A photographer captures Venezuela's descent

Juan Cristóbal says: - The New York Times has an excellent review of the new book of photography, "Capitolio," by Christopher Anderson. The images are haunting, and the review itself is not to be missed.

Kudos to the great Lucía for finding this.

Different fortunes of two chavistas

Juan Cristóbal says: - Few things thrill Hugo Chávez more than seeing a leftist win an election. Whether it's in El Salvador, Ecuador, Bolivia or Spain, he can't help gushing over any victory for his anti-imperialist "side."

And can you blame him? When your international status is that of a quasi-pariah and you have to resort to making deals with these people, well, you too would be thrilled at any chance you get of "expanding" your list of allies. Never mind the fact that his new "allies" are, more often than not, sensible politicians. For Chávez, any win counts.

But does it?

In the next few months, both Uruguay and Chile will hold Presidential elections. Uruguay is currently headed by the sensible leftist President Tabaré Vasquez. Term limits prevent him from running again and cashing on his considerable popularity, which is why I wasn't surprised when I heard the government's candidate was the favorite. But when I heard he was a former guerrilla fighter, my eyebrows rose.

And yet, reading this interview, I can understand why he's leading the polls. Uruguayans are, if anything, a serious people, not prone to fall for the showmanship, anti-business, anti-imperialist rhetoric that bellows from Chávez's mouth. (Well, sometimes they're not so serious.)

Mujica presents himself well here. He is an unassuming man of the people, that's for sure, and his leftist credentials, gained by fourteen years in prison, are impeccable.

But he is quick to say that his will not be a government where the state gobbles everything up. He says he needs businessmen to create jobs, and shies away from radical proposals like a "Constitutional Assembly" that has been used by Chávez, Correa and Morales to concentrate power. In a very explicit way, he comes across as a Lula-like figure. And at 74 years of age, I wouldn't expect him to change the Constitution so he can stay in power.

When the topic turns to Chávez, Mujica's common sense and wit shine through. He criticizes Chávez for talking too much, but recognizes that Uruguayans like the fact that Chávez sends them cheap oil. Still, that doesn't prevent him from being honest, like when he recalls telling Chávez that he's not building socialism, but rather an enormous bureaucracy that will gobble him up.

A pawn of chavismo, he is not.

In Chile, chavismo's luck is taking a turn for the worse. The young, dynamic "Trojan horse" candidate Marco Enríquez-Ominami has been rising in the polls. Having lived in Chile for five years, I've been following him for a while and I can honestly say he is a hard-core chavista - no "Lula-type," "chavismo-light" analogies are appropriate here. This is, after all, a guy that was invited by the CNE to observe elections. But don't take my words for it - take his.

Sure, he is trying to shy away from this, a must in a country where Chávez is slightly less popular than getting food poisoning from homemade mayonnaise, a surprisingly frequent occurrence in Chile. So Enríquez-Ominami, in his best I'm-a-good-boy-let-me-move-to-the-center voice, is trying to present himself as a modern, moderate leftist.

Although he was and is a long shot to win, for a while I thought his shtick would work and Chileans would fall for it to some extent. My fear was that a strong showing in this election would lay the groundwork for a win in a future one. And then...

Out of the blue comes an interview he gave in 2003, where he said that, for him, being Chilean "was a tragedy," and that he would have preferred to be an Italian. His lame attempts at damage control were, perhaps, even worse. After this, his candidacy, and perhaps his entire political future, are effectively dead.

Chavismo will boast, and they will win more elections in the future. But don't buy the hype. Both Uruguayans and Chileans are going to be fine.

The view from your window: Lusaka

Lusaka, Zambia. 2:00PM.

Send us the View from Your Window: caracaschronicles at fastmail dot fm, or nageljuan at gmail dot com.

Please ensure the window frame is visible, and tell us the place and time the picture was taken. And don't try to "pretty it up" - just show us what you see when you look up from the seat where you typically read the blog. Files should be no bigger than 400 KB.

Finding the link

Juan Cristóbal says: - "Mi Comandante, I would like you to meet my friend Michael Moore..."

The View from your Window: Berlin

Ernst Reuter Platz, Berlin, Germany - 10:00 A.M.

Send us the View from Your Window: caracaschronicles at fastmail dot fm, or nageljuan at gmail dot com.

Please ensure the window frame is visible, and tell us the place and time the picture was taken. And don't try to "pretty it up" - just show us what you see when you look up from the seat where you typically read the blog. Files should be no bigger than 400 KB.

Elite Permutations

Quico says: Fly into Venezuela and you come face-to-face with the single most important element reshaping Venezuelan society literally as soon as you've entered the country.

