Not a "State Sponsor of Terrorism"...just, y'know, a state run by people who sponsor terrorism

Quico says: In today's WaPo, Juan Forero has the skinny on the Empire's decision to freeze all assets belonging to three top chavista intelligence operatives: the inimitable Ramón Rodríguez Chacín, DISIP head Henry Rangel Silva and the deeply shady Hugo Carvajal, head of military intelligence (pictured), in response to their increasingly documented links to FARC.

Particularly striking is the second half of Forero's piece, where we get pearls like:

The Treasury Department said Venezuela's military intelligence director, Hugo Carvajal, protected FARC drug shipments from seizure by honest Venezuelan authorities, provided weaponry and helped the rebels maintain their stronghold along Colombia's eastern border with Venezuela.

and,

American officials said that in addition to the three Chávez aides who were named Friday, they know of other figures close to the Venezuelan leader who have helped the FARC. Colombian authorities have identified two of them as Gen. Cliver Alcalá and Amilcar Figueroa, who has had a role in organizing Venezuelan civilian militias.

"It's actually a fairly small group of people, but it's larger than three," said the senior American official. "We know who those people are, and we're watching them very closely."

It's worth reading the whole thing.

Taking shit from Chávez

Quico says: True Venezuelan politics junkies don't need reminding to check El Chigüire Bipolar on a daily basis. But on the occassion of Chávez's e/scatological expulsion of US ambassador Patrick Duddy, our prozac-popping rodent friend nailed it so perfectly I just have to give up a link. His take? "Government sets off smoke-screen to cover up the smoke-screen it had set off yesterday."

"We were weighing up whether we should reveal an imminent yankee invasion via Rio Caribe, have a black out in the East Side of Caracas or announce that Miquilena is an alien who sucks out people's souls," said our anonymous source, who took the chance to add what a hard time they're having coming up with suitably absurd ideas ever since Rodríguez Chacín left the cabinet. "That bugger had it in his blood."

Insofar as I can add anything to el chigüire's brilliance here (which, lets face it, isn't very far), I'd just say this. For all of Chávez's rhetorical violence, for all his vulgarity and rant-heavy informality over thousands of hours of air time, the guy virtually never swears. Sure, he's perfected the art of ambling right up to the lexical edge before playfully pulling back ("take your newspapers, roll them up real tight, and shove them in your ...pocket!") but, as far as I can remember, before yesterday, he'd only ever used an out and out tabu word in public once.

Read into that what you will...

Eat our dust, São Tomé and Principe!

Quico says: So, according to the latest World Bank report on the cost of business regulations, guess which is the only one of the ten worst countries to do business that's not in Africa? You got it!

Some of the jurisdictions judged to be easier to do business in than Venezuela these days include Equatorial Guinea, the People's Democratic Republic of Laos, Swaziland, Zimbabwe and East Timor.

And, while Bolivia did fight us to a draw, nobody but nobody has more rigid labor markets than we do. Hurrah!

Tit-for-tat

Quico says: The government's newfound love-in with Interpol makes for the kind of compare-and-contrast post that more or less writes itself.

I mean, it's too easy. A government that, just a few months ago, was assuring us Interpol was "an ever loyal ally of empire" suddenly went into aw-shucks mode yesterday after Interpol publicly praised its capture of a high-profile Colombian Narco. It's a classic bit of Chávez-style conditional approval. Just this spring Interpol's Secretary General, Ronald Noble, was an ignoble, shameless crook, an "international bum" heading up a scheme to infiltrate gringo spies into Venezuela. All of a sudden, he shows up in ABN stories treated as an impeccable source.

So the barrel was full, the fish had nowhere to hide and my gun was loaded. But then I wondered if there isn't more to this than a chance for some well-deserved but impotent snark. The political scientist in me has to wonder whether there isn't some strategic depth to these screeching turnarounds. Because the government sure seems to be playing tit-for-tat. Which, believe it or not, is a technical term in this context.

Tit-for-tat is a way of securing cooperation from agents that may be tempted to do you wrong. The basic idea is that, in the context of an iterated prisoner's dilemma, you're often best off starting out "nice" and then shadowing the other side's moves. If the other side screws you, you screw him right back. But if your opponent starts cooperating, you don't hold a grudge: you relaunch cooperation as soon as he stops acting against your interests.

Academics have long known that equivalent retaliation along these lines is an effective strategy for eliciting cooperation across a range of non-cooperative games. And you can certainly interpret a lot of Chávez's conflict management through this prism: when you hit him, he hits right back; when you play nice, he's often willing to turn on a dime.

Think of the media. So long as Venevisión and Televen ran hard against the government, Chávez retaliated, assaulting them rhetorically and signaling to advertisers to take their business elsewhere. As soon as they stopped broadcasting so critically, the government changed its stance too, dropping talk of taking away their broadcasting licenses and letting them get on with the business of broadcasting appalling shlock to housewives and raking in the advertising cash in the process.

That's tit-for-tat.

Think of Arias Cardenas, who was let back into the fold after going so far as to challenge Chávez for the presidency. That's tit-for-tat. Think of Baduel, aggressively harassed after literally saving the government from a coup, think of the unending on-again, off-again alliance between Chávez and PPT, of Chávez's eventual "break" with a FARC that wasn't listening to him, of the sad fate of the Villegas Brothers. Tit-for-tat, tit-for-tat, tit-for-tat.

From a blogger's point of view, this sort of thing tends to look like naked hypocrisy and makes endless fodder for cheap compare-and-contrast shots. Still, there's a reason he does it: tit-for-tat works.

Chávez's predilection for this kind of behavior may explain, in part, why he finds any sort of criticism so baffling, so unacceptable. When he says he's willing to work with all sectors (so long as they don't seek to destabilize his government), he may well mean it. The guy perceives himself as forgiving, willing to let bygones be bygones and give people a second chance. He can't for the life of him figure out why the price he demands - abject subservience - is so damn hard for so many people to swallow, and ends up interpreting refusals as grounded in essential evil.

"Nobody has to fight me," you can see him reasoning, "they choose to fight me, despite what's in their own interests. I'd be willing to give them a pass, to turn the page, but there's just no reasoning with some people: they're simply bad."

At the same time, his preference for equivalent retaliation means it's hard to definitively burn your bridges with chavismo. Recant and you can always get back into his good graces. We're miles away here from the strategy of a Saddam Hussein, a J.V. Gómez or a Trujillo, men famous for hanging on for grudges tenaciously for decades on end and prosecuting them long after they've ceased to serve any useful role in cementing their power.

Chávez knows better than to indulge such strategically costly appetites. In Hugoslavia, there's always a bit of carrot mixed in with the stick. The president may rant viciously against you, call you all sorts of unspeakable insults, but you always know that you can get back on the gravy train, simply by offering up your unconditional support once again.

