Your ideas are not your ideas

Quico says: I've been fascinated by the responses to Chávez's detailed invocation of Gramsci the other day. Most of the opposition is slightly dazed and confused by all this. Mostly, I think, it's because we just don't know that much about Gramsci - it's a names that crops up now and then in intellectualoid circles, but who really has the time to slog through some half-forgotten Marxist's musty old theories? Well, apparently Chávez does, and now we have to as well.

Probably the most common opposition reaction to this episode has been a sneering dismissal, something like:

"So he's a Gramscian now? Right, just like he was a Trostkyite after somebody gave him a few snippets of Trostky to read. When he went to the US in 1999 he said he was a Jeffersonian, two weeks later in China he said he was a Maoist. A few months after that he was quoting from a New Ageish gay self-help book during cadenas. His reading is a mile wide and an inch deep: there's no need to pay any attention."

Usually I would tend to agree, but not this time. Why? Because when Chávez runs out and "discovers" he's a great follower of, say, Mao, the claim is ridiculous because nothing Chávez has done shows any similarity with Mao's ideas or Mao's actions.But when Chávez talks about Gramsci, he lays out a kind of road-map to his communication strategy over the last eight years.

Chávez has always shared Gramsci's fundamental insight about the role of ideology in supporting capitalism. Gramsci's whole point was that, under capitalist hegemony, your ideas are not your ideas. They may feel like they're yours, but in fact you've unwittingly absorbed them from the hegemonic system all around you - from the radio and Hollywood movies and Radio Rochela. That cultural system exists precisely in order to pass off the interests of the ruling class as "common sense," to swindle the oppressed into siding with the interests of the oppressors. That's hegemony.

This interpretation is chavismo distilled. How many times have we heard Chávez attack a journalist posing a difficult question by telling him he's only advancing the interests of his newspaper's owners? How many time, just in the last week, did we hear chavistas dismiss the student protests over RCTV, saying they are "manipulated," that - in effect, their ideas are not their ideas?

Whether Chávez knew that this view was associated with Antonio Gramsci, I can't tell. But I am sure that, for the last eight years, his refusal to engage substantively with those who disagree with him has been implicitly based on this kind of understanding: a gut level sense that those who agree with him "get it" and those who disagree with him are, consciously or unconsciously, advancing the class enemy's agenda, carrying water for the Big Lies of the bourgeoisie.

So I do think there's more to Chávez's Gramscian tirade than there was to similar tirades in the past. Gramsci puts some theoretical meat on the bones of Chávez's intuitive understanding of hegemony, one that has always made a sharp distinction between the legitimate (revolutionary/socialist/liberated/patriotic) speech of his friends and the illegitimate (reactionary/capitalist/manipulated/pitiyanqui) speech of his foes.

The Gramscian turn helps explain chavismo's quizzical contention that the RCTV shutdown is a conquest for freedom of speech: certainly, if you see revolutionary speech as fundamentally free and dissident speech as fundamentally manipulated, you will think a fully free media is one where only revolutionaries get to speak.

And so chavista Manichaeism reductios itself at absurdum.

Because, when you get right down to it, who is the arbiter of whether an idea is liberated or not, revolutionary or not, counterhegemonic or not? Who gets to decide whether you are a patriot or a (conscious or unconscious) enemy of the people? Who's entitled to judge the acceptability of what is said? To pose the question is to answer it: only Chávez gets to make those kinds of judgments.

If you disagree with him, you demonstrate, by that very act, that you've not yet managed to shake off the last vestiges of hegemonic thought. You show the world that, even if you fancy yourself a revolutionary (here's looking at ya, Ismael García), you still carry the seeds of capitalist oppression within you. You demonstrate, in short, that your ideas are still not your ideas.

For chavismo, your ideas only become fully yours, only become fully free, when they are exactly the same as Chavez's. Until you've achieved that mystical union of views, your ideas are manipulated. You are only free once you submit.

Who would've thought it would come to this?

Quico says: It's incredible that it's come to this, but you can't even talk about Venezuelan politics anymore without reading this.

The petrostate revisited

Quico says: Turns out David Frum liked my petrostate essay. Looking back, it's probably the single post I'm most proud of.

Chavez vs. The Constitution

Quico says: These days it's easy to forget, but in 1998 chavismo was all about the constitution. Hugo Chavez built his pitch to the nation around calls to convene a Constituent Assembly to "refound the republic" by writing a new constitution. Not a revolution, not socialism: a new constitution.

The Assembly that ensued was dominated by his supporters. They held over 90% of the seats and wrote a constitution made to measure for the president. For several years afterwards, Chavez carried it in his shirt pocket, displaying it like a kind of talisman, citing it incessantly, calling it "the best constitution in the world" again and again, saying it was "his only project," and repeatedly demanding that his opponents recognize it and play by its rules.

What has come of that project? Well, speaking to his supporters yesterday, Chavez attacked his opponents saying:

They elaborate their system of ideas, their ideology and their ideas are those of bourgeois democracy: the separation of powers, alternation in power - they use that stuff to manipulate - representation as the basis of democracy: big lies! That's the ideology of that hegemonic philosophy that exercised hegemony here in Venezuela for 100 years, and has exercised it in much of the western world as well for 100 years.

With this little riff, Hugo Chavez comes out explicitly against the constitutional order he used to call his "only project." Because hearing him, you'd think the opposition got this stuff about alternancia out of some CIA briefing book. But we didn't, we got it out of article six of the 1999 constitution. It's right there, tucked away in a chapter labeled - preciously enough - "Fundamental Principles."

By the same token, time was when chavismo was so keen on separate and independent branches of government that the Constituent Assembly did Montesquieu two better, inventing an "electoral" and a "citizen" branch to supplement the traditional three.

Provisions affirming the autonomy and institutional independence of the five branches of government are strewn throughout the 1999 text. In Article 254 we read, "the judicial branch is independent and the Supreme Tribunal shall enjoy functional, financial and administrative autonomy." In Article 201, "National Assembly members represent the people and the states as a whole, they are not subject to impositions or instructions, only to their conscience." Article 273: "the Citizen Branch is independent and its institutions shall enjoy functional, financial and administrative autonomy." Article 294: "the institutions of the Electoral Branch shall follow the principles of organic independence, functional and budgetary autonomy, non-intervention by political parties, impartiality and citizen participation."

Hearing him straightforwardly saying he doesn't actually believe in any of that stuff, you almost feel relieved: at last the cards are on the table. Chavez supporters who've spent the last few years telling us Venezuela really does have a functioning separation of powers (it's just that, somehow, the opposition hasn't noticed) can finally stand down. In fact, they better, lest they be accused of carrying water for the hegemonic ideology of bourgeois democracy.

It's good to clear that mass of bullshit out of the way, it lets us focus on what we're really up against here. What we're facing is not some guy who sporadically waltzes that little bit too close to the edge of legality. What we're dealing with here is a man who explicitly attacks the fundamental principles of Venezuela's constitution.

In fact, as Teodoro Petkoff mordantly notes, the 1999 constitution reads more and more like a subversive pamphlet, so wide is the gulf between the principles it enshrines and the government's practice.

