Posted on 09/29/2006 2:52:29 PM PDT by StJacques
Rosales accuses "Fat Fish" of the Government Opposition candidate Manuel Rosales attributed the events which occurred in La Paragua1 to "the fat fish of the government, who have a big business in [the sale of] gasoline, contraband gold, and diamonds." In a visit to Trujillo, where he carried out a campaign visit, Rosales condemned the acts. "It is one of the most clear manifestations of how an authoritarian government stimulates criminal acts and insecurity in Venezuela. The deed in La Paragua is the action of a few spineless military men, who are not the majority, who felt themselves handsome and supported and who used the armaments of the republic in the most cowardly manner killing this group of miners," he said. He did not rule out that "many corpses were thrown out into the jungle in large numbers so that they did not appear" he asserted. For his part, the Secretary General of Copei,2 Luis Ignacio Planas, who supports the candidacy of Manuel Rosales, demanded that the deeds of La Paragua not be left unpunished. "We categorically condemn these crimes, the government must respond for the massacre of La Paragua and those responsible must be punished for violating the right to life of the miners who they killed, since the State has the obligation of respecting and protecting the rights of the citizens." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Translator's Notes:
1 La Paragua is a small mining town in Venezuela's Bolivar state, which fronts the Brazilian border in the country's southeastern rain forest. It is primarily populated by miners who have been illegally extracting gold and diamonds in the remote forested areas nearby. Early last week the Venezuelan army tried to move in to La Paragua in an attempt, according to their official statement, to stop the illegal mining activity. Locals have claimed that the military's action actually represents an attempt to take control of illegal mining into their own hands, as the army was already involved. According to official reports at least six people were killed, though Rosales is evidently supporting the charge many locals have made that the number is far greater. La Paragua and neighboring towns have now blockaded themselves against further military incursions.
2 Copei is the acronym for the Comité de Organización Política Electoral Independiente (Political Electoral Independent Organization Committee), generally referred to as the Social Christian Party of Venezuela.
ping
Here's to hoping his bodyguards are quick!
The phrase you translate as "fat fish" of the government is "pez (or peces) gordo(s)," which is the literal translation. However, the figurative meaning of "pez gordo" is a lot closer to "minion(s)"
...or "henchmen" for that matter.
Hopefully, Chavez' star has peaked and is now waning.
One of the communists biggest lies is their heroic myth of "liberating a nation of serfs, etc etc" Russia, despite its huge problems, was a rapidly industrializing nation as WWI broke out.
It was the social strains imposed by that growth in a country which had few mechanisms for controlling it (like every other country at the time), that the Soviets capitalized upon.
As far as liberating the "serfs," who had long ago been freed and many of whom benefitted from Czarist land reforms, today's leftists ought to look up the "Liquidation of the Kulaks," in which millions of free farmers died and the survivors collectivized in the inefficient Soviet system. Result: starvation.
An amazing tale of Chavez simply mocking the Rule of law
Last year, the General Prosecutor accused five people of being behind the assassination of prosecutor Danilo Anderson: Banker Nelson Mezerhane, journalist Patricia Poleo, a retired General from Plaza Altamira, a reporter of Cuban origin named Romani and surprisingly, an active General Jaime Escalante in charge of the military regional command called CORE I and reportedly very close to Chavez.
All of these people were jailed on the basis of the testimony of a single man, the so called super witness Giovanny Vazquez, who claimed that he had been at a meeting with all of them where the assassination was planned. Vazquez was soon discredited as a witness when it was learned he was not a psychiatrist like he claimed, he was an expert forger, had been a paramilitary and was actually in jail when the Panama meeting had supposedly taken place. For months, the Prosecutor General would not admit any of this until a couple of months ago he admitted Vazquez had deceived him.
Immediately, the lawyers of Poleo, who is in the US and Mezerhane who was freed on his own recognizance in December asked that the case against them be dropped, but the prosecutor General has refused to so far, saying he has other evidence that confirms Vazquez testimony. This week, Mezerhanes lawyers denounced that some of the files in the case had been forged, prompting an investigation. But the charges against all five accused remain in effect.
Now, as we say in Spanish, you can be either with God or the Devil, but not with both. Of Vazquez testimony has been confirmed then the five people charged were involved, if it is not then all five should be exonerated. But what I find amazing is that this week, on Hugo Chavez personal orders, General Escalante was reinstated in his position, even as the Prosecutor General continues to accuse him of being involved with the assassination of Anderson.