It's a situation Ronald Noble's coming to know from the inside, and one I imagine Vladimir Villegas finds himself mulling over today.

i for i-ntimidated

Quico says: One of the few rays of hope I found on my recent trip to Caracas was the rise of Canal i, the most promising of the new batch of all-news channels proliferating on Venezuela's airways. With "equilibrio en la información" as a slogan, Canal i set out to do something shockingly novel (for Venezuela): broadcast news and opinions that aren't wildly partisan. It seemed to good too be true, and it was: last week, Canal i's management pulled the plug on its flagship evening talk show and fired its Broadcasting Director for trying to air a sensitive piece on the Antonini case. The National Journalists' Guild is crying censorship.

There were, to be sure, reasons to be doubtful from the start. Run by PSUV executive committee-member Mari Pili Hernández and funded by the oil-shipping bolibourgeois magnate Wilmer Ruperti, nobody could mistake Canal i for a truly independent channel. Nonetheless, Ruperti had made it clear that he saw the channel basically as a commercial venture, and his business strategy relied on tapping into the badly underserved sick-of-polarization market.

He figured there were advertising bolivars to be made in that space. After all, hardcore chavistas already had a wide and widening set of media choices (from VTV and Vive to ANTV, RNV, and others,) and die-hard antichavistas still had Globovision, alongside as much print media as they could stomach. It was the broad center that was hurting for a source of news, so Ruperti, cunningly enough, thought he'd spotted a gap in the market.

It was, to be sure, one tough balancing act. Canal i couldn't afford to out-and-out alienate a government that Ruperti depends on for most of his cash-flow, but it also couldn't hope to attract an audience if it morphed into a VTV clone. For a while, the channel seemed to pull it off, with newscasts that were broadly sympathetic but not slavishly subservient to the government and opinion shows that made a serious attempt to give both sides of the political divide their say.

The station's flagship program was called Contrapeso - Counterweight - a prime time talk show jointly hosted by one of the more moderate pro-government media figures, Vladimir Villegas, and one of the less polarizing opposition talking heads, Idania Chirinos. Five nights a week, since January, Contrapeso did something that's become shockingly rare in Venezuela: bring together guests with opposing points of view for a heated but insult-free confrontation.

Bizarrely, it seemed to work - largely, I think, because Chirinos and Villegas had real chemistry on the set. They appeared to actually like one another, and had worked out a way to disagree on almost everything but without vitriol. Contrapeso became a kind of oasis in the Caracas media scene, a place where something like a democratic public sphere seemed to be constructed day in and day out.

Here's a taste:

Contrapeso 06/07/2008
by noticias24

It's no surprise that the government would find this kind of TV alarming. Of course, it couldn't last. Last week, the channel announced it was "restructuring" Villegas and Chirinos off the air. What specifically prompted this decision is not at all clear, though speculation is rife that the decision was made in Miraflores. Certainly, it escaped no one that the decision came soon after Villegas ever-so-gingerly criticized Chávez's recent package of 26 decree-laws and, heresy of heresies, called for a public debate about them. Significantly, Villegas isn't denying that retaliation is at play here, and instead has started to talk himself into the rhetorical corner that all "moderate chavistas" seem to end up in sooner or later.

All of which is more sad than surprising. Every night that Contrapeso stayed on the air was a minor miracle, an aberration that everyone could see could not last indefinitely. A government built on polarization, devoted to a sharp division of society into Good Guys and Bad Guys, couldn't be expected to tolerate a space where the two sides talked to each other respectfully for hours on end. The real wonder, for my money, is that Ruperti ever thought the show had a future.

[Hat tip: Eva.]

Off The Rails

Quico says: Sometimes, you have to take your hat off to the sheer audacity of chavista officialdom in full larceny mode. Say what you will about them, but when the time comes to think up corruption-hotbed-moneypit-boondoggles, these guys think big. I mean, really: 5% cuts on public employee insurance contracts are so Fourth Republic.

Even by their standards, though, the latest presidential brain fart raises the bar. Together with his Argentine counterpart, a Venezuelan government spokesmen recently announced plans to spend $9 billion on a 6,200 Km. railway between Caracas and Buenos Aires.

With a straight face.

That's nine zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero dollars; enough to buy every man, woman and child in Venezuela a Nintendo Wii.

Oh and, did I mention? The train can't go through Brazil: Lula's not on board.

Where to even start? Maybe with the patently, almost embarrassingly, obvious: it's never gonna happen. You are never going to board a train in Venezuela and disembark in Argentina.

Think about it. If the (by comparison, dead simple) scheme to run a gas pipeline from the Caribbean through Brazil into Argentina foundered on the shoals its own technical and financial inviablity, this far more complex, far less economically sensible project just doesn't stand a chance.

I mean, lets review the bidding here. We're talking about a government that, in ten years, hasn't even managed to finish the four lane highway covering the couple of hundred kilometers of flat coastal plain between Caracas and Puerto La Cruz, a government from a country with a grand total of 41 kilometers of active passenger railways, somehow getting it together to build and electrify tracks over thousands of kilometers of dense rain forest, zero-rainfall deserts, some of the world's tallest mountains, two imperialist-lackey-run countries and a war zone.

The chasm between capabilities and ambitions here is so psychiatrically off the charts, it feels faintly ridiculous to go through the detail of it.

So what are we really looking at here? What we're looking at here is a form of corruption so audacious, so unencumbered by any sense of restraint, that it simply refuses to make any of the usual concessions in the general direction of keeping up appearances.

Thing is, the bigger the contract, the bigger the cut, and if you're serious about taking your embezzlement to the next level, the only way forward is to pitch bigger and bigger projects with bigger and bigger price tags and less and less concern with verisimilitude.

Your great fortune, however, is that you find yourself pitching these transparently unworkable plans to a guy whose ego long since burst its banks, a guy who loves nothing more than a transparently unworkable project to embody his increasingly unhinged sense of historical import. The kind of guy who hears "$9 billion...6,200 km...six countries... Andes... Atacama... Amazon" and instead of calling in the men in white lab coats to pack you off to an insane asylum thinks "hmmmm, I like it!"

And so another batch of boli-millionaires is created on our dime, another chunk of the oil bonanza is tossed into the pyre, and the obscene parade of revolution ambles forward toward its next bout of narcissistic-lunacy-cum-quotidianity.

Venezuelan Parties Still Don't Get the Internet

Quico says: One thing should be clear by now: Venezuelan party websites pretty much suck. Most of them appear to have been started up by an enthusiastic volunteer or two who didn't really think through the time-commitment needed to keep a website permanently updated and gave up pretty early on. With just a few exceptions (PJ, UNT, PCV), it's easy to see party leaders don't much care what their party's web presence is like. It's telling, for instance, that you never ever see a URL printed on a party political placard in Venezuela.

As far as the opposition goes, it's no surprise. If Venezuela has a mad proliferation of tiny, half-baked, ineffective opposition party websites none of which can seem to reach the critical mass needed to have a real impact, much of that is down to the fact that we have a mad proliferation of tiny, half-baked, ineffective opposition parties none of which can seem to reach the critical mass needed to have a real impact. The dysfunction of the opposition's websites is the dysfunction of the opposition.

Only Primero Justicia takes any kind of stab at using the web for organizing purposes, but even they barely scratch the surface in terms of the way the internet can be used as a tool for grass-roots political organizing. The kinds of techniques for channeling people's political concerns into specific action pioneered by sites like MoveOn.org and MeetUp.com and later adapted by the likes of BarackObama.com and, closer to home, No Más FARC, are just not on the radar screen in Venezuela.

