El problema es que para decir tales cosas uno necesita tener credibilidad y usted no la tiene.

Lei bien el editorial de El Nacional al cual usted se refiere y no veo donde ellos hacen mención de su raza o de su clase. A menos que eso esté implicado, en su criterio, por las palabras "hombre nuevo" y "encapuchamiento".  Si es así le ruego me explique porque yo lo desconozco. En cuanto al odio sistemático no estaría de más que usted lo sustente porque a mi me parece que bastante gente ha criticado sus acciones, sistemáticamente. En eso El Nacional no tendría ningún privilegio. Como figura pública le recomiendo que en esta nueva era se vaya acostumbrando de una buena vez a la crítica sin tomarla personalmente.

Cuando usted escribe que respeta a la diputada D'Elia "como ser humano" usted me va a disculpar pero eso disminuye su credibilidad. Respetar como ser humano es lo menos que se le exige a quien sea, y más que eso a un diputado de la República. Es su deber respetar a la gente como personas, no solamente como seres humanos. Es su deber dar el respeto que usted exige para si mismo.

Acusar a Ramos Allup de homofóbico no resuelve su problema. Que él lo sea no le puede servir en ningún caso de excusa. Entiendo que la mentalidad del chavismo es echarle la culpa a quien sea de sus errores, sea la cuarta república, sea el imperio y se quien sabe que otra bobada como la fulana guerra económica. Pero los errores al final son suyos y usted tiene que asumirlos. El asunto aquí es que su credibilidad esta anulada de antemano por pertenecer a una corriente política de tendencia homofóbica muy bien documentada. ¿Se recordará usted del infame "patiquines maricones de Primero Justica" lanzado por Juan Barreto en el 2004? ¿O las constantes alusiones gay en contra de Henrique Capriles durante las campañas de 2012 y 2013? Sin hablar de la campaña de Cabello contra Mendoza en Miranda donde con sorna el argumentaba Cabello que por fin Miranda tendría primera dama. Sin referirme al historial de la prensa, solamente en mi blog la etiqueta "homofóbia" le conducirá a una serie de artículos donde explico mi posición sobre la homofóbia chavista, empezando en julio del 2004.

Pero personalmente lo que a mi más me molestó en su respuesta a el Nacional fue la ultima parte porque a mi, personalmente, me consta que eso es mentira, que usted no cree en la igualdad ciudadana. Reconozco que siendo yo "sexo diverso", parece que la palabra gay no le gusta a su gente ya que prefieren lo genérico en aras de castigar mas fácilmente lo específico, no he luchado como hubiese debido hacerlo. Pero mi lucha tuvo que ser primero para los valores de todos, desde la libertad de prensa e información hasta la libertad de disfrutar del esfuerzo de mi trabajo. ¿De que me sirven derechos gay si los derechos humanos básicos de la constitución del 99 ni se cumplen y menos se respetan?

Lo que a mi me ha dolido en lo personal leyendo su respuesta es que cuando usted era canciller de la república bolivariana se emitió un comunicado a las embajadas de los países que reconocían las uniones y matrimonios igualitarios prohibiendo tramitar dichas uniones. Aunque sean entre ciudadanos de estos países. Ni siquiera explicando a los venezolanos casándose con un ciudadano de estos países que ese matrimonio/unión no tenia validez alguna en Venezuela. Tengo doble nacionalidad pero no he podido hacer beneficiar a mi pareja de dos décadas de ventajas que podría ofrecerle a través de mi otro pais porque Venezuela no solamente lo prohibe pero no ofrece esas ventajas. Ustedes ni lavan ni prestan la batea.

Por lo tanto, para mi, su concepto de igualdad ciudadana no existe. A menos que sea que todos hagamos cola para poder comer, aunque de seguro tampoco eso se aplica a usted y su familia.

Le sugiero diputado Jaua que usted empiece por disculparse y a actuar como diputado para promover lo que usted nunca quiso hacer cuando podía hacerlo como ministro. Es justicia. ¿O será que se escudará con el "cristiano [...] que profeso"" para también justificar su homofóbia e intolerancia?

----------------------

Nota: observo que El Nacional publicó su respuesta, su derecho a replica, privilegio que nadie ofendido por VTV o cualquier medio del gobierno. Medios pagados con los impuestos de todos, le recuerdo.

Nationalization of Venezuelan Economy + Bolivarian Corralito

The regime has decided this noon to ask the National Assembly to grant it a decree of "economic emergency" for 60 days, extendable to 60 more. The objective is to face the "economic war" which is what made it lose the election. That economic war modality has never been explained but we were told it was waged on the regime by these nasty capitalist. So it is time to put them under real control.

