Venezuela's Sawdust Caesar

Hugo Chavez, the late president of Venezuela, may have been “poisoned by dark forces that wanted him out of the way”, at least according to Nicolas Maduro, his less than charismatic stand in.  I think the ‘dark force’ may very well have been Chavez himself, anxious to preserve something of his inflated reputation before his country implodes under his poisonous legacy. 

What an illusion the so-called ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ was, based on little more than a sharp rise in world commodity prices that enabled Chavez to float on a lot of oil revenue, squandered away in one cack-handed scheme after another.  The corruption and mismanagement was extreme, even by South American standards.  I’m reminded here of one of the jokes that was popular in the old Eastern Bloc.  “What would happen if the communists took control of the desert?”  “Nothing for a while and then there would be a shortage of sand.”  Venezuela, a country rich in natural energy, has suffered periodic power cuts for years.

I’ve long understood that Chavez was a complete fraud.  My goodness, I asked myself, who could not see through the posturing of this manipulative and self-regarding demagogue?  Politically he was an interesting phenomenon.  Supposedly of the left, his inspiration was shallow and eclectic, a ragbag of ideological detritus.  I read recently that Carlos Fuentes, a left-wing Mexican writer, described him as a ‘tropical Mussolini’, which comes extraordinarily close to the truth.  The political technique is just the same, the bread and circuses approach to life.  Now the circus is over and the bread, as Venezuelans may soon discover, is likely to be in ever shorter supply.

The signs are already in place.  Inflation is out of control, a fact that is unlikely to be changed by Maduro’s recent devaluation of the bolivar, the national currency.  Venezuela, after years with Chavez at the helm, is a ship floating at the bottom of every league table of good governance and economic competitiveness, an inconvenient truth pointed out by a recent report in the Economist.  Inflation is bad, poverty is worse, crime is unmanageable.  This, I suppose, must be the true definition of the ‘Bolivarian Revolution.’  The Revolution in health care, for instance, seems to have involved rotting hospitals and declining investment.  The fact that Chavez had to seek medical treatment in Cuba is a perfect indictment of a lamentable state of affairs. 

So, yes, he exited, stage-left, at just at the right time, no longer around to face the reckoning after fourteen years of corrupt, oil-fuelled autocracy.  His legacy, I suspect, will survive as a kind of grand illusion, a little like that of Juan Peron in Argentina, or a little like that of Mussolini.  

Ding, dong, Hugo is Dead, Horrible Hugo is Dead!

Bye, bye

“Chavez Vive!”, the red-shirted chavs are shouting on the streets of Caracas, the capital of Venezuela.  No, he is not – Chavez Muerto!   Thank goodness that the world is rid of another petty demagogue, a corrupt and degraded icon of the left. It's a measure of just how degenerate left wing thinking has become when a creature like this is celebrated.  Rather have no more heroes anymore than a hero like Horrible Hugo. 

By his friends shall ye know him, and lamentations are coming from the likes of Syria’s Basher Bashar al-Assad and our very own Ken Livingstone, King Newt himself. Diane Abbott, that fat thick black racist, said that his death was a ‘tragedy’ for South America. Imam George Galloway described him as ‘Spartacus.’  I wish that the Romans had got to him sooner.  “He’s Spartacus”, I would gleefully have shouted. 

Obsequies are also coming from Iran’s President Mahmoud Amadinejad.  Apparently Saint Hugo will rise from the dead, reappearing among us in the wake of Shia Islam’s long awaited Twelfth Imam, which means, of course, it will be the twelfth of never, which will be a long, long time.  Then there is the mass outpouring of woe from the readership of the Guardian, a paper, ironically, that would never have survived in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.  Hmm...maybe there is something to be said for Chavez after all. 

We go now to another delusional tyranny; we go to Cuba.  There two days of national mourning has been announced, a period of “deep and excruciating sorrow”.  It will indeed be deep and excruciating for the Castro mafia if a post-Chavez government cuts off the oil transfusions which have kept their shabby regime afloat for the past few years. 

Meanwhile, back in Caracas, the red shirts wail. Oh, woe is them.  Vice President Nicolas Maduro led the lamentations.  There he is, flailing around the place, blaming shadowy right wing and foreign forces for Chavez’ premature demise.  Apparently his cancer might have been plotted from ‘outside.’   Yes, indeed, a successful attack, code named Operation Crab! 