There's a terrible wasted opportunity in all of this. Net access is fast becoming the norm in Venezuela's middle class, and even poor people have at least sporadic access through schools and infocentros. But while Venezuelans have become politicized to an extent that would've seemed unthinkable just a decade ago, that energy can't seem to find the organizational channels it needs to fuel real world political action. Instead of catalyzing mobilization, online politics in Venezuela remains confined to ranting viciously on sites like Noticiero Digital, dominated by a fringe of die-hard anti-politics know-nothings who prefer to wallow in a form of infantile nihilism that dissipates political energy rather than channeling it into action.

It's a damn shame.

Disclaimer

Juan Cristobal and I wish to make clear that, while we realize the recent set of posts have been about as popular as a rabbi at a Hizbollah rally, we're both traveling at the moment and barely online at all most days. Regular posting will resume by Friday.

Stragglers, personal vehicles and a bit of nostalgia

...a shocking number of "parties" have no website to speak of. Podemos, Proyecto Venezuela, Causa R, UPV (Lina Ron's vehicle), Venezuela de Primera, URD, MIN and MAS, have either just a placeholder or nothing at all.

Alianza Bravo Pueblo and Comando Nacional de la Resistencia have Blogs masquerading as party websites. Both look very much like Ledezma vehicles. The CNR blog at least gets updated regularly, ABP's, not even.

Bandera Roja also operates a glorified blog, which is not entirely inactive, but hardly a hotbed of digital activism either.

From there on out, it only gets weirder. Convergencia has a website that's more like a cyber-shrine to Rafael Caldera than a party website. In a weird way, it's still more substantive than many other party websites, as you can download the full texts of a number of Dr. Caldera's books in PDF form.

Good to know for those of us who battle chronic insomnia.

Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) + Tribuna Popular

URL: http://www.pcv-venezuela.org/
or
http://www.tribuna-popular.org/

(PCV shares a website with the party's daily newspaper, Tribuna Popular.)

Updatedness 20 out of 20:
The decision to roll the Tribuna Popular and PCV websites into one really pays off here. Fresh stuff, lots of it, every day.

Interaction possibilities: 2 out of 20
The site allows you to open an account, which is somewhat mystifying, since you can't actually do anything with it. Still, they have almost 1400 users signed up.

Meaningful positions: 20 out of 20
Positions don't come any more explicit than this. (OK, maybe this tops it.) You can fault the commies for a lot of stuff, but being wishy-washy about where they stand is not among them.

Web-Design: 14 out of 20.
I'm of two minds about this. Technically, the site is pretty sophisticated: Joomla-based and comprehensive. There's a ton of content, and it's well organized.

On the other hand, it looks awful: dated, over-busy, and just plain ugly.

Contact information: 1 out of 10
A web form lets you write Tribuna Popular's editors, and that's about it. But then, the party explicitly says it doesn't want dilettantes or part-timers, boasting that it should be hard to be accepted as a party member, so outreach is not exactly a priority.

Local Goodness: 4 out of 10.
The site's dual nature as both party and newspaper website makes this a bit of a hit and miss affair. Local commies are covered often by Tribuna Popular, but if you're looking for a stable website about your friendly neighborhood Reds, you can't necessarily find it.

The Verdict: 61 out of 100.
Active, obviously fussed over and tended to, PCV's is easily the best of the pro-Chávez party sites. It could perfectly well be used as your main source of news, if you're into a hard-left point of view, and is particularly good at integrating web-video. The rhetoric is time-warpy, yes, but the positioning is very clear.

Copei Digital

URL: http://www.partidocopei.org.ve/

Updatedness: 5 out of 20.
"Noticias actuales" from May. A separate "National Blog" is updated about once every 3 days.

Interaction possibilities: 11 out of 20.
You get a way to sign up as a party member or renew your membership, but the website is designed more to harvest information from you than to give you a way to interact with the party.

Meaningful positions: 10 out of 20.
A very abstract "Quienes Somos" page cranks out the obligatory Catholic Social Doctrine noises.

Web-Design: 9 out of 20.
Another glorified blog, but not a very nice looking one, with tons of links that lead you nowhere.

Contact information: 3 out of 10
A form quizzes you extensively but doesn't tell you where your email will end up. On the plus side, Caracas phone numbers are displayed prominently on the home page.

Local Goodness: 3 out of 10
If you live in Anzoátegui, Carabobo or Táchira, you get out-of-date blogs. If you don't, you don't even get that. You do get the names of local party officials, but not a way to get in touch with them.

The Verdict: 42 out of 100.
The site is terribly concerned to nail down Copei's rebranding as "Copei Partido Popular". But, when you get down to it, it's just another website that might not be too bad if somebody, anybody, would just give it a bit of TLC.

Acción Democrática's Turn

URL: http://www.acciondemocratica.org.ve/

Updatedness: 2 out of 20.
"Latest news" are from April, party documents, for the most part, are 1 and 2 years old.

Interaction possibilities: 0 out of 20
There aren't any.

Meaningful positions: 9 out of 20
Lots of teary-eyed looks at the AD glory years, but too many documents are truncated.

La modernización de Venezuela promovida por Acción Democrática, se puede sintetizar con la creación de una sociedad abierta y democrática, fortalecida económica, política y socialmente, en el marco de una economía capitalista con fuerte presencia del Estado en materia social y cultural, con tolerancia, pluralismo y compromiso con la prosperidad y el progreso económico y social, con la creación de espacios para el ejercicio de la ciudadanía y la mejora continua de la calidad de vida de los sectores tradicionalmente excluidos de la sociedad.

La construcción de la modernidad en Venezuela está ligada, además del ejercicio mismo de la democracia representativa, con la labor pedagógica que la práctica democrática implica y con el ejercicio libre de la actividad de los partidos políticos modernos. Acción Democrática ha sido la organización pivote de dicho proceso.

Web-Design: 10 out of 20
A glorified blog, it is nonetheless readable and would make it easy to find information, if there was any information in it to be found

Contact information: 1 out of 10
The "contact" link doesn't work. A map shows regional contact information for some states but not others.

Local Goodness: 1 out of 10
Contact information for a few states.

The Verdict: 23 out of 100
Just another unloved, unused, uncared for party website.

Primero Justicia on the Web

URL: http://www.primerojusticia.org.ve/

Updatedness: 16 out of 20
Near-daily news updates, but too many links still send you to "Under Construction" pages. Also, the activities page is out of date.

Interaction possibilities: 20 out of 20
The "Inscríbete" link is prominent, and allows you to sign up as a party member or sympathizer quickly and easily. Links to the PJ network on Facebook and to its YouTube channel are prominent, as are chances to help out as a volunteer.

Meaningful positions: 13 out of 20
A Doctrine document is far more metaphysically oriented than the norm, and although it doesn't explicitly reference it as such, harks back again and again to mainstays of the Catholic Church's Social Doctrine, emphasizing human dignity and solidarity:

La construcción de la Justicia Social obliga a que la vida social se articule desde
el valor de la solidaridad y el principio de la subsidiariedad para poder atender con
una visión humana la diversidad y pluralidad de nuestra sociedad.

