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.

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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

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Left press review

On a slow Saturday night I decided to do what I have stopped doing long, long ago, to examine the misinforming to plain idiotic articles supporting the bolivarian farce. But two upset readers sent me these pieces and by sheer courtesy I read them and went ahead to comment below.

The first one is from CounterPunch. Since I do not read such pages I cannot evaluate how far left these people are. Nor I care for, taking the piece for itself as objectively as I could. It did not go far... All started well enough, pointing out the wish for the revolutionaries to fight back while acknowledging a major electoral setback. But then by the 4th large paragraph we were back in 2002... Really? It is OK that here, in Venezuela, they use that argument because they have no other one left, but overseas? Can't they afford to be a tad more creative in defending the revolutionary farce? Here the paragraph in full:

In April 2002, the U.S.-backed opposition in Venezuela staged a coup against then President Chavez in a desperate attempt to reassert their control over the country and extinguish the Bolivarian Revolution. Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans poured into the streets of Caracas, with millions more in other parts of the country, calling for Chavez to be restored tohis rightful office, and for the coup leaders to be arrested. There was really no doubt that the U.S. was responsible for this attempt at forced regime change, with many mainstream news outlets reporting within days that high-ranking officials in the Bush administration were intimately involved in orchestrating the coup.

The US had sympathies but it was NEVER proved that the Bush administration gave a "go ahead". Apparently for the left it is absolutely impossible to conceive that actually there would be a strong popular movement against a leftist regime, a movement that does not need to be stoked on by the CIA. Sigh...  The good savage theory from the North Atlantic do-gooders....

As for the hundred of thousand in Caracas and the millions across the country, pictures please. Amazing how some urban legends that started with a small crowds of looters on Friday 12 and some protest gatherings in the name of Chavez AFTER it was becoming clear that the army may be returning Chavez to office ended up becoming throngs of freedom seeking folks who did all the work. Apparently the author was in Caracas and I wasn't.

You can gather by yourself that the rest of the piece read like an open propaganda pamphlet. No need to comment further, just to point out that the piece appeared first in Telesur. 'nuf said!

The other piece graced Huff Post, where you can find about everything if you are patient enough to set through it (I do not). It is written by Dan Kovalic who presents himself as an adjunct professor. And has his twitter avatar posing next to Chavez tombstone. So there goes academic objectivity.

At least, in a way, he is more honest: you do not need to wait for the 4th paragraph, you get it right in the face from the start.

Of course, given the fact that the opposition was able to win such an election, and that President Maduro and the PSUV are going to honor that election, is a true testament to what many of us have been saying for years -- that, despite the claims of the U.S. government and its compliant media (collectively, the U.S.), Venezuela under Chavez/Maduro governance is authentically democratic. Indeed, one of the great achievements of the Chavista revolution has been democratic reforms.

So right there you have it, before Chavez there was no democracy (how did he get elected, to begin with?). And poor Mr. Kovalic: he should have waited a few days before writing on the Huff: Maduro et al. are not "honoring" the result.

For the rest Mr. Kovalic reveals his true colors: the bolivarian farce is good and worth defending no matter what because, well, it is anti US.  Mr. Kovalic does in very broad strokes. Not for him to have read the 18 pages letter from OAS secretary exquisitely detailing all the electoral treachery BEFORE the first vote was cast. Nor for him either to take a calculator and verify that the minimum wage today in Venezuela is not even 20 USD a month and as such ALL social advances of Chavez, whatever those may be, are now voided, leaving people worse off than what they were in 1998. The rest of the note is thus quite predictable. As is predictable that both notes do not expand much on the reasons why people voted against the regime: years of waiting on line under the sun for food and medicine and sanitary items. Conditions that neither one would tolerate for a minute in the cozy countries where they live and from where it is so easy to decide what is best for Venezuela (even if it is OK to sacrifice it on the anti US altar).

The problem with people like these two authors is that debate with them is useless, It is not that they believe in what they write about, it is that they desperately want to believe. And against that, history, logic and facts are impotent.

May the dear readers do as they wish with this blog entry.

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The banality of evil, Caracas style

Tonight I twitted this:

Oyendo Nieves me la paso pensando en Hanna Arendt y la banalidad del mal. #ConcluFiscal

— daniel duquenal (@danielduquenal) October 28, 2015

In English: Listening to {prosecutor} Nieves I keep thinking of Hannah Arendt and the banality of evil.

One of the top prosecutors in the Leopoldo Lopez show trial has defected to the US and is now saying that the whole operation against Lopez was a scam, that the intention was to put him away for the election of 2015 and more. In fact Nieves went as far as to say, more or less, that the order to arrest Lopez already existed before the events for which he was finally arrested in February 2014.