Minister Salas as he read
the infamous decree against
the economic war, whatever
that is/was/will

Here follows the highlights as I weigh them and at the end I will attempt an interpretation. Note: this decree was issued BEFORE Maduro goes to the Assembly for his State of the Nation speech in a few minutes. I am not commenting all articles.

Article 2.

1- Because of inflation the regime has some budgetary crumbs, it seems, and they will use them at discretion, without need to go through the assembly. The excuse is to maintain the "misiones" working.

2- Confirmation that resources may be used within the budget or outside of it to guarantee welfare of "el pueblo".

4- Let's not bother with bidding.

6- Exempt certain goods from importation permits.

7- Suspend for some the requirements for obtaining foreign currency for import (What foreign currency? Oil barrel is at 24).

8- Demand that public and private enterprise produce in full capacity to provide the markets. Yes, that is right, I kid you not. This is my favorite!  There is no raw material, there is no USD to import it, The harvest is in the dumps this year. And we are ORDERED to increase production.

9- The nationalization part. My translation and emphasis:

el ejecutivo nacional podrá requerir de las personas naturales o jurídicas, propietarias o poseedoras, los medios de transporte, canales de distribución, centros de acopio, beneficiadoras, y demás establecimientos, bienes inmuebles y demás mercancías que resulten necesarios para garantizar el abastecimiento oportuno de alimentos a los venezolanos, así como otros bienes de primera necesidad.

The executive branch will be able to request from private persons or businesses, owners or users (?) the means to carry, distribution systems, regional distribution warehouses, animal processing plants and other assorted establishments, real estate and other products that may be necessary to guarantee the prompt supply of food to Venezuelasn, as well as other basic necessities goods. 

In short, the regime can take over ANY business that works with food, produces it, distributes it, sells it. ANY, courtesy of the vagueness in it. In theory it will return them to their owners at the end of the emergency but in which conditions? Will they pay for what they used, wore out, etc...?

10- Bring in foreign investment and jump start exportations. Yeah, right.... In 60 days....  With full trust....

Article 3. Maduro can dictate other measures that will be necessary to protect living standards of families, children, teenagers and elderly. I kid you not, the redaction is much worse in Spanish.

Article 4. The "corralito" article. Simply: in rather vague terms the regime gets the right to control the flow of money inside the country, establishing limits for financial and banking transaction. In short: you cannot dispose of your money as you will, you need a permit to buy and sell. Note: "corralito" was what Argentina did in 2002 crisis where people could not get money out of their bank beyond a certain amount, or Greece a few months ago.

Article 6. People are not invited, they are summoned to participate in this economic offensive. the list of people that must partake include artists, sportsmen, youths, students and what not. In short ALL of US. Otherwise? My translation:

a la consecución de los más altos objetivos de consolidación de la patria productiva y económicamente independiente, como fiel manifestación de la cohesión existente entre los venezolanos en el desarrollo económico nacional y contra las acciones ejercidas por factores internos y externos que pretenden la desestabilización económica del país.

to the pursuit of the highest objectives of the productive fatherland economically independent, as the faithful manifestation of the existing cohesion among Venezuelans for the national economic development and against the actions undertaken by internal and external factors who pretend to destabilize the country's economy.

Important note: in the summoned "pueblo" there is no call to any established authority, be it governors, mayors, etc...  But all the parallel organizations such as consejos comunales, parlamentos comunales, etc are summoned and will be the enforcers. That is, the only organizations called to support the emergency decree are all the structures controlled by the PSUV that have no legal basis but are given it now for their action, whether they have any legality or legitimacy. Mob rule in the works. Paramilitary colectivos to the rescue.

Article 8 and 10. They contradict themselves. The regime announces that as soon as the decree is published in the official journal, it can be applied. However the Assembly has 8 days to consider it. Is the regime planning already some demagogic action during these few days, like taking over Polar?

My interpretation.

This decree is clear and direct announcement that the regime will take over all what it needs to take to make things work. The excuse for that is that nothing about the actual food shortage crisis is its fault, that all has been caused by the private sector. Just like that, point blank.

Of course, the decree is unworkable, it is only the paroxysm of a failed model of outrageous controls that have resulted in a worthless currency, massive food and medicine shortages and even loss of independence. If this decree is enforced total ruin awaits Venezuela.