En virtud de la solidaridad, Primero Justicia afirma que todos los ciudadanos y
todos los grupos deben contribuir al bien común de la sociedad. Por otra parte, la
subsidiariedad supone que el Estado no deberá jamás sustituir la iniciativa ni la
responsabilidad de las personas y de los grupos.

En tal sentido, reafirmamos a la familia como institución primaria de la sociedad.
En ella, los seres humanos reciben el don de la vida y la formación que habrá de
capacitarlos para el ejercicio de su libertad y la contribución que harán a la justicia
social.

Specific policies are thinner on the ground, and the party platform is not online.

Web-Design: 19 out of 20
Clean, clearly branded and functional

Contact information: 10 out of 10
Detailed, state by state contact information. Very detailed information on how to get in touch with specific party officials at all levels.

Local Goodness: 3 out of 10
Better at letting you know how to get in touch with the local party than at telling you what it's doing.

The Verdict: 81 out of 100
The only Venezuelan party that really gets Web 2.0. An excellent web-page that, nonetheless, contains some serious gaps.

PPT-sur-Web

URL: http://www.ppt.org.ve/

Updatedness: 3 out of 20.
It looks like the site was pretty scrupulously maintained...until last April!

Interaction possibilities: 0 out of 20.
There aren't any.

Meaningful positions 14 out of 20:
The Quienes Somos link makes a fairly creditable stab at describing PPT's ideology, and explaining both what it is and how it differs from others':

Nosotros queremos un Estado que forme parte consustancial con la sociedad y, por tanto, con la idea de nación, de Patria. Sólo así podrá realizarse el ideal del Estado-Nación que hoy se intenta borrar del mapa mundial, con la avasallante ola económica, política e ideológica que motoriza el plan de globalización o mejor aún, de totalización del dominio mundial por un capital financiero, desalmado, y de una voracidad insaciable. Íntimamente, vinculado a este postulado, está el hecho de que, para poder desplegar una política económica extranjerizante, el neoliberal tiene que acompañarla de una política excluyente, que, al desplazar fracciones importantes del capital nacional que se había formado a lo largo de varias décadas, lanza también a millones de seres a la pobreza. Y aquí no tenemos que apelar a ejemplos ajenos, cuando vivimos la experiencia en carne propia.

Web-Design: 14 out of 20.
Good, functional web design. Clear, readable and easy to find your way around. On the other hand, a bit dull, and badly let down by too little content and too many broken links.

Contact information: 0 out of 10.
They got nothin'!

Local Goodness: 3 out of 10.
A lot of the material included is very local in nature, but useless, because it's months out of date.

The Verdict: 34 out of 100.
A well designed website, slowly dying of neglect.

Cuanto vale el leak?

Quico says: We break from our regularly scheduled set of website reviews to bring you this bizarre, titilating, alarming, and apparently true story:

The secret-spilling site Wikileaks announced this week that it's acquired thousands of e-mails belonging to a top aide to Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez. But don't look for them online. In a departure from its full-disclosure past, Wikileaks is auctioning off the cache to the highest bidder.

Wikileaks began soliciting bids from media organizations on Tuesday, for what it describes as thousands of e-mails and attachments from 2005 to 2008 that provide insight into Chavez's management, CIA activities in Venezuela and the Bolivarian revolution.

[hat tip: JayDee.]

Un Nuevo Tiempo-am-Web

URL: http://www.unnuevotiempo.org.ve/cms/

Updatedness: 18 out of 20.
Updated almost daily, the site is definitely looked after.

Interaction possibilities: 11 out of 20.
A quick sign-up allows you to register and participate in a Forum, however the forum doesn't seem to be very active. There's no simple way to sign up as a party member, volunteer, or to donate money.

Meaningful positions: 11 out of 20
We get a clear, full throated defense of liberal democracy coupled to a strong rejection of the authoritarianism that hides behind calls for radical democracy.

En Venezuela, la futura democracia política deberá abarcar: una soberanía popular sin interferencias autoritarias, una auténtica tolerancia pluralista, la eliminación de dogmas ideológicos oficiales, la separación y descentralización de los poderes públicos y la independencia de la judicatura, la institucionalidad de la fuerza armada, la garantía de la seguridad personal y publica, la lucha contra la corrupción, como iniciativas imprescindibles para la existencia del Estado de Derecho. Un Estado de Derecho y de Justicia, donde impere la Ley y se respeten los acuerdos y contratos, donde el sistema de administración de justicia sea transparente y eficaz, es además el mejor piso para impulsar nuestro proyecto de desarrollo justo, equitativo y centrado en el ser humano.

On less abstract matters, the document descends into platitudes.

Web-Design: 13 out of 20.
The web design looks expensive, and there's certainly a lot of content, but there's also a hell of a lot of clutter, too many distracting moving graphics, and just too many colors.

Contact information: 7 out of 10
You get a general contact link and a press contact link. UNT gets special kudos for making their internal organization chart available, but loses points for not telling us how to contact the people in it.

Local Goodness: 9 out of 10.
A very cool Regions' Map guides you directly to locally relevant info. A few local politicians host blogs about what they're up to.

The Verdict: 69 out of 100.
A good, strong website, clearly looked after and fuzzed over, that doesn't quite dare to ask its readers to do something for the party or the country.

PSUV-upon-Web - UPDATE

UPDATE/WARNING: The website described below apparently contains some nasty malware. Be sure you have updated anti-virus software before clicking on it.

URL: http://psuv.org.ve/

Fun cybersquatter: http://psuv.org/ (Partnership Society for USA and Venezuela)

Updatedness 0 out of 20: A bunch of PDF files from 2006 and 2007.

Interaction possibilities: 0 out of 20.
The site is totally static.

Meaningful positions: 4 out of 20.
More or less what you'd expect from the Chávez cult-of-personality party. You get jewels such as,

Hemos odo [sic] lamentablemente voceros y no precisamente de la oposicin[sic], diciendo que estn[sic] de acuerdo con el pensamiento nico[sic] y quin ha hablado de eso? Nadi [sic] hablado [sic] del pensamiento nico, [sic] `no! pensamientos de lo ms diverso, flexibilidad, amplitu [sic] visin [sic] holstica [sic] integral, sistmica [sic]; es una nueva conformacin. [sic]

Web-Design: 6 out of 20.
Red, very red. Mismatched fonts. Designed for tiny screens only. Image of Chávez faces the outside of the window.

Contact information: 7 out of 20.
You get a toll free number (0-800-PSUV-000), and a single email that, alarmingly, has the date 2007 slapped on it: salapsuv2007@gmail.com

Local Goodness: 1 out of 10.
A few region-specific documents, but like everything else, they're years out of date.

The Verdict: 18 out of 100.
PSUV's website bears all the hallmarks of a site nobody really thought through, nobody really updates and nobody really uses on a regular basis. Two year old content. No meaningful chances for interaction. About as useful as an ashtray on a motorcycle.

How web-savvy is your party?

Quico says: From today, both Juan Cristobal and I will be out travelling: he has a business trip, I'm going to a conference.