Learning to cherish independent institutions

Quico says: Last week, the pro-Chávez Comando Alexis Vives marched onto the Central University campus and trashed the School of Journalism, spray-painting anti-RCTV and pro-government slogans all over the façade and the benches out front.

This week, opposition students held a "protest" that consisted in whitewashing the building, and painting over the graffiti on the benches.

It's a vast, vast, vast right-wing conspiracy. No, seriously, we mean vast!

Quico says: According to Chávez, the only reason he's getting all this flack about closing RCTV is a giant conspiracy against him. "International rightist, extreme-rightist and fascist movements are attacking Venezuela from everywhere — from Europe, the United States, Brasilia," is the way he put it. (You understand by now that he uses "Venezuela" and "me" interchangeably.)

Turns out you only thought the chorus of condemnation he's received this week was due to a diffuse but very strong consensus on this issue. You've been manipulated into thinking that, faced with such a blatant move against free speech, people right around the world can come to similar conclusions without anyone having to coordinate them. But Chávez knows better: all these reactions are being orchestrated by a shadowy international cabal of fascists.

Just how vast is this conspiracy? Really vast. Turns out extreme-rightists and fascists now run:

• The French Socialist Party
• The Spanish Government
  
• The Washington Office on Latin America
• The Carter Center
• The European Parliament
• The US Senate
  
• The Brazilian Senate
• The Chilean Senate
• The Salvadoran Congress
  
• The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights
  
• Amnesty International
• The Committee to Protect Journalists
• Human Rights Watch
• Reporters Without Borders
• The Inter American Press Association
  
• The International Press Institute
  

Fascists! Extreme-rightists the lot of them!

Now, if your first reaction in reading this post was "yes, but," if you can't see how loopy Chavez's defense is, how paranoid and unhinged, if you need someone to explain it to you - that in itself is a pretty good sign that you're a crank.

Say wha?

Katy says: Notes from the nonsensical revolution:

- Interior Minister Pedro Carreño says, in a press conference for the ages, that people have a right to protest but that the State has to protect people's rights to circulate and enjoy their private property, because we all know that this a government that has always respected private property (in those rare occasions when it isn't trying to abolish it).

- In the same press briefing, he asked for proof that police forces had used excessive force, and stated that students were led to protest by the "owners" of private universities who are afraid of losing their market share thanks to Chávez's recent announcement to open 24 new universities. Memo to the Minister: we've seen the quality of education in chavista universities. I think private university owners have nothing to fear.

- To top it all off, the Carter Center put out a communiqué expressing concern over freedom of speech and, get this, the danger of self-censorship! But did Carter voice those concerns during his meeting with Chávez and Gustavo Cisneros, you know, the one they had right before Venevisión mysteriously stopped criticizing the government? Hmmmmm...

Es que algunos las tienen cuadradas.

More from Reporters Without Borders

RSF says: Unfortunately, there is no longer any doubt about Chávez's goals: RCTV’s closure was just the prelude to the progressive disappearance of all the opposition press. Media that criticise the government will be snuffed out one by one until only the pro-government media are left.

More...

In other words:

My grandfather's ankle

Quico says: My earliest political memory is of my grandfather's ankle.

I couldn't have been more than 5 or 6. I was playing on the floor in front of him, running a matchbox car across the floor - vrooooom! As I ran it up his leg, I noticed something strange about his ankle. It looked weirdly bumpy, indented, just wrong.

"Grandpa, did you make a booboo on your ankle?"

"Nah," he said nonchalantly, "those are just the marks from the shackles, from when I was in jail."

His answer confused the hell out of me. Partly because the word for shackles in Spanish - grillos - is also the word for grasshoppers, so the image that popped into my mind was of insects gnawing at his ankles in some fetid prison. Mostly, though, what I couldn't put together was what the heck my grandpa had been doing in jail. I was too young to really understand my mom's explanation later that day. In fact, it was years before I was finally able to grasp what those marks meant.

As it turns out, my grandpa was just a high school kid in 1928, when he joined the first wave of student protests against the Gómez dictatorship. Like the rest of the protesters, he was tossed in jail for his trouble, chained to a wall for weeks alongside the likes of Jóvito Villalba, Miguel Otero Silva and Raul Leoni.

It's an experience that marked him, quite literally, for the rest of his life. Even though he didn't end up going into politics, my grandpa never forgot the difference between tyranny and freedom he learned in Puerto Cabello. "Democracy" and "freedom" meant something deeper to him, something more vital than it could ever mean to someone who's only read about democracy in books, or thought about the loss of freedom in the abstract.

I've been thinking a lot about my grandpa's ankle this week. About his sacrifice. About what those shackles did to him. Was it all in vain?

In 1928, it sure must have seemed like it. As every schoolboy knows, the protests of 1928 didn't really weaken the Gómez regime. He crushed the protests easily, eventually exiled the leaders, and remained in power until the day he died. If blogs had been around back then, we would've had to call it a monumental blunder.

And yet, those protests are remembered as a pivotal moment in Venezuela's 20th century history. It was those hapless kids, acting without a real plan, without a real notion of what they were up against, those kids whose efforts must have seemed so pathetic to Gómez as he crushed them, it was those kids who ended up dominating political life in Venezuela for the next half century.

The bonds they made while chained to that wall, the esprit de corps they forged amid a struggle over transcendent values, shaped Venezuela's political future in ways people could scarcely have imagined in 1928.

Something to keep in mind as we see Venezuelan students once again jailed for protesting out of rage. Will they bring down the Chávez government? Of course they won't. But the lessons they're learning this week, the ties they're forging, the values they're affirming...those will stay with them for decades to come.

Today's detainees, tear gassed and harassed, beaten and humiliated, will be our newspaper editors, parliamentarians and ministers over the next thirty, forty, fifty years. When they meet each other, they won't need words to evoke the memory of what they're experiencing this week. And once they're in power, the lessons they're learning right now about freedom of speech, civil rights and the right to protest are lessons they won't forget.

I admire them, I really do. And while I do think that, in the short term, their efforts are doomed, I realize it's not sensible to judge them on that kind of time horizon. More likely, it will be another half century before the deeper consequences of this week's protests have fully worked their way through Venezuela's public life.

The pot calling the kettle blackout

Quico says: Noticiero Digital's editor, Roger Santodomingo, strikes me as an uncommonly lucid observer of our political reality. I took the trouble to translate part of his latest column:

Blackout
One of the governments main allegations against the private TV stations, particularly RCTV, is that after April 11th, 2002, they didn't broadcast information about the protests Hugo Chávez's supporters staged against Pedro Carmona's de facto regime.

The private media censored themselves, they ran cartoons rather than information about the riots and looting that took the lives of dozens of citizens. Their excuse at the time was that they didn't want to contribute to spreading anarchy and violence, as had happened on February 27th, 1989, when the Caracazo was catalyzed by live broadcasting.

Curiously, the "public service" TV station that has just taken over Channel 2's signal hasn't broadcast any news so far about the protests taking place all over the country against the blow to free expression that was taking RCTV off the air.

But it's not just TVES, none of the state run channels, or the private ones that have lined up behind the government, such as Venevisión, has reflected on their screens what has been happening on the streets.