I'm not talking about the giant posters of Chávez you see in Maiquetía's baggage claim area. I'm talking about the the thing that happens the moment you leave customs, cross that symbolic portal into the country as such: you find yourself face-to-face with some hustler saying "bolivars? change dollars...good rate..."

In a way, it's a uniquely honest introduction. That guy at the airport is the tip of a massive socio-economic iceberg. Because currency arbitrage is much more than just one aspect of the chavista model of political economy: it's its heart and soul.

The distortions introduced by Venezuela's permuta-dependent, de-facto dual currency exchange system are remaking Venezuelan society from the ground up. Until you've grasped its dynamics, you've grasped nothing of the way the chavista stranglehold on Venezuelan society actually operates.

And yet even as I'm writing it I realize that that phrase - "permuta-dependent, de-facto dual currency exchange system" - is obtuse enough, impenetrably technical enough to send most sane people's interest's waning.

And that, in a way, is why it works: in the permuta system, we have a virtuoso feat of misdirection. While we all focus on what the government is doing with the one hand, it's off remaking society with the other.

Because, make no mistake about it: just beneath the surface, just beyond the heavily propagandized mountains of socialist paja, the government really is upending Venezuelan society. It's just that the reinvention is happening by stealth, through a mechanism too obscure for most observers to quite grasp, let alone pay any attention to.

When you get past the economist's mumbo-jumbo, the permuta system is the vehicle for a 21st century montonera, a mechanism for replacing one elite with another.

The dual-rate exchange market is, at its nub, an instrument of financial alchemy, a way of turning $1 into $3 instantaneously, with no risk, but only so long as you have the right connections.

Administrative permission from Cadivi is your golden ticket to this incalculable manguangua. Needless to say, if you can create $3 out of $1, you can create $9 out of $3, and $27 out of $9. Which amounts to saying that, in Venezuela, the amount of the nation's oil rents you can appropriate, risk free, is entirely dependent on your connections.

The dual exchange system's genius lays in the way it makes participation in the go-go world of risk-free bolibourgeois oil rent appropriation entirely dependent on your political loyalty. With control over a key part of the arbitrage mechanism, the government keeps a tight rein on who is able to participate in the windfall and who is not.

In this way, the Permuta System allows the real agenda of chavismo to be achieved: not the hopeful bla-bla-bla about the abolition of the class structure, but rather the recycling of elites. It's a process as old as Venezuelan nationhood, repeated a dozen times in the 19th century and another four times since Juan Vicente Gómez's death three-quarters of a century ago.

Any number of otherwise incomprehensible puzzles start to make sense when you understand the Permuta System's absolute centrality to Venezuela's political economy these days. Everything from the fact that a batido de guanábana costs $4.50 in an arepera if you put it on a foreign credit card but just $1.50 if you buy it like a sane person, to the fact that Wilmer Ruperti sails around in a vintage yacht that once belonged to Henry Ford.

International Capital's softly-softly approach to the Chávez regime only makes sense when you realize that any number of multinational firms have literally billions of dollars in profits whose value depends entirely on Cadivi's willingness to honor their official dollar requests.

Witness this Wall Street Journal article on Telefónica of Spain's perilous position with regard to its profits from Movistar's Venezuelan operation: whether Telefónica walks away with over $2 billion in profits from its Venezuelan operations since 2006, or with a third of that depends entirely on a single administrative decision in the hands of a handful of bureaucrats and advisors close to president Chávez. Can we really believe that the Spanish government's benevolent line towards the Venezuelan regime is uninfluenced by that?

And the supposedly "technical" policy debate inside the government on what to do with the exchange rate can be reinterpreted as a fight over who will end up appropriating the nearly limitless arbitrage opportunities arising from dual exchange rates: whether it will be Nelson Merentes' cronies inside BCV (who, unsurprisingly, are pushing for the Bank to adopt a daily auction of dollars that would leave their hands right next to the till), Alí Rodríguez's at Finance (who want rather a "tax" on foreign exchange transactions whose proceeds would end up - you guessed it - in the Finance Ministry's hands) or Rafael Ramírez's syndicate at PDVSA, which wants to keep the current system because the status quo leaves massive sums of cash flowing from PDVSA directly to the Permuta market, allowing them to appropriate part of the arbitrage margin.

Which faction succeeds is of mostly academic interest to outsiders, because each is locked in a bitter battle with the others over control of a natural resource rent stream whose existence is entirely independent of their efforts to control it. What we have, in other words, is a near-dictionary definition of rent-seeking (rentismo): an economic system where the prevailing incentive structure drives people to focus their efforts on activities that create no value for society as a whole.

The faction that exploits the rent-seeking opportunities around them most effectively will, inevitably, become the country's new economic elite. Venezuela will inevitably become the property of people well-connected enough to persuade Cadivi to trade them $20,000 for Bs.43,000, and then manage to use those $20,000 to buy a car in the US, ship it back here, and sell it for Bs.70,000. Or to those who manage to do the same with medicines, or clothes, or toothpaste, or any other product. The country is being turfed out to the Arbitrageurs.