To keep the blog active, we've prepared a series of posts reviewing the websites of Venezuela's main political parties. A new review will appear each day.

The Internet is proving to be a powerful weapon in the politics of our time. It seems like tapping the power of the Internet is fast becoming a crucial factor in making or breaking a candidate, a party or a platform. Are Venezuelan politicians (from all sides) paying attention? Have they grasped the importance of the Internet?

We'll be reviewing websites to try and find an answer. Websites will be judged on six criteria:

Updatedness - 20 Points.
You can tell a lot about how much people care about and use a website by how up-to-date it is. And, of course, nothing's more useless than a topical website with 6-month old information. Our first criterion, therefore, is how often the site is updated, how "news-y" it is. We award extra points for use of recent web-video.

Interaction possibilities - 20 Points.
A party web-site should be about more than just pushing information down to passive recipients; it should be about empowering people to use the website as an organizing tool. This criteria tries to capture how much of the whole Web 2.0 ethos has filtered down to Venezuelan party webmasters, and to what extent the website is used as a tool to catalyze off-the-web action.

Meaningful positions - 20 Points.
Every party website has some doctrinal material on it (well, at least they should!). But can an actual ideology be discernible when you are being drowned by a tsunami of clichés?

Web-Design - 20 Points.
How hard is it to find what you're looking for? How attractive are the graphics? Points here go to "clean" web-design that's elegant, balanced and functional, and are deducted from overly loud or cluttered designs.

Contact Information - 10 Points
Is the website helpful in getting in touch with specific people filling specific roles within the party? Or do you just get one or two all-purpose contact points? Is there any contact information at all?

Local Goodness - 10 Points.
With state and local elections coming up, it's especially important to provide locally relevant information. Does the website allow you to find out what the party is doing in your specific location? Or is it as Caraco-centric as the Venezuelan media?

Red Rag Chronicles

Quico says: In the last few weeks, Venezuelans have faced a paradox. A government that, by and large, has never allowed itself to be hemmed in by written laws has, nonetheless, pushed a wide legislative offensive, approving any number of new laws that expand its scope to punish private actors.

The result is disorienting, contradictory, baffling. Take the issue of property rights. Within a few days, the government both greatly simplified the legal procedure for taking over privately owned businesses and demonstrated that it doesn't actually care about those procedures by ignoring all due process and sending actual tanks to take over the nation's largest cement manufacturer.

This pattern, where the government approves punitive new laws and, in the next breath, gleefully ignores them, has been one of the defining characteristics of chavismo's onslaught against rule-based governance; a practice that badly undermines of the entire cognitive and cultural apparatus that supports idea of a state bound by laws.

How to interpret all this? Why does a government that clearly doesn't give a rat's ass about laws spend so much time and energy changing them?

For me, the key is to wise-up to the political role these new laws play, to understand them not as enshrining substantive new powers but rather as signals, messages within a signaling game.

What is alarming about the new Telecoms Bill, for instance, isn't actually the specific new powers it would grant the presidency. To realize that, it's enough to witness chavismo's move against two opposition radio stations in Guarico state last week. The stations, whose broadcasting licenses were not in order, were shut down in a delirious show of strength, by hundreds of armed soldiers that went on to seize their broadcasting equipment outside any due process mechanism whatsoever. Even the new Telecoms Bill, however punitive and authoritarian it may be, wouldn't empower the government to randomly seize stations' equipment like that...and that bill isn't even law yet!

Episodes like the one in Guarico show that the government's M.O. for screwing us doesn't consist of tightening the law, it consists of just ignoring laws with impunity whenever it feels like it. In that context, the question becomes: what's the point of tightening laws at all, of making them much more punitive than they were, but still less punitive than the government's real-world actions?

The answer, I think, is that these new laws aren't laws, they're messages. Signalling mechanisms. Language. They're the way Chávez communicates with his own bureaucrats, to indicate to them of which sectors are now "fair game". And it's the way he communicates with specific sectors to let them know that they've been marked out.

If you are, say, a tour operator, you're right to be alarmed by the new Tourism Decree Law - but not fundamentally due to the dozens of arbitrary new permits and authorizations you're now supposed to obtain just to do business, or to the heavy punishments you face for breaking any of them. After all, if the government had wanted to shut you down or bankrupt you, it certainly could've done so de facto, with or without the new law.

The reason you should be alarmed is that the Decree Law itself acts as a statement of intent, a none-too-subtle sign that, for whatever reason, your business is in the bureaucracy's cross hairs. That the people singled out for newly punitive treatment should react with alarm isn't at all surprising.

What's shocking is the breadth of new targets the latest batch of chavista laws take on: everyone from real estate developers and food processors to media companies and retail businesses. Marking them all out at once, Chávez waves a huge red rag in front of their faces. He invites them to charge, as though it was the red-rag that was threatening them.

But it isn't the red rag that threatens them. It's the sword concealed just behind it. Of course, he had that sword long before he started waving the red rag. All the red rag is meant to do is to lure us into a panicked charge, a hopeless attack launched without a plan that merely leaves us all the more exposed to the real threat we face.

There is no doubt that a bull has very good reason to be alarmed if he sees a red rag waved in front of his face at a bullfight. That rag signals an intent that he can only find alarming. But it's just as clear that, if the bull mistakes the signal for the threat itself, he'll only help the torero move in for the final blow.

Trust me, I know. After all, I'm a Toro.

Buckshot Provocation

Quico says: Reading back on what I wrote yesterday, it strikes me that I'm just now grasping the actual mechanics of chavista provocation. All at once, I realized that the reason the new Telecoms Law struck me as especially alarming isn't so much that it's worse than any of the other new laws, it's that I'm me!

Chávez knows that different sectors will react to different outrages differently. A punitive new law on Food Security may strike me as relatively unremarkable, but it'll freak the hell out of food distributors. A crazy new Armed Forces Law may be no skin off your back if you make a living distributing food, but it'll set all kinds of alarms ringing if you're an old-school military officer. The theft-cum-expropriation of Cemex may not keep military officers up at night, but it'll scare the hell out of foreign investors big and small. And a new Telecoms Law that sets up a Sword of Damocles over all electronic telecommunications may not bother foreign investors that much, but it'll freak the hell out of media types like me.

What Chávez is doing is buckshot provocation, scattering his fire widely enough to make sure he hits all kinds of different targets. The latest onslaught has something for everyone to hate: tour operators, real estate developers, farmers, kidnapees, oppo politicians, even bloggers. Things never go well when Chávez starts to go down this route.

Pushing it

Quico says: What would it take to get me really, seriously alarmed about the latest uptick in chavista autocracy? This is a question many of you have been asking, as I dismiss each of Chávez's latest provocative moves in turn as "grave, but not serious." As far as I could see, nothing in the latest legislative onslaught counted as a qualitatively new attack on the fundamental freedoms we have left, the ones that still keep me from labeling chavismo a proper dictatorship. But with this Telecommunications Bill now going through the National Assembly ... well, now Chávez is playing with fire.