Franklin Nieves was tonight in the top CÑNe rating show of Fernando del Rincon. Mr. del Rincon rocketed from a CNNE anchor to his own nightly talk show, Conclusiones, as a consequence of his daring reports on Venezuela through the first half of 2014. He has become the journalist to go for any trouble in Latin America, and the specialist on Venezuela, much loved by the opposition, and much more reviled by the regime.

I am not going into the details of what Nieves said (for those who read Spanish you can visit my Tweeter time line of Tuesday night). In short, he stated that all the evidence against Lopez was fabricated, that he received orders to prosecute anyway on those fake evidences, that all knew about that in the regime, that Diosdado Cabello himself was supervising the first orders and that he fooled the Lopez family in making them believe that if Lopez surrendered nicely a deal would be reached. He accused directly Maduro and Cabello and some of the top officials at the state prosecuting office in such a way that the regime will have to do better than just using the worn out line "he is a liar, paid by the nemesis of the revolution" (which he may well be for all that I know, but that is not the point). There is a situation now that will make supporting the regime almost impossible for some of its allies.

No, my interest is elsewhere. First, let's us start with the one with easiest access: why is the US covering for all those defectors? Is it a strategy to encourage them to defect the regime so as to build a case against its corrupt narco officials? In that case, how come indictments and active prosecutions are not coming through faster? In short, why are the US giving some (minor) credit to some of the accusations the regime hurls at them? I am writing that because informed people know better, know that the regime is indeed a rotten corrupt system, that is not investigated by the US alone. But too many use the people's ignorance and misinformation, even inside the opposition, in such ways that it helps the regime case. I am also writing this so that readers realize that I am not in a blind rage as I type.

There is some confusing evil above, but there is real evil next.

What has struck me more was the composure of Nieves during the whole interview, even as del Rincon was trying not to break down under the shock of having all of his antidemocratic accusations against the regime thus validated.

That made me think of Hanna Arendt, the Eichman trial, the basic nature of totalitarianism the way she explained, creating "the banality of evil".  At least Arendt was writing her seminal books based on people following orders. I suppose that concentration camp guards did not have access to Tweeter to get contrasting news to what the Reich told them everyday.  Even if pathetic, the defenses of "I was just following orders" " I did not know" "Nobody told me anything, nobody knew" could make one doubt on occasion if the lines were pronounced then with an empty enough glance.

But with Nieves such excuses cannot apply. Nieves tonight told us he knew what he was doing all along was wrong, was a crime, was an abuse of Human Rights. He knew all along that the regime wanted Lopez jailed, found guilty while it figured out, I imagine, a final solution to the Lopez problem.

Nieves knew and yet he did. And I do not buy much his crocodile tears at seeing Lopez little girl go to the same school as the prosecutor's orphan maker girl being too much for him and making him decide to defect.

What was shocking tonight is that all the actors were following orders, indeed, but knowing full well that the orders were wrong. In the end it does not really matter whether Cabello is the one that gave the original order, what matters here is that the chavista regime has been a totalitarian regime for quite a while as the behavior of the people at the nation's prosecution office show. This is way beyond debating whether the regime can be described as a dictatorship. This is a neo-totalitarian system as I have long ago coined it as a tag for some of this blog entries.

In the end one is left perplexed in trying to figure which is the worst evil. The ones giving orders? The ones executing it? The ones confessing to them without much trouble? And thus it all becomes banal.

PS: interview now up for those who understand Spanish

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Brief electoral report

This is not an electoral report. As I have announced weeks ago, this blog will not cover the coming elections for a variety of reasons. Still, when I read all of the nonsense or wishful thinking elsewhere, I suppose that I feel compelled from time to time to remind people that treating the parliamentary election of December as if it were a normal election is, well, close to idiotic. In other words discussing in detail the intrigues inside the MUD of PSUV is close to irrelevant. Discussing the treachery of the regime is close to redundant at this point. Speculating on the final outcome with polls and calculations is only marginally productive unless one places the comment on the consequences of the vote rather than the actual results.

Thus in no particular order a few talking points, for lack of a more descriptive title.


Electoral treachery. The regime keeps at it. In addition of banning from office for the silliest of reasons opposition leaders (interestingly no significant PSUV is banned, they do not even try to keep a vague pretense of fairness), it has now started to intervene directly into opposition parties organization on the flimsiest of excuses. Any disgruntled party member can sue its direction, win the trial courtesy DIRECTLY from the hand of the high court TSJ so there is no possible appeal whatsoever, and become the new party leader. The objective is simple: try to pry away from the MUD opposition umbrella electoral organization. Since the new "leaders" appointed by the regime are to say the least suspicious in their opposition commitment the MUD has no other choices but to expel the "renovated" parties. These in turn are expected to name their own candidates, certainly financed by the regime.

The point here is not the detail of any given electoral treachery. The point is that the regime will go in crescendo in inventing barriers to any opposition putative electoral victory and, caught in its own game, it will feel justified on December 7 not to recognize the adverse result.