President Chavez is not only making a mockery of Justice and the Rule of Law in Venezuela, but openly laughing and mocking those that he has put in charge of that same judicial system.
http://blogs.salon.com/0001330/2006/09/30.html#a3085
They all had a single party by Teodoro Petkoff in Tal Cual
The only two political offers of the candidate of continuity which are truly new are those of his unique party of the revolution and his indefinite reelection. The rest is a broken record of eight years of failure. More of the same. In the case of the unique party one has to beware. It would seem to be an idea aimed to regroup the archipelago that surrounds the continuity candidate in a single block and, supposedly, unite it. In the revolutionary nest of cockroaches the proposal has awakened mistrust, fears and suspicions. Not only in the little ones, but even-or specially in- Chavez MVR, because it is thought, not without a reason, that the whole purpose is to liquidate diversity, not to accept small differences, internally among the supporters of the candidate of continuity, who from now on, he thinks, he could subject his co militants to an iron discipline, making them obey the only voice of command: his. Commander in Chief, tell us what to do! this is what they expect to hear from now on. But if among his supporters the idea is seeing with reserve, the rest of Venezuelans have even more reasons to be concerned. The dynamics of unique parties have led, in very well known historical cases, from the suppression of debate internally within the party to the suppression of political debate at a national scale. Once the unique organization is created, the next step was to declare him interpreter and custodian of the interests of the Nation and deny the right of existence to other political forces with the argument that, by definition, they would be representatives of the enemy, which for our case will be Yankee imperialism. From the unique party of the revolution we would go to the unique party of the country, that is, to a single party in the country. Much like it was in the former Soviet Union. In Nazi Germany, in fascist Italy, in Francos Spain and
in Fidels Cuba. Speculation? History is there and those that say, that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it, are absolutely correct.
http://blogs.salon.com/0001330/2006/09/29.html
Hugo Chávez at the U.N. :
The heavy burden of the ridicule
By Gustavo Coronel
September 24, 2006
The Antidote to Petropopulism
Here's a question I've been mulling: is Mi Negra, Manuel Rosales' plan to hand out a portion of Venezuela's oil rents directly to poor families via a debit card, a populist proposal?
That, certainly, is how Vicepresident José Vicente Rangel, feigning unawareness of the massive glass palace chavismo inhabits on this topic, described it: "pure populism." Is that so?
Petropopulism: as Venezuelan as papelón con limón
In Venezuelan political economy, populism has a specific meaning. It describes the quid pro quo whereby politicians dole out oil rents selectively to their supporters in return for, well, political support. This is what I've called the Petrostate Trick: "turning oil money into political power - or, more precisely, turning control of the states oil money into control of the state - in a self-perpetuating cycle."
That chavismo's power is based largely on this sort of petropopulist arrangement seems really, really obvious to me. But that's nothing new: every Venezuelan government since at least the Trienio (1945-1948) has sustained its support through some twist on the petrostate trick. Medina and Pérez Jiménez had the Banco Obrero, CAP had Corpomercadeo and Chávez has Mercal. The cronies have changed over the years; the underlying mechanism hasn't.
The system works by distributing oil rents selectively, channeling the money primarily to your own political supporters. In this way, you set up an incentive structure that helps perpetuate the party in power, rewarding support for the official line and punishing dissent.
Mi Negra's sotto voce radicalism
By this reckoning, Mi Negra is not a populist proposal. Just the opposite: as billed, it constitutes a radical challenge to the deeply entrenched petropopulist mindset.
If oil rents are distributed following objective rather than political criteria, the incentive structure that underlies the petrostate model crumbles. By delinking recipients' political views from their claim on oil rents, a properly implemented Mi Negra would represent the start of a truly revolutionary change in Venezuela's political economy and political culture.
Under a scheme like Mi Negra, people would stake their claims on the nation's oil rents as citizens, not as political clients. And, all the prickly implementation issues aside, this is its most appealing feature. It would end the indignity too many poor Venezuelans now suffer of having to pimp out their political beliefs for a Mision check. It would end the implicit threat that now hangs over too many transactional chavistas that to Think Different could mean risking your livelihood.
For all of Chavez's revolutionary rhetoric, the fact is that delinking political support from oil rent distribution would constitute a far more radical break with the country's political traditions than anything his government has done in eight years.
http://www.caracaschronicles.blogspot.com/
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