Why is a regime that has lost an election a month ago under the clear perception by the voters that the crisis is due to the mismanagement of Maduro and the extensive corruption?

One thing is that the regime truly does not understand why it lost the December election. Thus they are trying through a nuclear bomb decree to prove that they have been right all along. And along the way establish rationing under the excuse of the emergency, even if not directly noted in the decree.

Another thing is that the regime is preparing for an election, more likely to change Madruo or to change the constitution to get rid of the National Assembly.

But what I think is going on is that the regime, or rather the Maduro faction has decided to gamble it all on this provocation. Because it is a provocation, the National Assembly cannot possibly approve of such an emergency decree that not only will void its authority but will block any reform it may wish to make. Never mind that the Assembly cannot allow Maduro to put the blame on the Assembly. Not only there will be a rejection but it will have to be forceful.

From this confrontation there are only two possible results: Maduro leaves office or a coup is perpetrated.

---------------

Note: the economic war theory has been advanced a few months into Maduro's tenure. The Dakazo was one of his first campaigns. Apparently business deliberately hide their production, or paralyze them so that prices increase and people get upset and blame the regime.

And yet there is no credible case where such a political/economic strategy has been proven except in the case of some isolated stores which at most had supplies for a couple of weeks stashed away. The big players have always been irreproachable no matter how many controls the government has put on them. I think of the Polar Group, for example. Let me put it this way: if Polar were successful in hiding corn flour it would need dozens of gigantic warehouses. Where would those ones be? How come in two years the regime could not find any?

What makes it worse is that it si public knowledge that all the industries and lands expropriated under Chavez are either closed, unproductive, deficient and what not.

The regime had no other option but to invent an imaginary economic war to cover its ineptness and today it is forging ahead even if the risk is a total collapse in a matter of weeks.  Not months, weeks, as in 4,5 weeks.

Judicial coup for dummies

So I am late into the fray, just learning about an hour ago what the High Court has done today. See, I live in reality. I had a delicate situation with my S.O. and, besides appointments, part of the day was to look all around for rather simple antibiotics, and pain killers and anti inflammatory pills. We found two of them, not the ones recommended by the physician albeit acceptably less suitable alternatives.

In a waiting room I got wind of the declarations of the new minister for urban agriculture. I found the video tonight (at end of this entry). Indeed, she wants everyone to grab a tin can, and empty bottle, put some dirt and recycle the roots of any vegetable we can, starting with green onions.

Today we also learned that Venezuela oil barrel has reached its lowest price since 2002.

Recycling the root system of green onions? Can I plant pot instead so as to escape reality?

All of this to give you a little context for what comes next.


The battle between the electoral hall of the high court (e-TSJ for short) and democracy keeps apace. The e-TSJ has decided today (even though they should be on judicial holiday) that seating the representatives for Amazonas was illegal and puts the National Assembly into contempt. And thus ANY decision of the N.A. is void and will be.

There is no point in going back into the detail of the contentious. For recall what the e-TSJ has done is illegal for many reasons: all appeals in front of the electoral board CNE have not been exhausted; there is no legal emergency; even with three seats less the N.A. can vote on 99% of laws it  needs to vote on; the e-TSJ first ruling came during judicial holiday; the e-TSJ has no right to void an election without some form of trial; etc.; etc.; and without mentioning that the allegations of fraud committed in Amazonas, even if true, pale in comparison to the accusations of fraud for every chavista candidate elsewhere.

Clearly, electoral justice is the least concern of the e-TSJ. The objective is elsewhere.

The objective is to stop the N.A. work before it has a chance to start hearings and voting laws that will limit or erase the power of the chavista elite. Complicated by whatever internal fight chavismo is having.

That is why a faction of chavismo, more than likely led by Diosdado Cabello as Maduro has more to lose in such a confrontation, uses the courts to undo the Assembly election. Going to the point of threatening the dismissal of the N.A. with the TSJ taking upo its functions until X.

The reactions of the N.A. were equally previsible. And the N.A. vice chair stated that they were not going to respect a "political" ruling of the e-TSJ.

It is also an excellent opportunity to remember a December 12, 2014 article in El Pais from Spain, English section where it is explained that

reviewed 45,474 sentences issued between 2004 and 2014 by the political, electoral and constitutional chambers at Venezuela’s Supreme Courts - in charge of government oversight. The group published the results in a new book, El TSJ al servicio de la revolución (Editorial Galipan), which it is distributing in the country in an almost clandestine manner. Analysts and journalists see this thick book as a gem. The main conclusion of this long essay is that the Supreme Court has never delivered a sentence against the government.