The blackout - one-sided information or zero information - has become a government policy. To ignore all that isn't convenient is the line handed down to the salaried journalists and parasitic businessman: only pre-approved propaganda is accepted. The media outlets that refuse to follow this order are pressured impudently, through their advertisers. Companies that buy advertising space get called, threatened and blackmailed.

When total control over a news item can't be guaranteed, only state media are accepted by the official sources. For example, tonight (May 30th), after the arbitrary arrest of former deputy and activist Oscar Pérez, of the National Resistance Command, only VTV and TVes reporters were given access to the jail so they could cover it first hand.

Facing this news blackout, the informal media are strengthened. RCTV is broadcasting its newscast, El Observador, over YouTube.

By blacking out the news, a policy ordered directly by Hugo Chávez, whose idea of journalism is closer to the uniformed Granma and the deformed Mario Silva, the President commits another flagrant violation of the constitution he so pompously sold as the most progressive of them all.

This is the logo for the cause

Katy says: Or at least the first I've seen.

1,241 editors can't all be wrong...

Quico says: According to Google News, wire service stories about the protests in Venezuela this week have been picked up by 1,241 publications around the world. And that's just in English. This is a story that has pierced through. We're not just talking about the big metropolitan dailies carrying it, we're talking dinky little home town papers, things like:

• The Journal Gazette and Times-Courier, IL
• The Kindred Times, UT
• The Anatolian Times, Turkey
• The Wyoming News, WY
• The Timaru Herald, New Zealand
• B92, Serbia
• The Dunton Springs Evening Post, CO
• The White Rock Reviewer, SD
• Mediafax, Romania
  
• The Jordan Falls News, IA
• Leading The Charge, Australia
• Dateline Alabama, AL
• Gulf News, UAE
• The Nelson Mail, New Zealand
• The Herald News Daily, ND
• The Akron Farm Report, NE
• The Ottawa Recorder, Canada
• The Manawatu Standard, New Zealand
• OregonLive.com, OR
• The Benton Crier, IA
• Brocktown News, NV
• The Hinesberg Journal, Canada
• The Howell Times and Transcript, UT
• The Prescott Herald, AZ

It's a story that tells itself. Everybody understand shutting down a TV-station.

Fuenteovejuna, señor.

Katy says: Our old friend Pepe sends us this link from Noticiero Digital.

Three hundred students from Central University in Caracas have decided to turn themselves in to the Prosecutor General's Office, in solidarity with the 182 protesters already detained there. That would make 482 people in jail for doing what PSFs in their home countries call "demonstrating," but in ours they call "destabilizing."

(Sorry about the link not working well, either Noticiero Digital is getting too many hits or there's yet another denial-of-service attack.)

As usual...

Quico says: The best piece on RCTV's closure in the English language press is in The Economist.

Katy thought...

Quico says: ...it would be good to turn comments back on for a few days so those of you in Venezuela can write in about what's happening on the ground. Looks hairy.



You know, I never fully bought into Alberto Garrido's portrayal of Chavez as Master Strategist. But the guy does have some sense for tactics. Enough to realize the importance of confronting his enemies where he wants when he wants. He's had plenty of practice over the last eight years, and by now he's pretty good at it. He knows just what he has to do to push our buttons, to provoke us out into a confrontation on his terms.

It's all too easy for him, because his side has leadership and plans ahead and our side has rage in place of a strategy, emotion in place of planning. It's an old script, the one these kids are playing out this week. Understandably and justifiably angry, they're doing exactly what Chávez wants them to do: handing him a pretext to shut down Globovisión and end University Autonomy. When the dust settles, the outcome will be the same it's always been: a few more institutions will have lost their autonomy, and a few more dissidents will have been scapegoated and silenced.

Eight years on, we still haven't put it together: anger is not a plan. Eight years on, we're still strategizing with our liver. Eight years on, Chávez can still play us like a violin.

TVES, worker and parasite...

Quico says: A taste of TVES, the new State run Channel 2, from my inbox...

So I woke up this morning after last night's sob-fest at RCTV to see aerobic tae- bo kick boxing on Channel 2. Like tanned and fake-titted instructors in gym-tights dancing to something that sounded like sped up Daft Punk or one of those cheesy pop-house bands. This went on for some time, interrupted later by some requisite negritos with tambores.

By the time I got to the office there was some kind of show of people doing some kind of snow/ice sailing, it didn't look horribly Venezuelan, though maybe there's a place at the top of Pico Bolivar that's flat enough for that sort of thing. Then we saw several hours of cameras panning across cute schoolchildren, their mouths open with ponderance as they glanced around the room like disoriented refugees. Lost track of things for a while, but when I came back there was some translated movie, I suspected German, about blond girl of maybe 10 and some guy about my age, at some point she drops a bunch of change onto a store counter to buy some alcohol to impress him, later shoots a toy arrow at some woman she doesn't like, then gets behind the wheel of Mr. Robinson's Volvo and threatens to run him over.

I'm sure they'll have Chavez on screen for most of the time over the next couple months, at least as soon as they run out of German socialist movies and National Geographic specials dubbed into Spanish. They've also apparently dredged up a 1970s Argentine soap opera in what appears to be an attempt to pass it off as local content.

Socialism I tell you.

Why does this remind me so much of this old Simpsons clip?

Good night, for now

Katy says: It's getting late, and things in Venezuela seem to have calmed down a bit. Tomorrow is sure to bring more unrest, but for now, I leave you with this cool picture I received today.

To the students bravely defending the cause against tyranny, my heartfelt thanks.

A word of caution for my fellow destabilizers

Katy says: As we read the news on the student protests and watch the government's heavy-handed approach to dispersing the crowds, we are reminded of the wave of protests in 2001 and 2002 that culminated in the Carmonazo.

So now is as good a time as any to ask: where is all this leading? Do we have any hope that Chavez will allow RCTV back on the air? The government's repression will surely be bad news for Chavez and his tarnished image overseas, but after almost universal condemnation for the closure, is there anything else to gain in that regard?

I heard an idea that one of the points is to force the Copa América to be held somewhere else, which would be a big embarassment for the dictator, kicking him where it hurts the most (his ego). But will we have the strength to reach that point?

Maybe I'm missing the tactical objective of this "massive destabilization plan." Maybe the answer is obvious. But I think that, after being led into the lion's den far too many times by obscure powers, Venezuelans should keep these questions in their head before going out and serving as target practice for the government's goons.

What it's really about

Katy says: As we restlessly digest our confusion, sadness and outrage over the RCTV shutdown, it's easy to forget the big picture - why did Chávez make this move, and why now?

To figure it out, ask yourself this: what does Chávez want more than anything? And, what is the biggest hurdle to achieving it?

What Chávez wants is absolute power, something he's close to but doesn't have yet, at least not by his standards. To get it, Chavez needs indefinite re-election, the assurance that he will never be considered a lame-duck President and that nobody in his circle will rise to prominence as his term nears its limit. And to get that, he'll have to reform the Constitution.

From this point of view, the nature and timing of the RCTV decision make perfect sense.