The skills needed to ride this particular gravy train - politicking, bureaucratic empire-building, scheming and intriguing - are skills that do precisely nothing to advance the welfare of Venezuelan society as a whole. This is the system Chávez has reinvented. This is the receptacle into which all that drool pouring out of Oliver Stone's slack jaw must eventually be collected. This is the revolution, people. The rest is bread and circus.

The View from Your Window: Quito

Quito, Ecuador - 4:16 p.m.

Send us the View from Your Window: caracaschronicles at fastmail dot fm

Please ensure the window frame is visible, and tell us the place and time the picture was taken. And don't try to "pretty it up" - just show us what you see when you look up from the seat where you typically read the blog. Files should be no bigger than 400 KB.

IMF ... WTF?

Juan Cristóbal says: - Ridiculous deadlines are preventing us from posting more regularly, but ridiculous headlines bring us back. So, we couldn't pass up the delicious irony of this little nugget: the IMF has apparently loaned $3.5 billion to the Central Bank of Venezuela. Yes, that's billions of dollars, not roubles.

Two years ago, Hugo Chávez announced he was pulling Venezuela from the IMF and the World Bank. Lucky for him, he never made good on his threat, 'cause now it looks like he's getting a quickie loan.

I just can't get my head around this one: the IMF bailing out Hugo Chávez. I could go on and on about how Chávez has railed against the "destabilizing" role of the IMF, but suffice it to say that if there's a Museum of Hypocrisy somewhere, they should put this in the Chávez Wing. Why just today, Finance Minister Alí Rodríguez is proudly announcing that Venezuela is making progress in its quest for "independence" from the IMF and the World Bank, which impose "outrageous" conditions in exchange for help. He should know!

So far, the Wall Street Journal, on a feed from Dow Jones, is the only news organization carrying this. If this is confirmed to be true, kudos to Jose Guerra for blowing the whistle on it.

The View from Your Window: PEI

Prince Edward Island, Canada - 10:00 a.m.

Send us the View from Your Window: caracaschronicles at fastmail dot fm

Please ensure the window frame is visible, and tell us the place and time the picture was taken. And don't try to "pretty it up" - just show us what you see when you look up from the seat where you typically read the blog. Files should be no bigger than 400 KB.

Occam's Razor and the Opposition to LOE

Quico says: The Education Ministry's byzantine conspiracy theories about the real reasons the opposition is upset at the new Framework Law on Education would be easier to swallow if it wasn't for the mountains evidence hiding in plain sight to explain why people are jittery about the government's handling of schools. Rather than carp on emails that are plain old made up, shouldn't MinPoPoEdu have a look at this press release, put out by the government's own press agency, touting president Chávez's plan to distribute El Correo del Orinoco to every school in the country?

Lets get it straight: the newly relaunched Correo del Orinoco is journalism in the best tradition of Granma, Juventud Rebelde and the old-style Pravda: a governing party mouthpiece dedicated almost entirely to aggressively peddling chavista propaganda.

It's not just that Chávez want to use state funds to distribute political propaganda to the nation's school children - a move that's illegal on several counts, including the same type of misuse of public monies that used to get Venezuelan presidents removed from office - it's that he actually brags about it in public.

Estimadísimos señores del MinPoPoEdu, trust us, there really is no reason to go searching for the fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth legs on this particular cat.

The reason LOE alarms us is posted on ABN's website.

The View from Your Window: New York

New York, NY - 5:28 p.m.

Send us the View from Your Window: caracaschronicles at fastmail dot fm

Please ensure the window frame is visible, and tell us the place and time the picture was taken. And don't try to "pretty it up" - just show us what you see when you look up from the seat where you typically read the blog. Files should be no bigger than 400 KB.

The View from Your Window: Nairobi

Nairobi, Kenya - 12:24 p.m.

Send us the View from Your Window: caracaschronicles at fastmail dot fm

Please ensure the window frame is visible, and tell us the place and time the picture was taken. And don't try to "pretty it up" - just show us what you see when you look up from the seat where you typically read the blog. Files should be no bigger than 400 KB.

The View from Your Window: Klepp

Klepp, Norway - 4:58 p.m.

Send us the View from Your Window: caracaschronicles at fastmail dot fm

Please ensure the window frame is visible, and tell us the place and time the picture was taken. And don't try to "pretty it up" - just show us what you see when you look up from the seat where you typically read the blog. Files should be no bigger than 400 KB.

Habermasochism

Quico says: Today, chavismo made a great leap forward in answering that age old question - is it possible for someone who isn't dead yet to roll in his grave?