My emphasis. I rest my case, the e-TSJ ruling has nothing to do with electoral justice. This is a judicial coup in progress where a partisan named court will undo the popular will exerted through perfectly legal, even if biased, elections.

That is all.

So, what next?

Certain argue that the N.A. and Ramos Allup acted harshly, that after all they could start doing a few things with the 109 other seats. That they should have waited even if it left Amazonas without representation at a crucial time.

Others, like the ones rejecting the ruling, think that there is no other way but to confront.

I side with the later for various reasons.

- The e-TSJ "ruling" is not the first, it is already the second and there is already clear evidence that more is coming. The ex-chair of the TSJ has said it so, anticipating today's e-ruling (I have written a lot on her, Luisa Estela Morales Lamuño, in this blog).

- Avoiding a confrontation is useless. Postponing may make sense but when the regime attacks first you need to reply and up the ante.

- This is a thugocracy/kleptocracy/drug-lord-ocracy. Legal elegance is something that flies way above their heads. Accepting any thing from them is just the same as validating their crimes and pushing them forward.

A coup, violence, is unavoidable because the leader of the violent is Diosdado Cabello and he sees in his future an orange suit. Unfortunately there are dozens that also are looking at different ways to wear orange. If anyone disagrees with me they are welcome to explain why I am wrong.

Considering the reality that I live in I am painfully aware that what the regime seeks is to delay any action from the National Assembly and this will be leaving el pueblo, me, with neither food nor medicine. But, my friends, confronting or not the regime IS NOT going to speed up the solution to our problems. We can be only sure of one thing: as long as Maduro and Cabello are in charge, nothing, absolutely nothing will get fixed. They cannot fix it. They cannot care less.

Might as well go for it.

--------------------------------------




There is an older video of this weirdo saying that she would pinch the balls of any gringo landing in Venezuela during the uproar of the DEA putting narco-personnel on its lists. I suppose her agricultural project include also planting pot at home?

A confusing but clarifying week

With the National Assembly swearing-in show and the collateral that came next Venezuela has experienced one of its most confusing weeks - but maybe one of its best ones-

Saddamization

The thread at the N.A. is simple. Chavismo could not find a way to stop its coming Götterdämmerung. So they came, saw and left. They could not avoid their first encounter with a free press in about a decade. Some of the questions were truly embarrassing like when a journalist was finally able to stand on the way of Cilia Flores and ask her about her narco-nephews. Not her nephews in jail in the US awaiting trial, but her NARCO-nephews, straight. This is what happens when you ignore and insult the press for so many years: they get so frustrated that they lose any sense of measure or respect. And poor Cilia, the "first fighter", the wife of president Maduro, had to pick up her pace to escape.

But this bringing down of Cilia was just the beginning of an iconoclastic binge. In the early morning next day the new chair of the N.A. Ramos Allup brought down all the portraits of Chavez that overwhelmed the decor. For good measure he also had brought down the computer created image of Bolivar out of his 200 year old remains. This necrophiliac endeavor from Chavez had become the new official portrait of Bolivar although there is a an existing portrait which was approved by Bolivar himself.

This carefully orchestrated act of Ramos Allup had the desired effect, an overreaction of chavismo which will cost it dearly. It included a lengthy military show in cadena (forced simultaneous broadcast on ALL networks and radios) to "desagravio"  redress/repair the insult made to Bolivar even though the bulk of the actions was in defense of Chavez who is, apparently, more insulted than Bolivar.

It is hard to imagine that the totalitarian mentality of these people could be exposed so well in such short notice. General Padrino wanted to impress on us that the computer Bolivar was now encrusted deep into the heart of all of us. How could it be otherwise, he implied. And this meant that Bolivar was insulted through insults to Chavez as the favorite "insigne" son of Bolivar (even if he never got 50% of the electorate to vote for him, even with his higher scores in votes cast). That there is no food or medicine after Chavez is not making a dent in these people who keep their idols up.  Hence the brilliant move of Ramos Allup, starting to tear down that mental construct that is blocking any progress for the country.

More details emerged to confirm that need. The mayor of Caracas announced that the whole city will be papered over with copies of the discarded portraits. Funds for that will apparently not be a problem. As to where will he find the paper and ink for that endeavour remains to be explained. Other chavistas suggested that all chavista households should have well displayed Bolivar and Chavez, a new version of the yellow star I suppose for those who do not harbor the "insigne" badge.