Not everyone is as deluded as Maduro and the hysterical canaille in Caracas.  There are those in the country who are courageously prepared to speak the truth.  “Hate and division was the only thing that he spread”, one man said.  “He did a lot of harm because there are no institutions, there is no justice.  He mistreated everyone who disagreed with his government.” 

Even so the mourning extends, yea, even so far as the United States, that is to say, even so far as the actor Sean Penn.  Apparently Chavez’ death is the hardest thing he has had to endure since trying to watch all of ex-wife Robin Wright’s series House of Cards on Netflix.  He plans to honour his late buddy by making life a ‘living hell’ for his fellow Americans.  I guess he won’t have to do very much then; his mere presence among them should be more than enough.  Penn’s counter-attack on the Great Satan will include chain-smoking, which may mean that Operation Crab will soon claim another victim.  In that sad event I expect the scenes of hysteria on the streets of Los Angeles greatly to exceed those in Caracas.

Elsewhere there is a lot of pious hand-wring, the usual guff that follows the departure of leaders like this, hated while they were alive, loved now that they are dead.  William Hague, our own Foreign Secretary, claims to have been ‘saddened’ by the event.  Personally I prefer my hypocrisy in extremely small doses.  Evo Morales, Bolivia’s indigenous and semi-literate president, said that Chavez is “more alive than ever.”  Actually he’s more dead than ever.  Amado Boudou, Argentina’s vice-President, tweeted that “one of the best has left us; you will always be with us.”  Never mind the contradiction here.  Perhaps he might like to go and find him?  I would advise him to hold his nose in the process. 

Amidst the guff there is a nugget or two of sanity. The best, I think, comes from Ed Royce, Chairman of the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs.  “Hugo Chavez was a tyrant," he said “who forced the Venezuelan people to live in fear.  His death dents the alliance of anti-US leftist leaders in South America.  Good riddance to this dictator.”  Venceremos, Comrade Royce! 

The simple fact is that for all of his left-wing credentials, or rather because of his leftist credentials,  Hugo Chavez was nothing but a bully and a thug, a fascist by any other name, who did much to destroy the economy of Venezuela for the greater good of...of what, exactly?  Why, of himself and his venal, money-grubbing family.  Is there anything at all to be said in his favour?  There is this much: he over-fulfilled, Stalin-style, aspects of his own five year plan – Venezuela’s murder and inflation rates are now among the highest in the world. 

My, how it delights me to speak ill of the dead; how it delights me that Chavez has been swept off to the deepest circle of hell, where he can dance forever with the likes of the late Kim Jon-il.

The world will not record their having been there;
Heaven's mercy and its justice turn from them.
Let's not discuss them; look and pass them by...

Get Back to the Chickens and Pigs

On Thursday Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez is scheduled to be sworn in for yet another presidential term, unless Jesus Christ, “the greatest socialist in history”, decides that it is time for him to join the people’s commune in the sky. 

Hugh the Horrible is not even in Caracas as I write.  He is in Havana, dying of cancer.  There he is surrounded, a bit like a medieval monarch, by his court and his kin, all worried about the future, the future of the ‘revolution.’  That is to say, they are worried about the future of the wealth that they have managed to siphon off during the fifteen years Chavez has run his benighted ‘Bolivarian democracy.’

The ostentatious riches of the Chavez family in Barinas, the state where he was born, and where his brother Adán is governor, stands in non-socialist contrast to the poverty of most of the local people.  The old family home, once a small chicken and pig farm, is now a sprawling state-of-the-art ranch, a sort of Venezuelan version of South Fork. 

In the state capital, also called Barinas, the family has a luxury mansion in a high-walled compound in one of the city’s most exclusive districts.  They are to be seen travelling around the place in heavily-armed SUVs.  According to opposition figures, the clan owes a further twenty estates throughout the province.  Elena Frias, the president’s mother, has an ostentatious taste for the better things of life, including designer clothes.  Viva la Revolution!