Chavez wants to reform the Constitution for one reason only: so he can govern until he dies. But in order to do that he has to change the Hard Constitution, and if he wants to do that and keep a semblance of democracy, he needs that reform approved in a referendum.

Since a specific proposal has not been unveiled, it's too soon to poll on whether or not people would vote favorably for a hypothetical reform to allow this. Nevertheless, recent opinion polls show large majorities of Venezuelans do not favor the idea of indefinite re-election. There is a real risk that Chavez could lose a referendum on it, and this is a risk he is not willing to take.

That's the real reason behind the RCTV shutdown - not the coup, not Miguel Angel Rodriguez, not the soap operas, not Granier. Chavez cannot risk having a national, opposition-minded media outlet heading the campaign against indefinite re-election and giving air time to those who oppose it.

With RCTV out of the way and the Constituional Reform shrouded in secrecy, voters in Venezuela will have to make up their minds on the basis of official information, print media and Globovisión (which have little penetration beyond the middle class) and the reporting on Venezuela's remaining TV channels, which can be relied on to mobilize in favor of the proposal.

Already, the European Union's election monitoring mision for last year's election noted the way state assets were openly mobilized in favor of Chávez's re-election and the obscene one-sidedness of campaign coverage on state TV. Well, guess what: in the run-up to the constitutional reform referendum, all mass-market TV will be state TV, or state-dominated TV. Faced with the flood of petrodollars the government lets lose in the run-up to any election, with the abuse of state broadcasting, with the illegal use of state money to fund official campaigns, our last remaining counterweight was a combative private media: now it's gone.

As I write this, I realize it all sounds too simplistic. But I also realize that Venevisión - an erstwhile opposition TV station that has now become the government's broadcaster of choice - had its license renewed for five years only, and that the next presidential election is scheduled to take place five and a half years from now. On those two facts alone, the government's war on private media starts to make more sense.

Put simply...

Quico says: The backstory is surely more complicated than this, but personally I can find nothing to disagree with in this Reporters Without Borders statement:

Reporters Without Borders today called for international condemnation of President Hugo Chávez's decision not to renew the licence of Venezuela's oldest TV station, Radio Caracas Television (RCTV), which was finally forced to stop broadcasting at midnight last night.

"The closure of RCTV, which was founded in 1953, is a serious violation of freedom of expression and a major setback to democracy and pluralism," the press freedom organisation said. "President Chávez has silenced Venezuela's most popular TV station and the only national station to criticise him, and he has violated all legal norms by seizing RCTV's broadcast equipment for the new public TV station that is replacing it."

Reporters Without Borders continued: "The grounds given for not renewing RCTV's licence, including its support, along with other media, for the April 2002 coup attempt, are just pretexts. Other privately-owned TV stations that supported the coup attempt have not suffered the same fate because they subsequently adopted a subservient attitude towards the regime."

Directly or indirectly, President Chávez now controls almost all the broadcast media. RCTV's closures is not, as he would have people believe, a mere administrative measure. It is a political move designed to reinforce his hegemony over the news media.

This attack on media pluralism is just the latest in a long series of press freedom violations in Venezuela that have included attacks on hundreds of journalists in recent years, a "media social responsibility" law that restricts their programming, criminal code amendments increasing the penalties for press offences, publication of a list of journalists who allegedly "sold out to US interests," and verbal threats by Chávez against foreign journalists.

"We appeal to the international community to actively condemn this use of force and to defend what remains of the independent media in Venezuela," Reporters Without Borders added.

Freedom of Propaganda

Quico says: "Chávez has been blessed with great enemies: they're so hard to defend" my friend replies when I express my distaste about RCTV chief Marcel Granier's elevation to the post of lead defender of press freedom. With his two-tone hair and his sub-Dali moustache, the erstwhile dean of Venezuelan anti-politics even looks like a comic book villain.

"Blessed with great enemies." Heh.

"You remember the April crisis?" I say, "the paro? the recall? I was all for the opposition all through that - but come on, man, the private TV channels were absurd! They didn't cover marches, they participated in them. They could have reported them, they could have acted like journalists, but they didn't, they chose not to. They chose to take sides, and that's not what journalists do. So don't you think it's a bit odd that it's this guy, who was giving those 'un-journalists' their marching orders back then, who's become the visible face of the 'save journalism' campaign?"

"But it's not about him," my friend goes on, "it's about the Venezuelan people's right to hear a diversity of views on TV. I mean, I agree with you, but the true reform of the media is simply not on the agenda here. What's being fought is a rearguard action against totalitarianism"

I know he's right. In my head I know it. I know today is marks an ominous milestone in the revolution's descent into authoritarianism. I'm not stupid, I can see these things. But in my gut, well...there's something about the canonization of San Marcel de Quinta Crespo, patron saint of repressed journalists, that I can't sit through with a straight face. And, frankly, I'm sick and tired of having to pretend that it isn't so just to avoid being branded a Chavez enabler.

I'm bitter. I wanted my press martyrs to be shining beacons, admirable, above reproach. I wanted Anna Politkovskaya but, I got Ana Vacarella. I can't help but feel a bit ridiculous mourning a channel that kept on running its 9 p.m. telenovela right up until the very end. I know that's wrong. But that's how I feel.

The RCTV shutdown episode, like every episode of Chávez-engineered hyperpolarization since 1999, has made genuine reflection nearly impossible, closing down once again the space for a critical dialogue about the state of the situation and the situation of the state (como diría Mafalda.) As the political climate heats up, both sides fall back onto their default positions, an automatic, tribal solidarity that treats the acknowledgment of uncomfortable realities as tantamount to treason.

In the opposition, a code of omertà has made it impossible to actually talk about anything the private media might have gotten wrong in the last 8 years. The usual canards about handing propaganda freebies to a totalitarian government are trotted out to squash discussion. The absolute virtue of RCTV's line is treated as axiomatic, beyond the need for evaluation. The sheer absence of introspective insight here is ominous - and it's made more ominous, not less, by the parallel turpitude on the other side.

In the government, only Chávez seems to have the balls to call a spade a spade, to forthrightly accept he's doing this to silence a troublesome outlet for dissidents. Sure, "conspirators" is the way he puts it, but anyone with a feel for Chavista-Spanish translation long ago figured out that when he means "disidentes" he says "conspiradores."

Conatel, on the other hand, tries to keep up the fiction that nothing remarkable is happening here, that all of this is quite routine, a bureaucratic procedure, nothing more. RCTV's license was not renewed, we're told, on aesthetic grounds ("the programming is too vulgar" - and this from the people who bring us La Hojilla!) For Conatel, what we're seeing is not so much censorship as a kind of muscular, applied cultural criticism, a line that brings to mind the provocateurs who justified the 9/11 attacks in terms of architectural criticism.

The two Venezuelas talk past one another, for the Nth time: two streams of bullshit running in parallel. No one puts forward a serious argument. The qualifier, of course, is that they have the tanks and all we have is our keyboards.

I, for one, intend to use mine. For me, the RCTV shut down wasn't really a violation of journalistic freedom, because for most of the last 8 years what RCTV has produced has been propaganda, not journalism. The RCTV shut down has been an abuse of propaganda freedom, which may not sound as noble, but in its own way is just as important to freedom of speech as the other kind.