Meanwhile Ramos Allup forges ahead and went alone to Quinta Crespo market for his week's groceries, to the great wonderment of el pueblo not used to see chavista nomenklatura shop on their own (even if he had to leave in a hurry after red storm troopers arrived). Whatever criticism people throw at Ramos, and many are from the opposition itslef, we must thank him for breaking a taboo. The idolization of Chavez will never be the same.

The government thread is briefer: they have lost the capacity to set the political agenda and their race is to keep up with what the MUD and R.A. do. I am not going into the expected Greek chorus that want already to nullify the N.A. and jail R.A. I am just going to look at what happened at Miraflores. There Maduro named a new cabinet which kept military in the main positions, and the ones that move the most money. Some cryptic moderates under the guise of people with experience in the private sector were appointed. And to balance it all a social sciences major with nebulous ideas on economy and zero experience is the alleged new star.

But the new cabinet is more interesting through what is missing: some of Cabello heavy weights even though he still has his wife as tourism minister. Some see in that a real weakening of Cabello who, stripped of his power base at the N.A. and the refusal by the army to follow him in a coup on December 6, may be just on his way out. Perhaps even as a token offering to the DEA in a near future? All is possible but I also concur that Cabello's day are counted unless he finds new support that these days could only come from forgiveness of an opposition that he has brutalized for too long. In a way Cabello aura of invincibility is another icon that was brought down this week. After all since December 6 he was threatening and threatening and yet in the end he had to surrender the N.A. seat and could not stop its first measures, ridiculing himself by threatening the N.A. to leave it without funding.

As the first true week of the Assembly looms we may expect more surprises, the more so that it seems resolved in promoting first an amnesty law which could be the final showdown into forcing the regime to compromise,or to surrender. The final release of Leopoldo Lopez in the streets maybe too much for the regime to endure without breaking down. We will see.

Tales of a military temper tantrum

What has inflamed the 2.0 tonight is the late afternoon address of Padrino Lopez, in cadena nonetheless. A quick video analysis follows.

The act at Chavez grave is a "desagravio", that is an act of redress, in this case of the memory of Bolivar, Chavez and the honor of Maduro. We get that in the first seconds. Of course this is a response of yesterday Ramos Allup iconoclast act or removing the images of Chavez and the fake Bolivar at the National Assembly. The fake Bolivar is a "reconstruction" based on the skull of Bolivar that Chavez got through profanation. So, from the start poor Padrino ends up being quite ridiculous defending a 200 yer old reconstruction which present Bolivar with more "negroid" characters than the portrait that Bolivar himself approved of.  But this bolivarian Venezuela....

In all truth here the outrage is against chasing Chavez from the National Assembly hallways where he should have never been to begin with. So the alleged Bolivar insult is used as an excuse to justify the defense of 17 years of ideologizing Chavez demi-god status.

Observe the actual camera focus at 40'' on the red foulard with the 4F which is the apology of the failed coup of 1992. Right there this is unconstitutional, illegal, traitorous and what next. Objectively there is no need to listen to the rest of the Padrino crap, but we must.

1:09 Padrino places Cilia flores above all the other representatives of chavismo. Some pigs are more equal than others.

2:03 Observe the panoramic of a fat military. Priceless.

2:35 The idiot taking pictures behind Padrino in what is supposed to be a most solemn occasion. They really cannot behave. Ever.

3:09 According to Padrino the whole fatherland has been "ultrajada" insulted, violated, etc... So he is the avenger.




3:30 He insists on Bolivar being the one offended. Go and see the Ramos Allup video again and tell me about that.

3:50 We finally get to Chavez "hijo insigne de bolivar y de la patria también" notable child of Bolivar and of the fatherland too. Note the order.........

Follows an amalgam as to Ramos Allup "ultraje" to the armed forces. Sure, the idol was toppled! Including biblical references of Jesus saying that you do not fight Satan with Satan. And suddenly at 6:30 Padrino approves of this, that they will not fight Satan with Satan.

7:45 close up of the fake Bolivar as he is cited that good manners make good laws. Really? Under Chavez?

Follows a dissertation about the preservation of Venezuelan history. never mind that Chavez rewrote it.

9:09 Freeze there and notice that the 3 army stars and the title of the communique Padrino then reads. You can see the title there.  By then you notice that the event has been very carefully planned.

Follows a series of banalities noting that Maduro is the embodiment of the state so he was also offended.