If Elena and the rest of this grubby and nepotistic shower are worried by the expected death of the golden goose they can’t be nearly as worried as his thuggish allies across the region.  There is the Castro regime in Cuba, desperately trying to keep the demagogue alive on life support, just as he kept their regime on life support for years now with cheap oil.  There is the semi-literate Evo Morales, president of Bolivia, whose crack-brained political schemes, all supported by rent-a-mob, have been underwritten by Comrade Chavez. 

In all Chavez has spent an eye-watering trillion, yes trillion dollars in state funds to support foreign allies, his family and all his other domestic political hangers-on, including the ‘Boligarchs’ – oligarchs who have flourished under the so-called ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ - , the sort of greedy and self-serving gangsters that are such a feature of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. 

Meanwhile Venezuela, with some of the richest oil reserves in the world, has gone step by step down the primrose path to economic ruin.  The cupboard is bare.  Chavez’ critics say that the very fact that he has repeatedly sought medical treatment in Cuba over the last eighteen months for his recurring cancer is a damming indictment of his stewardship of Venezuela. 

Damning indeed.  A country that should be floating on oil revenues is sinking under a surging fiscal deficit.  Inflation is out of control.  The overvalued Bolivar, the national currency, is sliding on the black market.  The country’s debt, now standing at an estimated $160billion, has increased five-fold under Chavez.  The economy has been crippled by the price and currency controls that are such a favoured feature of state socialism.

Chavez is dying of cancer.  Venezuela is dying of cancer too, the cancer of socialism.  This disease has such a predictable pathology, always resulting in the inevitable outcome of ruin, necrosis and decay.  Intelligent people recoil from it in horror.  But then intelligence was never one of El Jefe’s virtues.  There may – thank goodness - be no hope for him.  There is, perhaps, hope for Venezuela, once this appalling demagogue is off the scene and his corrupt and venal family have been dumped in the dustbin; once Elena and her dreadful progeny get back to the chickens and pigs.  

A Future for the Birds

Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezuela, is a Twerp. That’s no secret, I know, but I should make it clear that I mean that he Tweets on Twitter in his bird-like fashion, delightfully informing his many devotees about his bouts of diarrhoea, among other things.

But the little bird had fallen strangely silent of late, the occasion for much speculation in the garden. Did Sylvester finally manage to catch Tweety? Actually, no; he just flew off to Cuba some three weeks ago, seemingly for an operation to remove a pelvic abscess. But like so many other things surrounding the man that turns out not to be true. Not noted for his brevity, he briefly announced at the weekend from his Havana exile that he is recovering from an operation to remove an – unspecified – malignant cancer. Not to worry; he will return, he announced, to continue leading the socialist revolution.

There are a few vultures at home not entirely convinced that he will. Even before the latest health news the intriguers in Caracas were already been staking their ground, making ready to fill the political vacuum. Caesar is indisposed; long live Caesar, long live Chavez. Oh, I don’t mean Hugo; I mean his older brother, Adan, who obviously sees himself as the bird on the wings.

Adan, if anything more radical than his sibling, is certainly the man to advance a ‘socialist revolution’ which has brought this oil-rich country to its knees, its wealth squandered away in one bird-brained scheme after another. At the weekend he addressed a gathering of Chavez supporters at a health vigil for Brother Hugo, telling them that force could not be disregarded in “applying and developing the revolutionary programme.”

And what a programme it has been, with inflation running at 30 percent and unemployment at almost 10 percent. The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (yes, that’s the country’s official title) is a little bit like the goose in the fairy tale. Not laying golden eggs fast enough it was eviscerated in the onward flight of the ‘revolutionary programme’.

What an irony it is that a country rich in natural resources has become used to power cuts, shortages of water and a crumbling infrastructure. While production is falling in most branches of the economy there is at least one buoyant sector – organised crime. Caracas, the capital of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, is a place best avoided, given that it now has, according to the London Times, the highest murder rate in the world.

Hugo Chavez had one way of dealing with adverse criticism – silence. The press has been gagged and judicial independence all but ended. He has role models here, ‘brothers’ as he has referred to them, brothers other than his brother. The obvious one is his good friend Fidel Castro, but Chavez’s fraternity also embraces well-know ‘progressives’ like Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran.