Propaganda is the key concept here, and we need to understand it unsentimentally, see it for what it is. As Jonathan Chait puts it in The New Republic this month:

The word has a bad odor, but it is not necessarily a bad thing. Propaganda is often true, and it can be deployed on behalf of a worthy cause (say, the fight against Nazism in World War II). Still, propaganda should not be confused with intellectual inquiry. Propagandists do not follow their logic wherever it may lead them; they are not interested in originality. Propaganda is an attempt to marshal arguments in order to create a specific real-world result--to win a political war.

Fox News is propaganda, and The Daily Show is propaganda. France's Liberation and the Wall Street Journal's editorial page are propaganda. Their basic goal is not to inform, it's to convince: and in any normal democracy, that's a normal, natural part of the political conversation a free society has with itself.

It's not often put this way, but the freedom to produce and consume propaganda is a fundamental component of freedom of speech. Because propaganda is just the broadcast version of what those of us who like politics do whenever we go out to a bar. We argue. We say things in the way we figure is most likely to convince the other side. We don't feel bound to present the other side's views in the most flattering light, because our goal isn't to elucidate, it's to convince.

To ban propaganda is to ban the cut-and-thrust of democratic political debate, to drive a stake through the heart of deliberation.

The problem is that Venezuela as a society has lost any sort of insight into the dividing line between propaganda and news. It's not surprising, it's been a long time since we've seen proper jounalism on Venezuelan television screens. Propaganda is constantly, incessantly passed off as news. The "Chinese Wall" between editorializing and reporting crumbled a long time ago, in both the public and private media. It can be hard to find actual news at all. So we can hardly fault people for failing to realize the difference between them.

Now, for the last eight years we've had precious little reporting, but we've at least had some diversity in the propaganda on offer, a rough pluralist balance of un-news. From now on, though, what we'll be left with now is not "No Propaganda," but outrageously one-sided propaganda, a debate where only one side talks, where the governing party line is showered on people from all sides, all the time, with nothing to balance it.

The reality is that, this morning, outside a few big cities in Venezuela, people waking up and turning up the tube will have no access to any televised content critical of the regime. For all of the private media's faults, it's hard to shake this ominous sense that this really is a rear-guard action against totalitarianism, and we're losing.

Is there an Emmy for irony?

Quico says: Check out CNN's package on RCTV. It's a good, hard hitting piece...with one colossal, deliciously suggestive blunder. Notice the footage they show as they explain that Chávez accuses RCTV of golpismo for backing the coup against him in 2002. That's right, they dug up this hoary old clip of a light tank charging up the steps of the Palacio Blanco...from Chávez's coup attempt in 1992!

I guess you gotta cut them some slack: nothing that happened in 2002 produced a Latin American coup image quite as iconic as this one.

Doing Orwell proud

Quico says: One of the most striking aspects of the RCTV Shut-Down episode has been the scale of the rhetorical U-Turn involved. These days, with regime apologists arguing that there is no link between shutting down a dissident TV network and freedom of speech, it's easy to forget that, over the years, it's chavistas who have made that link most forcefully. In fact, Chávez supporters used to positively brag about how they had never shut down an opposition media outlet, and consistently cited that fact when presenting their democratic bona fides.

So join me, gentle reader, on a stroll down Memory Lane, a tour of what some prominent chavistas have had to say on this issue:

Let's start with Heinz Dieterich - Chávez's favorite theorist. Watch him gloat over the regime's record in this regard in an interview on June 24th, 2001:

"There isn't a single persecuted journalist, not one media outlet has been shut down, there is not one political prisoner in the country. It would be hard to find another government in Latin America that has allowed so much press freedom."

We heard this kind of line all the time. Take Ultimas Noticias editor Eleazar Díaz Rangel. Invited to give the keynote address to the National Assembly on January 23rd, 2002, he spends much of his speech setting out in detail the pre-Chávez era's sordid practice of intimidating opposition news outlets through temporary shutdowns and sporadic arrests. He then pivots and contrasts that history with Chávez's proud record of restraint:

"No one can show, here or abroad, an instance of a single news item or a single article that hasn't been published as a consequence of the government's actions. There hasn't been a single imprisoned or jailed journalist, a single suspended or closed media outlet."

On April 5th, 2003, then Defense Minister José Vicente Rangel joined Dieterich in marching down that well-trod rhetorical alley. How can you tell that Chavismo is more democratic than the old regime? According to JVR, in part it's because they used to shut down critical media outlets, but we've never done anything like that:

"In Venezuela, in the real country, there isn't a single political prisoner, a single media outlet censored or banned, a single prosecuted journalist, a single desaparecido or torture victim. However, in the 40 years of the democracy that came before, all of that happened."

A few months earlier, Rangel had followed up virtually the same line with:

"Rest assured that Venezuela, under the leadership of Hugo Chávez, will not step off the path of democracy, shall never exit the path of the constitution."

It was JVR who most consistently made this link, implying time and again that moves to shut down opposition media as anathema to a democratic regime.

Want more? Luis Britto Gracía, writing in July 2003, takes evident pride in the democratic tolerance the revolution has shown to the coup-plotting news outlets, hinting that Chávez is such a democrat that his tolerance has virtually been excessive:

"In effect, after three years of trying to invoke a coup through the media, the state hasn't shut down or sanctioned a single media outlet, hasn't arrested a single journalist, censored a single news item, suspended a single constitutional guarantee or established a single minute's state of emergency. It's been an exemplary and almost unprecedented respect for the media..."

Variations on this riff, always built around that rhythmic, sing-song "ni un X, ni un Y, ni un Z," always designed to call attention to various instances of tolerant restraint, became boilerplate for chavistas who wanted to highlight their democratic legitimacy.

We heard them even from fairly obscure chavista pols, like National Assembly member William Querales, who went on the floor of the AN on October 7th, 2004 and said:

"I'm not ashamed to say that President Chávez is the only President in the history of Venezuelan democracy who hasn't shut down a single broadcaster, a single radio station, a single newspaper."

He followed it up by contrasting Chávez's record with the media intimidation tactics of the "false democracies" that came before. By 2004, even Miranda state legislators were using it.

In fact, the riff became so firmly entrenched in the revolutionary rhetorical arsenal that some high officials continued to use it even after Chávez had announced he would shut down RCTV! Here's Vice-president Jorge Rodríguez on January 8th, 2007, during his swearing-in ceremony.

"If there's one thing this government has stood for is individual liberties, civil rights and especially freedom of speech. The only media outlet that has been shut down in the last eight years was Venezolana de Televisión, on the tragic night of April 11th."

And here's Human Rights Ombudsman Germán Mundaraín in an interview he gave even later, on January 30th of this year:

"We've seen a significant change, especially concerning freedom of speech. Never has a media outlet been shut down, except when there was a coup and the coupsters did it."

So, up until a few months ago, chavismo's position was clear: shutting down media outlets that criticize you is something only golpistas do.