Conclusion, of a sort.  All of this in the end matters little. The vote is quite clear. No matter who the candidates are, the crisis has tuned out the election into a referendum on Maduro. Any yellow or red dog will get its due votes. Any treachery form the regime has no effect on the long run of things.

Do the results matter?

They do not. It is irrelevant which side wins on December 6, the task is the same for all, there is no margin of action. The price of oil keeps going down and corruption is stronger than ever. Things are so reckless that I have been asked straight for money if I want a certain permit to be processed: they will receive the request, they cannot refuse, but the evaluation will happen only if I pay a load of cash to X (fake companies exist with fiscal registry so I can even get a bill for tax purposes).

For the regime the strategy is clear: rake as much cash as possible before December 6, either to win votes, or to have a safety net if ousted, AND leave the coffers empty if the opposition wins. This one deprived of means will be destined to failure (with a fast chavista return to office). And if chavismo wins they will find a way to wing it out, using harsh repression as needed. There cannot be any other way for the colony as long as the Cuban master needs whatever it can get from its Venezuelan overseas territory. That the viceroys of that overseas are corrupt narco military and radical low life politicos only aggravates the situation.

In short, the predictably worsening economic crisis in 2016 will lead to political failure of whomever holds office. One is actually tempted to wish for a chavismo "victory" so to be able to finish it off once and for all in the following year.

The opposition will lose the election

Not only electoral treachery will be hard to overcome, but the opposition electoral umbrella, MUD, is doing whatever it takes to demotivate its potential electors. For example sabotaging folks like Leopoldo Lopez or Maria Corina Machado makes their more fervent and dedicated electoral voters want to stay home.  Lack of a concrete program is as bad as lack of a principled program: lack of either one sets up the opposition for political failure after the election and has as such a demotivating effect. The current offering of being an kind of efficient chavismo, or efficient populism, an oxymoron of course, is simply not enough to pry away chavista voters who at best, it is hoped for, will stay home.

Because the opposition victory is not to get more seats than chavismo, the opposition needs a victory of at least 3/5 of the seats at stake. Otherwise it will have no veto power and no real control over a public administration and power structures solidly packed with chavista hacks. The reader should remember that the MUD is not a political party based on any ideology or coherent program, even if flawed. The MUD is first an electoral alliance to unify a splintered opposition, an alliance that has really no program beyond restoring some democracy to the country. This is by itself very commendable, but in the current calamitous situation it is not enough.  Thus only a 3/5 victory will steel the MUD in front of chavismo and give it a chance to take action, if anything to call for a recall election on Maduro. If the MUD gets a simple majority this one will fall apart in front of the crisis and chavismo will not be controlled and over time will be able to pry away or outright destroy whatever it needs to recover a majority.

Chavismo will not win the election

The paradox here is that I can write that the opposition will lose the election but that chavismo will not win it. The candidate "primary" fixing process of chavismo has been very interesting. First, it was all but transparent. Second, more than half of the outgoing representatives are not running for reelection (I read somewhere that 80% were out). This does not talk at all of internal democracy inside chavismo, this talks of account settling between factions, of an absolute lack of trust in the currently serving personnel for the leaders of the current factions, or vice-versa. All prefer new blood, or have been eaten up by dissent.

If opposition need 3/5 to win, chavismo needs 2/3! If it fails to do that no faction will have an internal majority to rule over the assembly and possible outright divisions may not be contained further. With less than 2/3 of the assembly chavismo will simply have to rely even more on the military to hold unto office, either through repression, or as the only power all factions can agree on, albeit reluctantly.

The grand elector

Which brings us to the only elector that truly matters in this electoral charade: the army.

The army is under great threat. Tendency is for chavismo, and the opposition, to turn the army into the scapegoat of the whole crash. Chavismo because the army may have put the brakes of radicalization of the system. Opposition because the army did not slow down the decay and instead associated itself happily with the looting of the country.

The truth is that to avoid an outright civil war (there is already a larval civil war going on, look at the numbers of people killed every day) a grand pact between opposition and chavismo is necessary. And such negotiation can only be carried through with the consent of the fire power of the country which will be in charge of keeping order while the painful measures are being taken.

It does not matter, thus, who wins in December, the army will either rule or decide who the apparent ruler will be for the unavoidable transition.

Conclusion

Covering the current election as if it were a "normal" one albeit with peculiar/extraordinary parameters is, well, intellectually dishonest. But I suppose that journalists and bloggers and think tankers need to cover their white pages with ink, digital or otherwise.

The only thing worth discussing today is not the election or the immediate exit of Maduro. The only thing worth discussing is to demand a transition government and how to get one. Elections are not necessary. They will not solve the crisis, unless of a presidential or constitutional nature. Period.

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