11;00 Padrino starts justifying the invented Bolivar of Chavez, starting that this image has been accepted by all (not by me anyway, but I do not want to make this post about me).

Follows more bullshit about how Venezuela became bolivarian.

11:35 Anti capitalist jab.

14:15 In defense of Misiones.

14:44 "Bolivar y Chavez", the amalgam is now complete. They cannot be separated and are both the embodiment of the fatherland. There you go!

15:33 The attempt at amalgam of Maduro to Chavez and Bolivar starts.

15:58 Padrino ratifies the army unconditional support to Maduro. Really? How often will that support need to be ratified? One wonders.......

16:59 "conciencia supraracional", supra rational conscience? What the f...? Is this the intellectual excuse for a coup?

And then, surprisingly, Padrino finishes this totalitarian speech with an olive branch of sort stating that all have Venezuelan best interests at heart and that such scenes should be avoided so as not to foster further divisions.  I, for one, read into this that Padrino has not read the speech he truly wanted to read. As to what that speech would be, I'd rather not speculate.

I do not know what this all means. However there are a few things that I can advance without fear of beeing too far from the mark.

First, for the armed forces living in inbred chavista and Cuban propaganda the idea that some people actually did not like Chavez at all is a surprise. For some reason they have equated a heavy imposed silence on us as a tacit acceptation of Chavez grandeur. It is not, and they are in shock.

Second, the actions of Ramos Allup have hit at the center of chavismo core beliefs, all that was used to justify years of looting and human rights violations in the name of a higher cause. That mental idol has also taken a hit.

Third, the regime suddenly realizes that the opposition means business and that a confrontation of powers is not a sure success for the regime. A rule in warfare is that you need to know your enemy. Watching the reaction of chavismo it seems that the opposition knows its enemy plexus much better than expected.

Still, Ramos Allup wishes he would have had it as easy as Leo the Isaurian.

A new geography of chavismo [Updated]

When political movements suffer a major set back they either go extinct or they reorganize for better days. This means that inside factions shift, balances change and the result of these glissando will be extinction or renewal. With events these last two weeks we can start seeing how this is shaping.


The regime lost bad on December 6 but not everyone inside lost the same. The big loser is Diosdado Cabello; he lost his soap box, a lot of protection and his ability to rule through fear. Maduro lost a lot for sure as the election was a referendum on his tenure. But he is still president while Diosdado is, well, not much more than a minority party representative. If for the sake of survival the rivalry between the two men has been put in the side burner a year ago when polls started to look bad, that rivalry still exists and the need for survival is now desperate.

With the army party slightly on the side as they are not willing to pay the political price of 17 years of misrule, with the corrupt chavista narco elite blamed internally for the catastrophic economic crisis, it is the hour of the radicals and they are going for it.

Maduro formed in Cuba and the Castro's viceroy is naturally fond of radicals. He did not advance them before because chavismo was a coalition of interests where displacing a single group could have dangerous snowball effects. But now he can because the other factions are stunned not only because they lost on 6D so badly but also that the people did not revolt to expel the MUD invaders and restore chavismo to revolutionary glory. I am not making this up, read their own words in the press.

The thing about radicals is that even if they lose a battle or an election they do not care much as to the why and how. They just care about pursuing their agenda at all costs since they truly believe that through its completion people will finally see the goodness of their proposal. Be it radical chavismo, IS or Marine Le Pen. Thus yesterday we saw Maduro finally imposing a cabinet more to his liking where the economy tsar/star is pure lefty, but someone without even a formal Marxist formation. Luis Salas is a prophet. He has had visions that inflation does not exist, that gas is not subsided, that Polar hides months of national production in a small warehouse somewhere. As a prophet now in charge he will demonstrate that his fantasy world was the truth that others failed to see and thus failed to seek.

If some of the chavista factions may be stunned they are not necessary totally oblivious. The army sent back to its barracks keeps a few seats, in particular the defense minister Padrino who was the guy that refused to commit electoral fraud a month ago. Some more sensible heads are still around such as the new vice president or a couple of economy ministers offering a strange balance to Salas. It should be noted that the new vice, Aristobulo Isturiz, would be a great president for a short transition in between Maduro departure and the election of its successor. In fact, Isturiz could well be the best candidate chavismo has to offer but is smart enough not to accept this late in life such a poisoned gift. President for a few weeks will suffice him.

Thus go the moves inside chavismo, the first serious realignment since the civilian faction was ousted when Ramirez and Giordani were expelled. Now the fight in earnest between the radicals and the bolibourgeois narco elite supported by part of the army has started.