Venezuela is now so used to misrule that it’s even missing Hugo. I suppose that’s not really that surprising with Adan getting ready to become the Tweeter-in-chief, flying to power on a ‘revolutionary programme’, pointing to a future that is strictly for the birds.

¡Viva la Revolución!

What happens when the legislature turns against the executive, a question that doubtless has engaged Barack Obama since last November? That’s easy: abolish the legislature. If that’s too radical consider the next best thing: get the old legislature to pass an Enabling Act before the new legislature meets.

Ah but American presidents are tied by the safeguards built into the constitution, unlike, say, the president of Venezuela, where the constitution can be set aside with ease. Taking a well-trodden path, Adolf, sorry, Hugo Chavez now has enabling power to protect him and his Communist Reich from the new parliament, recently sworn in following the September election.

Under the new powers the Venezuelan parliament has become something of a political irrelevance, rather like the Reichstag in Hitler’s Germany. Chavez now has the power to rule by decree, while the assembly has been sidelined, meetings now reduced to four days a month. But to make assurance doubly sure all parliamentary commissions have been placed under government control, while speeches in the assembly itself have been limited to fifteen minutes per member. I suppose, on reflection, that’s not a completely bad idea if only it could be applied to El Presidente, who has a tendency to witter on interminably.

Thus it is that dictatorships are built, piece by piece, not just by hamstringing the legislative branch of government but by controlling the media and packing the judiciary with placemen, all part of Chavez’ recent gleichshaltung, which has even extended so far as higher education. He also intends to neutralise the advance of the opposition in local government, having the power to transfer its functions to ‘socialist communes’, bodies packed, of course, with a lot of chavs.

Control of broadcasting and telecommunications has even been extended to cover the internet and mobile phones, just in case someone says something nasty about the government, the said nastiness, incidentally, being on their own heads. According to a report in The Economist punishments will be meted out for promoting disrespect for the country’s institutions or “alarm” among the population. So I guess Chavez is a fat communist pig is out!

Meanwhile, in reference to this, the opposition is calling for peaceful but energetic resistance against government tyranny and the attempt to install a communist system. It’s a cause that has a wide base of support, with labourers joining farm owners to prevent further Mugabe-style land grabs by the chavistas in the area around Lake Maracaibo. Those who have taken to protesting against Chavez’ coup have been attacked by government thugs, injuring many.

If there is any doubt that democracy is dying in Venezuela one should take heed of the pronouncements of Chavez and one of his senior military commanders on the coming presidential election, scheduled to take place in 2013, in which the dear leader is seeking another six year term of office. An opposition victory, they said, will not be tolerated. Revolutions, after all, can only ever go forward on the tracks laid down by history…and by tweets on Twitter.

Comrade Boyo

A spectre is haunting Venezuela – the spectre of Chavez. Unfortunately, apart from the miserable people of his miserable utopia, no power is united against him. Last September his party was defeated in the legislative elections but that has done nothing to stop the progress of the beast, currently engaged on a campaign of grand larceny, sorry, make that nationalisation. Property is theft, so said Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the French granddaddy of anarchism. So clearly Hugo the Horrible is busy returning his country to a natural state of virtue, with him as the only thief, a truly noble sacrifice.

The problem is not everyone sees it that way. Chavez is moving against what he is in the habit of referring to as “the oligarchy”, getting a bit of an edge in before the hostile legislature meets for the first time in January. I have no idea what shape the ‘oligarchy’ takes in the recesses of this man’s mind but it must include the workers who have openly protested against his campaign of economic ‘liberation’. These poor, benighted souls simply do not know what is good for them, so the national guard has been trotted out to make sure they acquire a quick education.

It’s not only industry that is effected, with property seizures coming at a moment’s notice, often after no more than a sudden announcement on television; a fairly major land grab has also been underway for some time. So far some 3million hectares of farmland have been seized, with a further 450,000 to follow in the course of the coming year. Farms are simply taken with little or no compensation, on very much the same basis as Mugabeland, another earthly paradise.