The bill would grant the president the authority to suspend all electronic communications, for as long as he wants, to preserve "public order" and "national security". And when I say all, I mean all: not just TV and radio broadcasts, but also cable and satellite TV, the Internet, the phones, SMS text messaging and even - explicitly - any other comparable media that may be invented in the future.

The criteria are vague; the powers open-ended. The chances for meaningful judicial review are nil.

Now, it's true that having bought CANTV, the government is already in a position to shut down 90% of the country's telecommunications de facto, just by flicking a switch. But alternative, non-state telecom channels - the kind you'd want to turn to for independent information in case of trouble, everything from Movistar to Radio Fe y Alegría - do exist, and they're exactly the ones threatened by these proposals.

Even for a government that has made an amateur sport of thumbing its nose at the Constitution, the sheer chutzpah of the constitutional violation involved is staggering. Article 337 unambiguously says the government may not suspend core human rights even in case of emergency and explicitly lists the right to information as one of those rights.

Now, I'm the first to argue that, when it comes down to it, some constitutional rights are more equal than others. With a Constitution littered with good intentions masquerading as rights, it's clear that some rights are "hard" and some are "soft". Nobody is going to call chavismo a dictatorship because it doesn't really guarantee everyone's right to decent housing (Art. 82), say, or vacation pay (Art. 90).

But negative rights are another matter altogether, lying much closer to the "hard constitution" than some pajeric positive right no court could really enforce. And no right is harder than free speech: a constitutive element of the dividing line that separates the kind of postmodern autocratic bananarepublicanism we've had so far from out-and-out dictatorship.

Until now, chavismo has made a routine out of violating the soft constitution but, in the grand scheme of things, has stayed on this side of the yellow line with regard to the hard stuff. But grant Chávez the legal power to shut down any broadcast (or, for that matter, any narrowcast) whenever he wants, for whatever reason he wants, for as long as he wants, and suddenly the case for resisting the D-word starts to wear desperately thin.

There's no question about it, Chávez is really pushing it now. The decision to pick and choose which opponents are allowed to stand in November's local elections. The 26 decree-laws, enacting many of the reforms voters rejected last December. The embrace of Russia's occupation of Georgia. The theft - lets face it, "expropriation" is a euphemism - of Cemex. The closure of two opposition radio stations in Guarico. The crazy-ass kidnapping law. The changes to the Armed Forces Law. And now this openly dictatorial proposal. A drip, drip, drip of outrages and humiliations, each more willfully provocative than the last, each guaranteed to raise the temperature, and the latest of which is so dangerous it'll tip even a die-hard moderate like me into a spasm of alarm.

There are people in Venezuela who have been trained to think it's their responsibility to save the country from tyranny. If you didn't know better, you'd think the guy was trying provoke an extreme response from them.

Who moves the markets?

We move the markets!

[hat tip: Omar]

Does Cemex matter?

Juan Cristobal says: - The government is confiscating Venezuela’s largest cement company. Our readers are incensed. Some are wondering when we are going to write about this latest outrage. So here it is: it’s not that important.

Tonight, the Chávez government will take over the Venezuelan subsidiary of Mexican cement giant Cemex without paying a penny in compensation. Cemex was understandably reluctant to accept the imposition of unfair business terms and become minority shareholders in a joint venture with the unreliable Chávez administration. In this high-stakes gamble, Chávez has decided to take over the entire operation, and the Mexicans have probably lost big-time.

In any other country, this would turn on alarm bells. But in Venezuela, alarm bells have laryngitis.

There is nothing in this operation that we didn’t already know. Is it illegal? Yes, it is. Is it unprecedented? No, it is not. Was in unexpected? Nope. Does it signal a shift in the Chávez government’s war on private property? No, it confirms a trend, one that has been publicly announced by the President over and over again.

Cemex was once the mighty Vencemos, the brainchild of legendary Venezuelan businessman Eugenio Mendoza. In a country with very little private industry, Vencemos was the trailblazer that built an empire, a symbol of what Venezuelan entrepreneurs could accomplish.

But that was long ago – the Mexicans bought it out in the 90s and most of the romance of the old company is simply gone. Up until today, it had been transformed from a national champion to the well-managed local branch of a huge multinational. Its symbolic value is muted at best.

The question, then, is whether this is actually good policy. The easy answer here is that no, it is not. The government’s dismal failure in home-building cannot be attributed to fictional cement shortages – the cement has always been there for the taking, and the government has always been able to buy it. In fact, buying it would have been much cheaper than buying entire cement companies, which is what the government is doing with Cemex rivals Lafarge and Holcim.

It's not lack of cement that's holding the government back. Stealing cement companies is not going to make 200,000 low-income homes build themselves.

Instead of investing in roads, access to water and sanitation services, the government decides to invest in companies it will surely trash. The first thing it will probably do is rename Cemex something like Cebol. Pretty soon we’ll begin hearing Cebol’s board asking for public funds to keep the company going. Shortages will appear and the company will march to its inevitable demise.

Some people think that Cemex and the other cement companies are part of a ploy to keep the opposition guessing and distracted. If it is, it’s surely an expensive one. Not only will these moves cost the government some money: think of the time it takes to negotiate with the companies, the workers, to name a board. Just today we had public statements from both the Vice-president and the Oil Minister. Don't they have other things to worry about?

It’s a distraction alright … a distraction for the government.

There is one piece of the puzzle that is blurry. Years ago, Chavez announced a joint venture with Iran that included building a cement factory. Needless to say, nothing came of it.

And yet just this past week we learn that Chávez wants to set up another cement joint venture, this time with Bolivia and Iran. Never mind that it makes absolutely no sense to export cement from Venezuela to Bolivia or Iran – could these imaginary cement factories be a cover-up for something else? Could Cemex (Cebol) and the other companies be covers for the traffic of illicit material? Only time will tell.

In the meantime, we are left with the takeover of Cemex. What does it boil down to? Another boneheaded decision by the government, one that will surely cripple the industry, cost Venezuelan taxpayers millions, scare away foreign investment, damage Venezuela’s reputation abroad and confirm that we are governed by a bunch of thugs.

So as troubling as it is, it’s just business as usual in the Bolivarian Revolution. There’s nothing in these news that we didn’t already know, no fear that hadn’t already been confirmed long ago. It sucks for the Mexicans, and it’s probably going to suck for the workers. For the rest of us, it’s been sucking for years now. Ho-hum.

Qué rayón

Juan Cristobal says: - Don't miss the latest outburst from chavista congresswoman Desireé Santos Amaral in the front steps of the Mercosur Parliament, where Leopoldo López was about to explain the case of his ban from public office...

Discusión a las puertas del Mercosur
by noticias24

I was reminded of my grandmother, who always said that no matter what problems we had in the family, we should "wash dirty rags at home." How sad that we've lost even that, that discussions one would expect to have in a normal democracy have to take place in front of foreign reporters and in international forums because, well, we are no longer a normal democracy.

I can only imagine what those Uruguayans must be thinking... and these are the people we want to admit to Mercosur? Don't we have enough problems already?

As usual, chavista aggression works against them, as López comes out of this looking like the victim of a political lynching and chavistas come across as fire-breathing hoodlums.