We will see if some inside the PSUV have the nerve to form a third faction to avoid the final demise of the Chavez party.

I have my doubts.

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Update.
Rafael Poleo thinks that the new cabinet and the iconoclast wars are a strategy to remove Diosdado Cabello once and for all. I am not mentioning this because I concur, I am just noting it to illustrate the wide swath of speculation going on.

El nuevo gabinete y el discurso de Padrino son las pinzas conque sacan del poder a Diosdado.

— Rafael Poleo (@PoleoRafael) January 8, 2016

Weimar or Harare?

Or was that a suicidal note from the regime?

I wrote earlier about the recent "economic policies" of the regime. But I need to add the latest from today, the de facto privatization of the Central Bank of Venezuela, BCV, to Nicolas Maduro and his camarilla.


In what is a gross constitutional violation Maduro modified through law decree the rules over the BCV. His enabling law did not allow him to do so, and the constitution either. Period.

Which are the modifications?

First, the National Assembly, NA, cannot name representatives to the BCV board of directors, they are now named all by the executive branch. That is right, the executive decides on its own on monetary and fiscal policies. No outside input or supervision needed.

Second, the new BCV is under no obligation to make its statistics public, that is, it will send them to the NA if the executive power allows for it. And apparently even then the NA cannot comment on them. One wonders how can the NA legislate if the most important statistics of the country remain hidden from view.

Third, the BCV can now lend to the regime whatever money it needs, and the conditions of such lending may remain confidential if the regime justifies of any crisis. That is, the banknote printing machine depends on whatever petty cash Maduro needs at any given day.

I need not insult the intelligence of the reader that if such a measure is not immediately overturned by the new NA we are going straight ahead into the wall of hyperinflation. Our currency is as of today is, well, worthless (today 847 to 1 USD, I bet you 1,500 by early February). Hello Weimar! Greetings Harare! We may just beat your records!

This suicidal action of the regime, because when hyperinflation comes in I have no idea how they will stop the people from Catia and 23 de Enero to come and burn down Miraflores Palace, has three clear intentions.

One is to avoid asking the new NA for budgets and their extension. Electoral needs will be covered directly through borrowing at the BCV, for example.

The second intention is to delay as much as possible the publication of the catastrophic economic news of 2015 which may well speed up the downfall of the regime.

The third intention, last but not least, principal in my eyes, is to hide the corruption, looting and mismanagement of the country under Maduro. When the numbers come in, when the NA is able to open hearings on some ministers like Rodriguez Torres, Osorio or the BCV director Merentes, these people will be unable to hide their responsibilities and penal measures will have to be required on the spot. Or these people will have to do a coup which would be hard to succeed considering the reasons why they will ask el pueblo for support. Henceforth the neutralization and privatization of the BCV.

I should add a fourth ancillary reason. Funding for Cuba will be very difficult through the NA. There will be a need to hide the looting that needs to maintain alive the Castro criminals. Blocking access to the BCV not only hides what was already given to Cuba but will allow for a year or two more of partial financing of Cuba. Then again since the country is all but bankrupt I wonder how much money can Cuba get anyway.

This, for me, is the worst possible thing the regime could do to itself. It is simply unthinkable and betrays the desperation of the regime and its willingness to disregard any rule, any constitutional obligation. But it also may show that the army is abandoning it. If they need to resort to packing courts and hiding the money it is because they cannot do a coup. Or so I hope for the sake of all of us.

The inevitable confrontation: let's begin by unseating a few representatives

As I have been writing through December in any possible way that I could come up with, the confrontation between the regime and the opposition new National Assembly is inevitable. And started in all earnest today. By demanding that almost a dozen MUD representative election is to be questioned, the regime has deprived the new majority of its supernumerary majority of 2/3 which would have allowed it to change some of the worst and more repressive and manipulative laws approved under Chavez. Namely the laws that ensure the regime's near dictatorial nature such as freedom of expression and control of the judiciary by the regime (absolute, 100% control by the way as nobody remembers the last time the regime lost a case in the high court TSJ).

True, the Assembly still preserves the 3/5 super-majority that it needs to control fiscal aspects of the regime, but the ones that matter, the ones that can bring back democracy to Venezuela, are, for the time being, lost.  Let's look at some details.

The regime uses two excuses to justify that up to a dozen of the newly elected representatives should not be seated. Note: such massive annulment is unprecedented in Venezuela since regular elections started in 1958, the more so that the regime controls tightly the electoral system which makes it implausible the theory that the opposition could commit fraud at election time (see OAS secretary Almagro 18 pages letter to Tibisay Lucena, head of the electoral board CNE).