In the last couple of months, though, the line has been not so much scrubbed from official rhetoric as reversed outright. This week VIO, Chávez's lobbying outfit in DC, sent out a "Press Advisory" that contends that:

"RCTV is Venezuela's oldest private broadcaster, but also the nation's most often cited for legal infractions. Previous offenses committed under other presidential administrations have led to repeated closures and fines for RCTV."

It's staggering. The same pre-Chavez measures that used to be cited to draw a contrast between Chávez's tolerance and past governments' intolerance are suddenly flipped on their head, reinterpreted and redeployed as a justification for Chávez's move. What can you even say?

Turns out Venezuela has always been at war with Eastasia.

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"The principle of the impartiality of the state"?! Whassat??!

The European Parliament says:

A. whereas media pluralism and freedom of expression are an indispensable pillar of democracy,

B. whereas media freedom is of primary importance for democracy and respect for fundamental freedoms, given its essential role in guaranteeing the free expression of opinions and ideas and in contributing to people's effective participation in democratic processes,

C. whereas the non-renewal of the broadcasting license of the private audiovisual group Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV), which expires on 27 May 2007, may endanger the future of a media organ employing 3000 people,

D. whereas the non-renewal of the license of this audiovisual organ, one of Venezuela's oldest and most important, will deprive a large section of the public of a pluralist source of information, thus undermining the right of the press to criticise the authorities,

E. whereas the President of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, has announced that he was not going to renew the broadcasting licence of one of the country's leading television stations, Radio Caracas Televisión (RCTV) and the license expires on 27 May 2007,

F. whereas Radio Caracas Televisión is, according to the statements of the Venezuelan government, the only media organ affected by this decision concerning the non-renewal of its license,

G. whereas Articles 57 and 58 of Venezuela's Constitution guarantee freedom of expression, communication and information,

H. whereas Venezuela is a signatory to the International Pact on Civil and Political Rights, the International Pact on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the American Convention on Human Rights,

I. whereas RCTV has appealed to the Venezuelan Supreme Court, but the Court has failed to rule within the time-limit laid down in law,

J. whereas the attitudes for which the RCTV management is reproached should provide grounds, should the authorities consider it necessary, for ordinary legal proceedings,

K. whereas this decision was publicly announced at the end of December by the President himself, thus establishing an alarming precedent for freedom of expression in Venezuela,

1. Reminds the Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela of its obligation to respect freedom of expression and opinion and freedom of the press, as it is bound to do under its own Constitution and under the Democratic Charter, the International Pact on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the American Convention on Human Rights, to which Venezuela is a signatory;

2. Calls on the Government of Venezuela, in the name of the principle of the impartiality of the state, to ensure equal treatment under the law for all media, whether privately or publicly owned and irrespective of all political or ideological considerations;

3. Calls for a dialogue between the Venezuelan Government and the country's private media, while deploring the government's total unwillingness to engage in dialogue in general, notably in the case of RCTV;

4. Calls, therefore, on the relevant delegations and committees of Parliament to examine this issue;

5. Instructs its President to forward this resolution to the Council, the Commission, the Secretary-General of the Organisation of American States (OEA), the EUROLAT Assembly, the Mercosur Parliament and the Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.

VIO School of Hackery and Hucksterism

Quico says: So this memo made its way to my inbox...

PRESS ADVISORY / BOOKING MEMO
CONTACT: MEGAN MORRISSEY
MAY 22, 2007
TEL: 202-347-8081 X602 - MEDIA@VENINFO.ORG

VENEZUELA'S RCTV CAUSES CONTROVERSY ON PRESS FREEDOMS: EXPERTS AVAILABLE FOR COMMENT

Next Sunday, May 27th, marks the end of RCTV's right to broadcast on the public airwaves in Venezuela. The decision made by the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) not to renew the broadcasting license of RCTV has caused the owner of the Caracas-based station, Marcel Granier, to take legal action. A member of the opposition camp opposed to President Chavez, Granier controls about 40% of the Venezuelan media through his corporation, 1Broadcasting Company. Though his influence has helped garner support for RCTV, the Venezuelan Supreme Court ruled late last week to uphold the non-renewal decision. RCTV will still be permitted to broadcast via satellite and cable TV as well as the internet, all of which are exempt from NTC guidelines and widely available to the Venezuelan public.

RCTV is Venezuela's oldest private broadcaster, but also the nation's most often cited for legal infractions. Previous offenses committed under other presidential administrations have led to repeated closures and fines for RCTV. Most recently, RCTV supported an illegal coup against President Chavez in 2002 by encouraging citizens through their programming to overthrow their elected president and promoted an oil industry strike later that year.

RCTV's non-renewal has been condemned by U.S.-based non-governmental organizations such as Reporters Without Borders and the Committee to Protect Journalists. The United Nations and the Organization of American States have been approached to make rulings on the issue, but neither of these institutions has passed a resolution condemning Venezuela for the non-renewal of RCTV's license. In fact, OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza has stated that the body "does not have the least intention to issue any condemnation against Venezuela." As the May 27th deadline approaches, a heightened debate is taking place about press freedoms in Venezuela and the role of the media in the political life of the country.

EXPERTS AVAILABLE FOR COMMENT ON VENEZUELA AND THE MEDIA:

DAN HELLINGER, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AT WEBSTER UNIVERSITY.

CHARLES HARDY, AUTHOR AND FORMER CATHOLIC PRIEST

STEVE ELLNER, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AT THE UNIVERSIDAD DEL ORIENTE IN VENEZUELA.

MARK WEISBROT, CO-DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR ECONOMIC AND POLICY RESEARCH (CEPR).

/TO REACH ANY OF THESE EXPERTS, PLEASE CONTACT:/

Megan Morrissey
Media Analyst
Venezuela Information Office
202-347-8081 x602
media@veninfo.org

Verrrrry interesting. Time was when chavistas bragged that, unlike past governments, they had never shut down an oppo broadcaster. That's how JVR usually responded when challenged about press freedom. Remember that?

Now we find out that Chávez's decision to shut down RCTV permanently is legitimate because the station has such a sordid history of past infractions that even before Chávez was around, the government had to shut it down now and then. See how that works?

Here are a few questions we might all want to ask Ms. Morrissey.

• What can we infer about the independence of these experts from the fact that their PR is handled by the Venezuelan government's DC lobbying arm?
• Why precisely doesn't VIO disclose that it is a registered representative of the Venezuelan government in its "Press Advisories"?
• If the private media's position in 2002-2003 is the main reason for the shutdown, why don't they also shut down Televen and Venevisión?
  
• Isn't the phrase "illegal coup" redundant? Or is this to differentiate it from February 4th?
  
• Why should my tax bolivars be spent promoting the views of Mark Weisbrot?
  
• How does a "media analyst" whose job it is to provide PR cover to a government that silences dissenting voices in the media sleep at night? Chamomile? Valeriana? Hospital-grade demerol?
  
• And why should we hang the DJ anyway?!

Got ten minutes to kill!? You have her contact info right there!



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Vivanco gets it

Katy says: Human Rights Watch came out with a statement today blasting the Chávez government for shutting down RCTV, Venezuela's oldest and most critical TV network.

One of the report's strong points is that it doesn't deny the state's "right" to control the airwaves. Rather, it blasts the government for not even pretending to grant RCTV due process of law. As José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, sardonically put it, “the government’s proposal to democratize the airwaves sounds great in theory, but shutting down broadcasters for their political views is not the way to do it.”