Plantain chronicles

Juan Cristobal says: - Don't miss Alberto Barrera's amusing riff on Venezuela's new barter law. In Spanish only.

My Piedad Córdoba Shame

Quico says: OK, OK, I admit it!

I funnel Venezuelan government money to Piedad Córdoba!

Boy, I never saw that one coming!

Quico says: Guess who Chávez blames for the South Ossetian war? You have three guesses. First two don't count.

Kidnapped Twice

Quico says: Want something new to be alarmed by? Check out the newly enacted anti-kidnapping law - something I'd written about before - which mandates the Prosecutor General's office to freeze all financial assets belonging to kidnap victim's families to prevent them paying ransom.

The rules extend to the second-degree of consanguinity and force banks to disclose any loans made to the family during the freeze. Which means if your second cousin gets kidnapped just before you submit a mortgage or business loan application, you're shit out of luck. The law even empowers a Ministerio Público official to set a kind of "allowance" for you - deciding how much of your salary you're allowed to keep to make sure there isn't a medio left over at the end of the month to pay ransom with.

It may be one of the most shockingly hamfisted policies I've heard in recent years. As though the kidnapping of a relative wasn't traumatic enough, the new law means once that happens, your assets get kidnapped too.

But what if your relative is killed and the body isn't found? Do your assets stay "frozen" indefinitely?

Would you report a kidnapping, knowing what the government would do to your stuff? And, if nobody reports, guess what happens to the kidnapping statistics?

Ten reasons why November matters

Juan Cristobal says: In some opposition circles, wanting to get elected to office amid the swirl of inhabilitaciones and decree-laws almost amounts to treason. The conventional wisdom seems to be that only someone completely absorbed by his or her own personal ambition could fail to see this. "It's an outrage! Running for office...at a time like this!"

It's a compelling argument, that one. On the face of it, it's true that the Mayorship of Naguanagua is peanuts next to the advancements of Chávez's "frog-in-the-water" brand of authoritarianism. But taken as part of a medium-term strategy to end this madness, the coming elections are indeed important. When you think about it, we should be glad cool heads in the opposition are focused on November and are not getting overly distracted by the rojo, rojito rags Chávez is waving in our faces.

The way I see it, our current goal should be to do everything we can to tackle the myth that Chávez has a lock on Venezuelans' hearts and minds.

So why are November's elections important? Let me count the ways.

1. We have a shot at winning more votes than chavismo: Before December, Chávez loved to boast about how he beat us eight or nine times in a row. It helped create a notion in the minds of the electorate that he was invincible at the ballot box. The Revolution could not be turned back, or so we were led to believe. "Whine all you want, but this government is backed by an overwhelming majority of Venezuelans," goes the story.

Have you noticed how he doesn't do that anymore? Have you noticed we've stopped being referred to as "the squalid ones" every two days?

While last December's narrow defeat shattered Chávez's unbeaten record, it didn't exactly do in the chavista election machine. We need to work on a streak here...2D, the regions this year, the Assembly in two years' time, you complete the sequence...

Winning in November could be a major step in cementing the view that the opposition is a viable political force. It could also do wonders for the belief in ourselves and for our shaky morale

But winning could also help bring in swing voters. After all, there's a reason Venezuelans support Brazil in the World Cup - we love a winner, we hate losing. Winning in December may create the idea that if you back the opposition, you're playing the winner card.

2. Local governments provide a platform for opposition ideas: I agree with most of the opposition curmudgeons that our politicians have failed to deliver a clear narrative on their aspirations for our country. Part of the reason is because only a handful of them have any ideas at all. But it's also true that the few who do have them don't really have a platform to talk about them, much less implement them.

Holding an elected position gives you a platform, a podium from which you can talk about ideas and actually implement them. And with the chance to put ideas into practice comes visibility.

Think of it this way: if you conduct a political opinion program, who would you rather showcase: the under-secretary general of an opposition political party, or an elected opposition governor? If you're a reporter, what do you choose to cover first: a speech by an opposition politician in a political party's headquarter, or a speech by the mayor of a big city?

3. Local governments keep the party base motivated and employed: We can argue until we turn blue, but all of us agree that our political parties are not what we want them to be. Having strong political parties is a pre-condition for having a viable democracy. And in order to have strong parties, we need to have good people working for them.

As I've met party activists and volunteers, I've always been impressed by how passionate most of them are about public service. While I share some skepticism toward the bigwigs, I'm a believer in the rank-and-file, the folk who organize the smaller groups who march, distribute flyers, paint walls and devote a lot of time to party activities. Rendered invisible by the cogollo-centered media, these people's energy and idealism perseveres even in the face of the incredibly hostile medium of the broader anti-politics opposition.

But it's hard to keep them motivated and energized when they have to work 9-to-5 and then organize in their off time. And it's really hard to have a functioning political party without a motivated grass-roots organization.

Let's grow up a bit. It's neither the lust for power nor the chance to fill their pockets that's driving some of these people to run for municipal council in Guatire or for State Assembly in Yaracuy. It's their desire to conjugate their love for their country and their faith in the possibility of political action with the need to get a paycheck on 15 y último.

Winning lots of seats in municipal councils and state legislatures for people who have earned it will only make our parties stronger. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me to see the morale of the chavista base plummet after lots of them lose the jobs they won in 2004.

4. Local activists can help us reach distant communities: We've talked about it before, but it's worth repeating: nothing beats local knowledge when trying to reach rural bastions of chavismo. Too often, we can't compete in the countryside for a simple reason: we have nobody in any position of influence there at all.

We may not win the governorship of Guárico, we may not win the mayorship of Municipio Juan Germán Roscio, but win a few seats in the municipal council and, little by little, you go from being totally absent from large chunks of the country to having, at least, a beachhead. A concejal's power is, to be sure, very limited, but he can nonetheless serve as a spokesman for micro-level complaints that, today, find no voice whatsoever, a champion for rural people who have, so far, had simply no one "important" at all to support them in the face of chavista excess.

The people who manage to win there, if they do their job right, could deliver that Municipality in the future. Little by little, they can help us eat away at the massive chavista advantage in the countryside that remain the opposition's biggest obstacle to winning nationally.

5. Local governments still get significant funding: We face a behemoth of a financial machine in chavismo, one that constantly bends the rules to not give regions their fair share. Recent moves by Chávez will probably mean state and local governments will face diminishing powers.

And yet...

The Constitution says that state and local government will receive up to 20% of each year's budget (the so-called situado). To shortchange local governments, Chávez has typically passed budget laws that assume oil prices will be much, much lower than the market price. That way, large chunk of oil income do not go through the normal budgetary procedures, and therefore, state and local governments don't get their fair share.

Still, while the assumed price of oil is low, it's still the case that it has been growing year after year, and with it, the funds available to state and local governments.

It's true that the recent decree-law allowing Chávez to name special regional envoys diminishes the power of state and local governments. But Chávez has yet to place a complete stranglehold on their budgets. If he does, and if things in November go well for us, he will have to deal with an army of very committed, very squalid, very pissed-off governors who have the legitimacy his Miraflores-appointed flunkies will never have: the legitimacy that comes from popular election.