Where there is socialism there is disaster, it follows with the same logical certainty of a proposition in geometry. It seems to me to be something perverse in human nature for people, even deeply stupid people like Hugo Chavez, to follow this proletarian road to ruin. It is a road to ruin, evidenced, once again, by the Venezuelan example: the more property that is seized the less productive it becomes. Take the example of the food industry, much of it in government hands in an attempt to ensure what is called “food sovereignty.” I have no idea what that means exactly but it seems to involve a major increase in imports. Food shortages, declining productivity, housing shortages and power black-outs, all in an oil-rich country. Welcome to the future; welcome to Hugoland.

I’ve been following the career of the Dear Leader for a while now. Perhaps you have, too? If so you will have rapidly reached the same conclusion as me: Hugo is too stupid to walk and chew gum at the same time. So, is there ideological éminence grise here, it’s only fair to ask? No, not really; just a Trotsky manikin and – look you - he’s Welsh! His name is Alan Woods, a self-professed a Trotskyite, as well as an informal advisor to El Presidente.

If you’ve seen Monty Python’s Life of Brian you may recall the People’s Front of Judea. If so you will know the Woods type, the forms of language weird beards like him prefer, polytechnic-speak, it might be called. He has been publicly urging Chavez to respond to the setback of September by “accelerating the revolutionary process”, meaning get on with nationalisation, Comrade Boyo, look you. Poor Venezuela; things can only get worse. They are only a step or two away from Welsh choirs and a welcome in the hillside.

Would you like to be shot? Come to Venezuela

Here I am, once again, reporting from the Bolivarian Republic of Hugo. If you are thinking of coming to Caracas you might consider packing some body armour, for your chances of being shot here are higher than anywhere else in the world, outside of war zones, at least outside of some war zones. Even visiting sportspeople are at risk, as The Economist reported recently. What safer place to be than a playing field in front of thousands of people? This is something you might care to ask Cheuk Woon Yee Sinne, a basketball player from Hong Kong, who was shot in the leg while taking part in the Women’s Basketball World Cup.

It was an 'isolated incident', said the Chavistas, while immediately moving the tournament to a venue outside the capital. And then there is the statistics, something clearly has to be done about them too, just to show how rosy things are in Venezuela, a country replete with ‘isolated incidents’.

In the old Soviet Union the statistics about child mortality were so bad that the government decided on immediate action: it stopped publishing the statistics. Venezuela has obviously learned from this enlightened example: it, too, has stopped publishing the statistics on crime. No surprise really, as the murder rate is now twice as high as that of neighbouring Colombia, a country that is actually fighting a war against Marxist guerrillas. In 1998, before Chavez became president, 4,500 murders were recorded nationally, high, yes, but not nearly as high as the 19,113 who died last year alone,

President el Twit, who Twitters, as you may know, drones interminably on television and radio every week, though he has surprisingly little to say about crime. This is an admirable principle, that of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Unfortunately the benighted people of his socialist paradise both see and hear evil…everyday. It comes as no great surprise, therefore, that they are beginning to speak it also; they are beginning to speak evil of El Presidente.

Again there is a solution: just pretend crime’s not there, that it’s all a media fabrication. Stop publishing the statistics, that was good, so far as it went. Even better, let’s stop the press reporting crime.

To begin with El Nacional, one of the main Venezuelan dailies, was barred from publishing any information about violence. Moving on from that, the government then stopped all print media from publishing any photos on the subject for a month. Why a month, you ask? Simple: because Hugo is facing some a rather awkward legislative election on 26 September, and would rather keep things as smooth as possible.

Of course there are other causes of crime, beyond press ‘fictions.’ Hector Navarro, spokesman for the ruling socialist party, says that crime is a product of the neglect of youth in BC, the time Before Chavez. In response Roberto Briceno-Leon, representing an organisation called the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence, has said that “they have a policy of blaming the previous government. But they don’t seem to realise that, after eleven years in power, they are the previous government.”

Still, look on the positive side: there may be some tourist dollars here. No need to bother with expensive clinics in Switzerland for assisted suicide. Come to Venezuela instead.

What a Twit

Just imagine yourself as the president of a country, a populist steadily becoming less popular as the economy crumbles away under your hopeless mismanagement. It’s your own fault, really, your own fault for embracing Marxist socialism, the one certain route into a political graveyard. But you can’t give it up; your conversion to this wretched ideology is too recent and you have too much prestige invested in platitudes and nostrums.