HRW notes that "no procedure was established to enable RCTV to present evidence and arguments in its favor; the criteria on which the decision was based were not established clearly beforehand, nor was there any application or selection process allowing RCTV to submit an application for continuation of its concession."

HRW also points out that the justification for shutting down the station came months after the decision was announced, that it ignored the arguments RCTV had made in its own defense, and that so far, neither the network nor any of its representatives have been convicted of any wrongdoing in any court of law.

José Miguel Vivanco and HRW continue to stick up for Venezuelans' rights, speaking out clearly and succinctly on the ongoing deterioration of the country's human rights situation. I strongly recommend re-visiting their report on Chávez's move to pack the Supreme Court. Or you can check out its entire page on Venezuela - it's loaded with good information.

---

Quico notes: Psssh...Vivanco. Another one who didn't get the memo about why you can't judge the revolution "through reference to the procedural mechanics of liberal democracy."

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An (dis)empowerment proxy

Quico says: Empowerment. Chavismo gives the poor the tools they need to gain mastery over their own lives, to realize the possibilities open to them and to seize them. That's the basic reason the reason to support the Bolivarian Revolution. Buxton dixit. And not just her, it's a central PSF theme.

But it's a slippery concept. How could you measure such a thing, how do you certify its extent? Can we imagine something like a reliable proxy, a metric to ensure that something more is going on here than Julia Buxton going to some Community Council meetings and having her ideological erogenous zones stroked?

Here's one possibility: if we can't measure empowerment, maybe we can measure its opposite. Maybe we can find a clear proxy for generalized hopelessness, for despair. Maybe we can measure what happens when the poor lose any confidence in the future, when their communities' sense of possibility withers away.

We have such a proxy already: the murder rate. And it has more than quadrupled in the eight years since Chávez came to power.

How can we reconcile chavismo's narrative of radical empowerment with the 18,381 corpses that turned up in Venezuelan morgues last year? How is it imaginable that communities newly and radically in charge of their own destinies kill each other at four times the rate of their radically disempowered counterparts of 1998? What sense does that make?

The Paradox of Politization

Quico says: Chávez has politicized everything. But chavismo is scared of politics. Chavismo dramatically expands the political domain, injecting politics into every nook and crevice of daily life. From the country's official name to black bean packaging, no sphere seems off limits. At the same time, chavismo fears politics. It goes to great lengths to avoid genuine political exchange, the back-and-forth of genuinely opposed ideas. Chavismo shares the old left's suspicion of bourgeois politics, its antipathy towards the unpredictable cut and thrust of political debate - it likes political ideas safely directed from the center, not running wild beyond their control. For chavismo, politics must be everywhere, but must everywhere be controlled.

Real appreciation for dummies

Quico says: Economists are constantly going on about the bolivar's "overvaluation," about the horrors of "real appreciation," and the way it "erodes competitiveness in the manufacturing sector." This stuff is important, but I imagine it sounds like total gibberish to non-economists.

With Katy newly exercised about Mision Cadivi and Dutch Disease, I thought this was a good time to try to demystify this whole knot of issues. Here's, in the simplest possible terms, is what we're so worked up about:

("widget" is just a non-sense word economists like to use for their examples)












This is what all those rants about "the overvalued bolivar" are about: an overvalued currency is one that has more purchasing power when you trade it for foreign currency than it does in the domestic economy. When a currency is overvalued, rational businessmen will choose to import more and to produce at home less. "Real appreciation" is what happens when domestic inflation goes faster than currency depreciation - the process that makes a currency overvalued. And in a country where inflation is 20% but the rate of currency depreciation - due to exchange controls - is zero, well, it's not exactly hard to figure out that the currency will get overvalued.

Think about it this way: these days, the only thing that isn't getting more expensive in Venezuela is the dollar. Potatoes are getting more expansive, shampoo is getting more expensive, cars are getting more expensive, everything is getting more expensive...but the price of dollars, magically, stays the same! What does that tell you? That Cadivi is subsidizing the people it sells dollars to, and the group that benefits the most from that policy is the group that buys the most dollars: importers.

Ultimately, this is just the Nth twist on a story line economists love: it doesn't matter how high-minded your intentions are, when you start messing around with the market mechanism you create distortions, weirdly warped incentive-structures you probably didn't foresee, and that usually run counter to your policy goals.

Calling yourself a socialist doesn't change that one bit: Cadivi's architects may think they're reining in the savage free market, but in fact what they're doing is reshuffling incentives in a way that depresses employment in Venezuelan factories and fills the pockets of importers.

(Though there's also the possibility that crushing Venezuelan capitalists by making their products uncompetitive with imports was exactly Chávez's game plan all along.)

One last thing: notice that this mechanism only works if Cadivi actually sells you the dollars you need to import goods and then lets you repatriate your profits at the official rate. Now, ask yourself this: what kind of businessman is more likely to have his Cadivi requests approved, one who goes along and gets along with the revolution, or one who expresses dissent? The Cisneros of the world or the Graniers of the world?

Enforced consent, thine homes are many...

Hey Hugo, spare a thought for this kid

Katy says: Blogging is an interesting hobby. Sometimes it's hard to get worked about about anything in particular, but other times, some new development causes such indignation that posts just burst out of you like a geyser. This post is a geyser.

During the course of my day-job, I have worked on the issue of the ongoing humanitarian crises in Sudan. For years, the government there has used its oil wealth to carry out genocide against its own people. The oligarchs in Khartoum, moved by a sick distortion of Islam, are waging Jihad against their African & Christian country-men and -women, carrying out mass displacements and massacring hundreds of thousands in Southern Sudan and, more recently, in Darfour. These atrocities have been documented in human rights reports from reputed organizations such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.

While the international community shuns the government in Sudan and desperately finds a way to put a stop to the series of war crimes being committed in Darfour, our government puts out a press release announcing the visit of Sudan's Minister of Energy as part of a move to increase ties with that nation.

The tone of the press release makes it sound like we're talking about a member of Iceland's cabinet instead of a war criminal. For those of you who don't speak Spanish, it says the visit is to increase relations related to energy, and that the minister is scheduled to meet the President of PDVSA, among other high-ranking government officials. The "distinguished visitor" will also give a talk titled "The Republic of Sudan and its participation in the international system", sponsored by one of Chavez's under-secretaries of foreign affairs, Mr. Abdelbassit Badawi Ali El- Sanosi (I kid you not, that is his name).

The last paragraph is a keeper. It says that since diplomatic relations were established in 2005, ties between Venezuela and Sudan have been "cordial" and "friendly," and that this led to both countries coinciding on many opinions in international forums in 2006. I suspect those opinions had something to do with the alleged "sovereign" rights of states to do whatever they please inside their borders.

While I envision this madman parading around my country as a "distinguished visitor," the memories of the dozens of refugees I have met in my work come to mind. I think of the ones who told me of their villages being indiscriminately bombed by their government. I think of the ones who fled to the jungle, surviving for weeks on water lillies and praying not to be eaten by leopards at night. I think of the maimed, the orphaned and the widowed, and I think of the Chinese, Canadian, Malaysian, Indian and now, Venezuelan oil companies that made - or stand to make - a buck out of all this mayhem.