6. It gives democratic legitimacy to key opposition figures: It's always surprised me how chavismo has gotten an incredibly easy ride in international public opinion considering the amount of crap it's pulled. To a large extent, the reason is that Chávez has successfully sold the view of his opponents as a cabal of coup-plotting extremists who hold no appeal to the grass-roots. "He might be bad," international public opinon thinks, "but we can't be seen to back another Pinochet."

Winning local elections in places outside the Sifrino Enclaves will put a stake through the heart of this particular canard. Imagine Carlos Ocariz standing in front of the European Parliament, say, or the Brazilian Senate and introducing himself as the elected mayor of the biggest shantytown in Venezuela and the third biggest in Latin America before ripping into chavista authoritarianism. That's rather different than Marcel Granier doing so, don't you think?

One time, I was in a meeting with a bunch of Chilean senators opposed to Chávez. When we asked them what they knew about the opposition, they told me they were fully aware of the opposition because they had met with Henrique Salas Römer a few times.

Did I mention the year was 2005?

Needless to say, Salas Römer was not a factor in 2005, and he is not much of a factor now. But the fact is that by virtue of his (dismal) performance in the elections of 1998, this was the face of the opposition to them.

Foreign political circles can be of help: they can open doors to foreign media outlets, they can put Venezuelan issues on the forefront and they can put pressure on their own governments to moderate their enthusiasm for Chávez. So while foreigners will not come and save us, they can sure be of help.

After all, the group of senators I met ended up being instrumental in putting pressure on the Chilean government so they would not support Venezuela's bid to the UN Security Council.

7. It forces the government to work with us, or at least, through us: Have you noticed how Chávez doesn't usually broadcast his Alo, Presidente show from Zulia or Nueva Esparta? If he does, he usually does it in the confines of a chavista municipality.

Has there ever been an Aló Presidente from Chacao or Baruta? This show requires logistics, an advance team that takes care of security, that sort of thing. Chávez generaly shies away from having to negotiate these and any other aspects with people from the opposition.

The same can be said of infrastructure projects and social programs. If he can avoid having to deal with unsympathetic authorities (and up until now, this was easy to do), he will do it. But if we win half the country, if 65% of the people end up being governed by local authorities sympathetic to our cause, this will force him to acknowledge us as authorities, at least on a basic level.

8. It is one more step in putting together a coalition: We're all pissed about the Inhabilitados, about the constant abuse of power by chavismo. One thing we can do is try to win back the National Assembly in 2010.

Think about what it would mean. Everything, from the passing of Referenda on controversial laws to the replacement of key figures in the TSJ, to the naming of a new Comptroller to convening a Constitutional Assembly - it would all be on the table. After November, winning the Assembly should be our number one goal.

But... in order to do so, we need to build a strong coalition. November will be a crucial test on whether or not our politicians are up to the task.

9. It is crucial in turning out the vote in future elections: This is related to the previous point, but also to any Referenda coming our way, as well as the Legislative elections of 2010 and the Presidential election of 2012.

Last December, our dismal performance in the areas outside major metropolitan areas cast a shadow over our victory. In order to address this, we need to improve voter turnout in these key areas.

There is no doubt that regional and local governments can assist in this. Anything from providing transportation to information to canvassing neighborhoods with activists can be accomplished better if the local government is on your side and not harrassing us, like they usually are. And in a close election, this type of "trabajo de hormiguita" makes all the difference.

10. It would grab the headlines abroad: Last December, Chávez's aura of invincibility was shattered, and international headlines took notice. From that point on, references to Chávez past electoral wins usually carry the tagline that he was "narrowly defeated" in a Constitutional referendum.

That "narrowly" hints at the feeling that Chávez almost won the Referendum, that he is still very popular. Another loss in another election - deemed as crucial by Chávez himself - will work to shatter any remaining doubts about Chávez's hold on popular consciousness.

The Smoking Gun That Went on Nicorettes

Quico says: Here's a question to ponder: what really changed in Venezuela when the 26 laws of the Gacetazo were decreed into effect? We've heard a lot of woolly thinking in the opposition about this, a lot of emotional posturing, and a huge amount of red-rag charging. But if you put your spleen on hold and think with your head for a second, can you tell me what specifically changed when the new laws came into effect?

The standard rap is that the decrees are unconstitutional, and anyway they were rejected in the December 2nd referendum. The logic here seems to be that in order to change, say, the mechanisms for expropriating a farm, you need a constitutional amendment.

There are two problems with that. The first is that in the weeks and months ahead of the Constitutional Reform Referendum, we argued that most of the changes proposed didn't require a constitutional amendment! We protested loudly, saying the government could achieve the same thing by changing the laws and that most of the changes were "cover" for the one real change that did require changing the constitution: removing presidential term limits.

For my money, we had it right the first time: most of the proposed reforms didn't require changing the constitution, they just required changing the laws, which is exactly what the government is doing.

Does this mean the policies in the new laws are good? Hell no! Or wise? Far from! But, unconstitutional? That just doesn't follow.

A lot of the confusion seems to come from a sloppy tendency to just use the words "bad" and "unconstitutional" as rough synonyms. That's childish. Bad ≠ Unconstitutional.

The second problem is the whole sense of irreality as we discuss, in grave terms, the expansion of the government's legal powers to regulate and sanction private actors. But Chávez has never paid any attention to what the laws say in terms of what he can and can't do vis-à-vis society, and it's been years since he's faced any significant institutional counterweights. We speak in horrified tones about how easy it'll be to expropriate farms from now on, but seven years ago I was making films about guys in Barinas who had their farms confiscated with zero notification, zero due process, and no recourse to the courts!

The violations of the constitution these laws allow are nothing new. Take the latest LOFAN (or, erm, LOFANB, as I guess we'll have to call it now) - which blatantly tramples the constitution by creating a praetorianish Militia within the Armed Forces. The semantic trick they use to slip this one in amounts to the barest coating of vaseline: the constitution says the Armed Forces are "integrated by" four components (Army, Navy, Air Force, National Guard) whereas article 5 of LOFANB says the Armed Forces are "organized by" a bunch of bodies that don't show up in the constitution, including the militia. That's some thin gruel, but no doubt the TSJ will drink it up with relish.

Clearly unconstitutional, yes, but does it change anything? Is the constitution more violate today than it was two weeks ago? Not really, because the 2005 version of LOFAN also invented new military components out of thin air. All the LOFANB does is rename the Guardia Territorial and the reserva, calling them the Militia.

In practice, the Gacetazo doesn't really make Venezuela more autocratic than it was before. It doesn't violate the constitution any more than has become sadly usual. That's, of course, cold comfort: the country was already alarmingly autocratic before the new decrees, and the constitution has long been a stomping ground for chavista whims.

The point, though, is that the Gacetazo doesn't appreciably add to the already desperate state of our state. That there's nothing in the gacetazo that substantially alters our situation. They have, indeed, jiggled around some old laws that they were blatantly breaking, and thought up some novel ways to violate constitutional principles they've been violating for years. But if you didn't think an Article 350 adventure was warranted this time last month, there's nothing in the gacetazo to make you think it is now.

From the Art. 350 User's Manual.
Step 1: patronize your way to power.