So what do you do, what way is there of taking the collective mind off present problems and failures? I’ve got it: why not dig up the body of a presidential predecessor, a distant predecessor, to see if he was murdered? Too fanciful, do you think; what value is there in that kind of grotesque gesture? If you want an answer to that question you will really have to ask Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s Twittering president, who had Simon Bolivar, the great hero of the Latin American independence movement, disinterred this summer; yes, he did.

This is the sort of thing that goes on in the “Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela”, where the president, Marxist in one part of his muddled mind, Catholic in the other, is recreating his personal hero as a kind of secular saint. Saint Simon’s ‘resurrection’ was seemingly to determine if he died of tuberculosis, as historians maintain on good evidence, or if he was poisoned by his political rivals, “crucified like Christ”, as Saint Hugo insists. Crucified by poison, yes, indeed, that does make quite a lot of sense.

With important legislative elections scheduled for September, what better way of taking the nation’s eyes of its troubles than a kind of historical soap opera? Chavez announced his revisionist thesis some three years ago and has become more obsessive ever since.

The whole spectacle is just too, too funny. He has told the world through his Twitter page that any doubts he had on the ‘crucifixion’ were assuaged by Bolivar in person. Yes, you read that correctly. Seemingly his bones called out as they emerged from the grave “Yes, it’s me.” Nobody of course heard this apart from Chavez himself, presumably on the principle that saint shall speak unto saint. “I confess we wept”, he later wrote on his Twitter page, “That glorious skeleton must be Bolivar, for we could feel his spark.” Yes, I’m sure ‘we’ could. Still I suppose it makes a welcome change from his Tweets about his bouts of diarrhoea, the real kind, not the verbal stuff. I can assure you, I’m not joking.

In a way it’s a great pity that this egotistical and self-pitying clot has selected Bolivar as a personal avatar. The real Bolivar, not the man of Chavez’ mad imagination, was a social conservative, not a socialist, as he is being recast in the “Bolivarian Republic of Hugo”. But the exhumation serves another purpose. The remains are set to be reburied away from the conservative company they now keep. And in Chavez' paranoid mind the exercise is intended to remind people that they very same “imperialists” and “oligarchs” who allegedly assassinated his hero are plotting the same fate for his ideological heir. Those the gods wish to destroy…I think you probably know the rest.

Venezuela running on empty

When one assumed that things could not get any worse in Chavez’ Venezuela they do. I suppose I shouldn’t really be surprised because one thing Marxists and socialists of all kinds really are good at is making desolation and calling it progress. The country’s oil wealth is being squandered in Hugo’s vanity projects, which includes propping up the sclerotic Castro regime in Cuba. There is also evidence to suggest that he is offering support to ETA, the Basque terrorist organisation, as well as the FARC guerrilla movement in Columbia.

Meanwhile Venezuela is suffering ever greater problems as this vainglorious man struts across the region like a sawdust Caesar. As the rest of Latin America prospers, Venezuela has suffered a decline in real wages, continual power cuts and a growing shortage of staples, with meat now being added to the growing list. But the most astonishing thing of all that this oil-rich country is running short of hard currency, as Chavez has squandered much of the nation’s reserves to buy arms. Corruption is everywhere, and crime is virtually out of control. Worst of all the economy has been ransacked for purely short-term and partisan benefits. The piggy’s bank is close to empty.

The growing discontent is likely to be reflected in the country’s legislative elections, scheduled in September. And here we have the contradiction at the heart of the whole Chavez project, highlighted in a recent editorial in The Economist: he sees his ‘revolution’s as permanent and irreversible, the usual Marxist teleological rubbish, that history always goes one way, his way. Cuban influence is everywhere, all public buildings now being adorned with Patria, socialismo o muerte – Fatherland, socialism or death- Fidel Castro’s ancient battle-cry.

But unlike the Castro brothers in Cuba, Chavez has derived past legitimacy from the ballot box. He’s been working steadily at undermining freedom from within, suppressing critical voices in the press and undermining the independent judiciary. With the Presidential election scheduled for 2012 it seems unlikely that he will allow himself and his party to be voted out of office; it seems unlikely that he will allow history to go into reverse. So, it’s possible that a Mugabe-style coup may be engineered, opponents intimidated and the ballot rigged. It seems a remote prospect that Venezuela will get rid of this unwholesome thug, or the legacy of history, with any degree of ease.