The first motive is that in a few districts the amount of nil votes is larger than the margin of victory of the opposition candidate. In the eyes of the regime PSUV vehicle this mean that the real will of the people has not been expressed. In short: the regime does not recognize the possibility of the nil vote.

The first line of criticism against such a view is that if the nil vote needs to be taken into account then there should be no abstention and everyone should be obliged to vote. An obligation, by the way, that chavismo removed in the Constitution of 1999. The second immediate objection is that there is no way to say which way the nil vote would have gone if these people had been "obliged" to make a choice. At least in that part of the ruling the representatives are not unseated outright but the TSJ has opened the door to repeat the election in those district without any justifiable reason, going over the attributions of the CNE which should decide on such matters BEFORE the TSJ does. That is, if you consider that the CNE did not give you justice then you go to the high court of the country. The regime simply uses its stronghold on the judicial power to dictate the resolutions it needs to be dictated, bypassing whatever needs to be bypassed, starting with the will of the people.

The second motive is that apparently in the state of Amazonas, in the Wild South of the country, there may have been cases of vote buying. First, let's note the absolute cynicism of the regime who has made it an institutional practice to buy vote and blackmail public employees in voting for the regime, as they did in Amazonas. After the vote we have Maduro himself on record saying that since people did not vote for him he did not see any point in keeping building housing for them. We have the director of electrical service in Venezuela firing people suspected of not having voted for the regime. We have the documented distributions of goodies such as tablets, before the election. But even if we assume that there was indeed vote buying by the Amazonas governor who seats with the opposition, how do you know the people blackmailed into voting for you did so in the end? After all the vote is secret EVEN in Amazonas; and in other areas where the regime exerted huge pressure it lost the election anyway. For example in ALL of Caracas districts. Thus vote "buying" is no guarantee of vote "getting".

Let's go a little further in the vote buying supposition. Before you write a sentence to unseat an elected representative for Amazonas, which the TSJ just did, you need to have an investigation, possibly a trial, definitely real verifiable evidence. None of these things exist to this writing, we only have declarations of the PSUV direction with an illegal phone tapping which authenticity has yet to be established.  I will go further, you need to prove that the elected representatives actually worked directly at vote buying. It is quite conceivable that a third party with interest in the electoral result may have bought the vote behind the scenes but that is no reason to punish FIRST the elected official, without a trial, even a fake trial.

I trust that with these very simple arguments stated above it is quite clear for the reader that what is going on is a judicial coup to deny the genuine expression of the people of Venezuela in rejecting the regime. Period.

What can the opposition do?

It started by the easiest way offered by the hurried desperation of the regime: it decided to demand that the justices in charge of that sentence be declared as unfit for conflict of interests. See, one of the judges is someone who was a PSUV representative in the outgoing Assembly and was hurriedly, and illegally, appointed judge a week ago. Clearly, such a judge, member of the PSUV until a very few days ago, cannot be fair and impartial. And more like that.

The opposition has also other choices. It can go international and has already enough evidence to require that the OAS applies the sanctions previewed in its democracy chart. That is, demand that Venezuela be not recognized anymore as a functional democracy. Just with the precedent of the 18 page letter of OAS secretary Almagro it is near impossible that the regime wins its case. A letter has already been sent to various organizations.

However international help, if it comes, is slow. Meanwhile at home the choices are not as clear. The Assembly may decide to seat the questioned deputies anyway and thus enter in a direct power confrontation. The TSJ may disband the New Assembly for contempt, etc. etc......

The fact of the matter is that the regime has decided to use any way it can to annul the MUD victory. And that is that. Recent evidence? Maduro is using the remaining two days of his enabling law to dictate more control measures to limit the scope of action of the new Assembly. He also said that he could not care less about the new "burguesa" assembly, that he was going against the "capitalismo salvaje"

In case you have any doubt of the totalitarian mentality of the regime there is that clip from yesterday when on live TV a Maduro supporter said that any deserter of chavismo should be put down with a bullet though the head, gesture included. Maduro laughed and told him that such things cannot be said on live TV, which implies that off camera chavismo has no problem using violent and foul language to discuss the fate of its opponents/deserters/traitors. You can see the complete video to truly measure the nature of these people here, if your Spanish allows (the shooting gesture is clearer in the long version).



Friends, it is going to get worse before it gets better.