The boy in the picture accompanying this post is one of the thousands of children whose lives have been devastated by the genocidal acts of this government that Chávez is so willing to engage. I wish I didn't have to show this picture, but we spend way too much time hiding the ugly side-effects of what passes as normal diplomacy. So here's hoping that somewhere, someone within the Chávez administration develops a moral compass, and asks the distinguished Minister what they plan to do about the children of Darfour.

XXIst Century Dutch disease

Katy says: The latest GDP growth figures from the Venezuelan Central Bank are out , and they seem to confirm what is quickly becoming the conventional wisdom on the Venezuelan economy: the current economic boom in Venezuela is based on the government spending cash like there's no tomorrow, and it can't last.

Economists have a term for the distortions this causes: Dutch disease.

This "malady" occurs in countries where there is a significant boom in a sector, usually linked to a sudden increase in the price of a natural resource. The country becomes awash in cash, and this causes an appreciation of the currency - in other words, dollars become very cheap (see Venezuela's official exchange rate).

The easy cash and cheap dollars stimulate both imports and the consumption of non-tradeable goods. In other words, people use their available cash to spend on non-tradeables such as housing, cars, services and the like. Ultimately, it is called a "disease" because this phenomenon undermines the manufacturing and export sector ("tradeables") that are the basis of future growth and push modern economies to become more productive and wealthy (see, e.g., Taiwan).

What are the signs that Venezuela is now suffering from Dutch disease? The sectors that grew the most in the last quarter were commerce, transportation, communications, construction and financial intermediation. In other words, Venezuelans are using all their cash to go shopping, buy more houses, take more bus trips, make more phone calls and increase their credit card debt. They are also spending more on importing stuff: imports grew an astonishing 46.9% in the last year.

Not surprisingly, the Balance of Payments (the difference between the dollars coming into the economy and the dollars going out of it) is running a deficit of US$5.1 billion, shocking for a country undergoing an export boom.

What about manufacturing? Well, it's up, but not by much, and its rate of increase is lower than the average for the economy. In other words, Venezuelans are not using its current boom to import capital, develop technology or become competitive in other sectors. They are using it to buy consumption goods and services and purchase dollars for safekeeping overseas.

These figures only reinforce the idea that the current trend is unsustainable, and that the economy's landing is going to be a hard one.

Schemelfreude

Quico says: According to the latest Hinterlaces poll, two out of three Venezuelans disagree with the proposal for indefinite re-election, and four out of five (including a majority of chavistas) don't want oppo broadcaster RCTV shut down.

"The president's case for socialism doesn't receive the backing of the majority," Hinterlaces big cheese Oscar Schemel says, "instead, the term is associated with social programs and solidarity, rather than a new social and economic order."

Chávez's positive job performance rating is now on 40% - down 9 points since November. An eye-popping 3 out of 10 of the people who voted for him last December wish they hadn't.

"More than a socialist citizens, what we see arising is a liberal citizen."

Listen to Schemel's spiel on my spiffy new podcast player:

Getting out while you can

Katy says: "I think what everyone is hoping is that they'll get expropriated." Manuel's words surprised me, to say the least.

"Why would you say that?" I ask.

He sighs. "Katy, the way things are going here, it's really the best thing that can happen to your business," he says. "When they expropriate you, the government pays for your company in hard cash, and at a price that is probably higher than anything you'll be able to get a year or two from now, when the economy is fully socialized."

Manuel is a close friend of mine from college. After graduating, he took his hard-earned Venezuelan degree and got into an elite MBA program in the US. He went back home a few years ago and now manages a mid-sized company that manufactures health-care products.

To talk to him these days is to stare into a deep well of frustration. After all those years studying strategy, finance, marketing and things of the sort, he realizes his job is not so much to manage the company as to implement the decisions the government makes.

"The government decides at what price I can sell my products, who competes with me, how much my raw materials cost," he explained. "I can only buy raw materials when they say, at the price they say. They decide how many people I can have working on my factory floor, and what I can pay them. And all of this is done at their whim, you don't even get to have any input into their decisions."

He sounds like he's at his wit's end.

"Actually," he goes on, "if you don't get expropriated your second best option is to move all your production overseas and just import finished goods. After all, the government lets you import stuff at the official exchange rate, and once you import, inflation means the stuff you sell fetches a higher price each month. Then, at the end of the year, the government lets you repatriate your earnings at the same exchange rate you used to import. So if you're an importer, they basically subsidize your profits! It's a steal."

He pauses.

"It's just too frustrating to work like this."

In his words, you can gauge the immediate dangers facing the Venezuelan economy. Nobody can deny that the past few years, Venezuela has been growing at a frenetic pace. But can it last?

Not if the mood around the private sector mirrors Manuel's. And all signs show that, like him, the business community is casting around frantically for ways to salvage some capital as they get out.

The economy is awash in petro-dollars, but the parallel exchange rate has shot up and foreign reserves have begun to dwindle. Just today, the International Energy Agency is reporting that oil production fell once again. And oil prices don't seem to be going up anytime soon.

What does that tell you? That Chavez's drive for full nationalization of the economy has the business community beyond jittery, and that's starting to show in the national accounts. Businesses are operating at full capacity, but with the threat of nationalization hanging over them and all those heavy-handed controls, few are willing to invest to expand. In fact, Venezuela was one of the few Latin American countries to have had negative foreign direct investment last year, according to ECLAC.

All the signs point to capital flight. Until relatively recently, businesses seemed happy to use their subsidized dollars to buy imported goods or raw materials to satisfy swelling demand. But now, as inflation eats away the margins for price-controlled products, demand is not being satisfied - scarcity is rampant, with basic food stuffs like grain, beef, chicken, eggs, black beans and cooking oil missing from the shelves. This is not limited to East-side Caracas grocery stores - a friend of mine tells me that Mercal's market share has fallen dramatically and is now at the level it was in 2003.

That tells you that, even with the enormous inflow of petro-dollars, the government just doesn't have enough to import all the goods people want to buy and buy up private industry and supply the demand caused by capital flight. Which suggests we will see a devaluation of the currency soon, possibly before the year is done. Unless the Gods of the oil market smile on Chávez again, the government is going to have no choice but to turn the same number of dollars into more bolivars just to make ends meet on its own budget.

This will inevitably cause prices to go up even more quickly (inflation is already flirting with the 20% mark, and rising, in spite of price controls). Depending on what happens to the price of oil - and we know how unpredictable that is - it's not far-fetched to think that a year from now, Venezuela could be on the brink of recession.

As another friend of mine put it yesterday, the nub of it is that "it's not enough for oil prices to stabilize, Chavez needs constantly growing oil revenues just to make ends meet." And if oil prices fall, well, let's just say it won't take a big drop for the bottom to fall out. After all, when we had our first capital-flight-induced devaluation back on Black Friday, back in 1983, the price of oil was a comfortably high $30 per barrel.

Let's just hope all the Manuels out there get safely expropriated before the government runs out of cash.