Paper Clip Imperialism

One simply knows that things are going from bad to terrible when the Organisation of American States chooses to turn its spotlight on Chávez’s socialist utopia. In a hefty new report he has been accused of endangering democracy, intimidating opponents and curbing freedom of speech in Venezuela;

The commission finds that the state’s punitive power is being used to intimidate and punish people on account of their political opinions. Venezuela lacks the conditions necessary for human rights defenders and journalists to carry out their work freely.

The report goes on to detail acts of intimidation, harassment and violence and the use of judicial action to criminalise protest; of the law being suborned as an instrument of the state; of independent judges being sacked for not following the correct political line. The interesting thing here is that the OAS usually has a Nelson-like capacity to turn a blind eye to the misdeeds of its members. No longer, it seems.

The reaction from the Chavistas has been predictable. Roy Chaderton, Venezuela’s ambassador to the OAS, has criticised the report as the work of ‘imperialist bureaucrats’, whose aim is to destabilise the country in advance of parliamentary elections in September. Chávez himself, never short of a witty retort, has described the OAS as “excrement.”

I’ve tried to form an image in my mind of what an ‘imperialist bureaucrat’ might look like without, I have to say, a tremendous amount of success. Who are these ‘imperialist bureaucrats, you might ask, and where do they come from? Well, the six-strong commission that compiled the report was made up of jurists and human rights activists from America, Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, as well as from Costa Rica and Antigua, both places well-known for their paper-clip imperialism.

Meanwhile things get bleaker by the day for the people of a country whose economy by more than 3% last year, a country that now suffers from the worst forms of stagflation. The gloom is deepened by, well, gloom; for the cities are continually plunged into darkness by electricity shortages. People are so frustrated and angry that a Chávez rally was even interrupted by what is known locally as a cacerolazo, a banging of pots and pans.

I expect many long for the days of good old fashioned and straightforward imperialism, the kind supplied by the likes Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, rather than the tame paper-clip variety. With Nixon and Kissinger in charge I suspect Hugo the Horrible would have had a very short shelf-life. Now one can only sympathise with the people who continue to suffer under this thug’s misgovernment.

Venecuba, No!

I reported recently that Hugo Chávez, Venezuela’s Sawdust Caesar, now considers himself to be a Marxist. So, having taken that path he is seeking ever more guidance from the Cubans, who are sending ‘aids’ to the country in ever increasing numbers. Earlier this month Ramiro Valdés, who ranks number three in the Castro government hierarchy, arrived Caracas, where he is expected to remain for some time. At home Valdés served twice as interior minister and has a particular expertise in policing the internet, so the Venezuelans have a fair idea what they might expect.

Cubans are to be seen in all areas of Venezuelan life, running the ports telecommunications, transport service, police training, the issuing of identity documents and the business registry. It’s so bad that the health ministry is unable to provide primary care data because the information is sent to Havana It’s so bad Chávez himself only learnt that thousands of primary health care posts had been shut down when he was told by Castro!

And what can ordinary Venezuelans expect from this ‘fraternal’ aid, this creeping Anschluss? Well, not much, if the experience of the workers in the oil industry is any measure. Trade unionists have complained of ill-treatment at the hands of the Cubans. Indeed, unions are not even allowed on Cuban-run sites, which must count as one of communisms more peculiar ironies. Last year Froilan Barrios, of the Confederation of Venezuelan Workers, said that the oil and petrochemical industry had been completely penetrated by G2, the Cuban intelligence service. Workers planning a strike were threatened by Cuban thugs.

The history of Eastern Europe in the immediate post-war years provides a useful roadmap for the present Venezuelan experiences. After 1945 communists effectively ate away at the national independence of places like Czechoslovakia and Poland from the inside by obtaining control of key ministries, like the interior and defence. Exactly the same thing is now happening in Venezuela, with Cuban ‘advisors’ closely involved in implementing new policies for the police force and the army.

These of course are all matters pleasing to the Castro dictatorship which is likely to get control of more and more of Venezuelan oil wealth to shore up their crumbling economy, an economy ruined by communism. Chávez, who has not the wit or the intelligence to understand that his country’s integrity and independence is being undermined, is set to become Mussolini to Castro’s Hitler.

When he was in Havana in 2005 he was told by Castro that their two countries now constituted a single-entity. “We are Venecubans”, he said. The only problem is that nobody thought to seek the approval of the people of Venezuela for this remarkable change in their fortunes. In a recent poll no fewer that 85% said that they did not want their country to become like Cuba. No wonder; for as bad as things are in Caracas they are considerably worse in Havana.

Tale of a Latin Chav

Hugo Chávez continues to drag Venezuela down the path to outright dictatorship. On 23 January, a date on which the country commemorates the 1958 overthrow of the Pérez Jiménez, the last military caudillo, cable television operators were ordered to stop carrying, RCTV, a pro-opposition channel.

This is all part of a pattern that I have described in previous blogs, a pattern of growing intolerance and creeping authoritarianism. When the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, part of the Organisation of American States, complained on behalf of RCTV, which previously had its general broadcasting licence withdrawn, they were simply ignored. For Chávez human rights may be at a premium in Honduras but they count for nothing at all in Venezuela.

Opinion, I’m glad to say, is now moving against the sawdust Caesar. He won a referendum last year to remove limits on presidential terms, the sort of thing that Zelaya attempted in Honduras to his cost. But there are now, according to The Economist, unprecedented levels of discontent with life in the Chavista utopia; discontent with crime, inflation and power and water shortages. This is not good for this tawdry modern Bolivar, not good that demonstrators are taking to the streets of Caracas, not good that parliamentary elections are approaching.

But there is a way around that little hurdle when one has the will and the means. Closing down RCTV is just the first step. A new electoral law has been passed virtually guaranteeing that the Chavistas will emerge triumphant. That has been coupled with some creative gerrymandering by the government-dominated electoral commission, ensuring that opposition gains are kept to a minimum.

One thing I forgot to mention is that Hugo the Gross announced last month before parliament that he was now a Marxist. That’s certainly no surprise to me, understanding Marxism to be a political style, a style long since grasped by this thug. What I can’t really accept is that he has the intellect to work his head around such delights as surplus value and dialectical materialism!

It’s no joke, though, for at least some of the people of the country when the president announces that private property is the root of all evil. And being the root of all evil he has set about grubbing it up, taking hold of a French supermarket chain and adding it to Comerso, his very own conglomerate. Casting their eyes over history I have a hunch that the people of Venezuela may come to regret the revolution of 1958, come to regret the passing of Pérez Jiménez.

Zapping Clouds

I managed to catch that tub-thumping clot Hugo Chávez doing his bit in Copenhagen, looking every bit like the cheap gangster he so clearly is. He continues to ‘do his bit’ in Venezuela, his fiefdom, looking for scapegoats to explain away the miserable failure of his socialist tyranny, to explain away the fact that this oil-rich country is plagued by power cuts and water shortages.

There is a Chávez-style solution for the latter. Venezuelans have been told to stop singing in the shower, thus cutting down the time spent there. Meanwhile, El Comandante will fly with Cuban scientists, zapping clouds to make them rain. You think I’m joking? No, I’m not! He’s also warned Venezuelans to watch out for fat people, seemingly another cause of the country’s woes. The latter I take to be an indication that resources are being unequally distributed, the fatties getting more, a fair assumption when one looks at the presidential torso.

He’s a joke; his government is a joke, though some of his attempted scapegoating carries potentially serious consequences, including his admonition for the country to prepare for war with neighbouring Colombia. But the woes of Venezuela have nothing do with showering divas, fatties or Columbians and everything to do with the promotion of ‘Chavistas’ to important posts for which they are totally unfitted. Rubbish rots in the streets and inflation is now well into double figures. The inefficient command economy has encouraged a vibrant black market in a country that already has a horrific crime rate, with Caracas being one of the most violent cities on earth.

It’s the usual story with socialists and socialism everywhere, the usual story of geese and golden eggs, creating poverty where once was riches. To do this in a place like Venezuela really is some achievement. I suspect that Chávez would even turn El Dorado into the land of dust. Not much to sing in the shower about. :-))