Witness the brain-twisting communiqué in page 7 of today's Ultimas Noticias (unfortunately, not available online) which defends the new Framework Law on Education with reference to that old Caracas Chronicles favorite, Jurgen Habermas's theory of communicative action.

In the communiqué, the Education Ministry cites an appallingly reactionary rant it attributes to Cardinal Urosa Sabino to slam those who oppose the new Education Law as two-faced, lying, cheating oligarchs determined to keep the poor down. After citing Habermas's theory of the ideal speech situation, MinPoPoEdu goes through a series of documents nobody in the opposition recognizes on its way to condemning all who disagree with LOE as reactionaries.

In effect, the communiqué flatly refuses to engage the opposition's actual arguments against the LOE, tearing down instead a fantasy strawman argument whose authorship the cardinal has strenuously denied...and all that, in the name of ideal speech!

Lets take a minute here to take the full measure of the obsenity involved in this.

Habermas, for those of you who may be a bit rusty on this sort of thing, made his name with a theory of the social and communicative preconditions for democratic decision-making. Championing the idea that the tenor of the society-wide debate that leads up to a public policy decision is the truest test of that decisions democratic credentials, Habermas argued that it's how we talk about our common decisions that makes those decisions democratic.

In the "ideal speech situation" - the near-platonic ideal we are meant to strive for - citizens come together as equals to engage one another's views in good faith, attempting to act collaboratively to build a common understanding on the subject up for debate.

For Habermas, rationality is communicative and iterative: it is that which ensues when you put forward a view, I accept it as having been put forward in good faith and, in turn, I put forward my objections to it in good faith. That gives you the chance you consider my objections, also in good faith, and seek to modify your original position in light of them. We keep doing that, working together for as long as it takes to craft a shared understanding of the issue that we started with.

For Habermas, political decisions are democratic to the extent that the debate that leads to them approaches that ideal vision. From this point of view, no decision is perfectly democratic, but some decision-making processes are certainly more democratic than others.

The Education Ministry, somehow, sets out to champion communicative rationality by refusing, as a matter of principle, to engage any of the arguments its opponents actually put forward and militantly refusing to accord the opposition even the right to decide which views are its own.

Surely, a new record is being set here for argumntative chicanery. The same communiqué that echoes Habermas's rejection of "communicative pathologies" like gossip, unfounded allegations, clichés and empty adjectives launches into a gossip-based storm of unfounded allegations, stripping bare the store of clichés in calling Urosa Sabino's "opinions" a system of "the most rancid and exclusionist classism" before descending into pure paranoia by refuting an anonymous pamphlet circulating online as the one true voice representing the opposition's rejection of LOE.

Chavismo's refusal to engage the actual arguments of those who oppose it is already legendary. But trotting out Habermas in defense of that refusal...that's just beyond. Just beyond...

The View from your Window: North Carolina

Alamance County, North Carolina, USA. 9AM.

Send us the View from Your Window: caracaschronicles at fastmail dot fm , or nageljuan at gmail dot com .

Please ensure the window frame is visible, and tell us the place and time the picture was taken. And don't try to "pretty it up" - just show us what you see when you look up from the seat where you typically read the blog. Files should be no bigger than 400 KB.

The Link Between Iran and Venezuela -- A Crisis in the Making?

Quico says: One of the big, underlying questions in the Chávez era has always been whether Chávez will maintain his status as low-level annoyance to the US or graduate up to the next level: actual geostrategic threat. The reality is that, geostrategically, Chávez will always remain a third-tier concern for the US, unless ... he attaches himself to a pre-existing top-tier threat.

There are, as far as I can tell, only three geostrategic challenges that count as top-tier concerns for the US right now: Al Qaeda, North Korea and Iran. This piece makes it amply clear which of those Chávez is placing his chips on.

Reprinted from the LatAmHeraldTrib.

By Robert M. Morgenthau

I would like to thank the Brookings Institute for inviting me to speak today. The issues I will discuss with all of you are the blossoming relationship between what might seem unlikely bedfellows…. the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, whether we have a national security crisis looming on the horizon, and whether our national security and law enforcement communities are sufficiently focused on this threat.

Iran and Venezuela are beyond the courting phase. We know they are creating a cozy financial, political, and military partnership, and that both countries have strong ties to Hezbollah and Hamas. Now is the time for policies and actions in order to ensure that the partnership produces no poisonous fruit.


I. Iran and Venezuela In Bed Together

The diplomatic ties between Iran and Venezuela go back almost fifty years and until recently amounted to little more than the routine exchange of diplomats. With the election of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in 2005 the relationship dramatically changed. Today I believe it is fair to say they have created a flourishing partnership rooted in a shared anti-American rhetoric and policy.

As early as 2006, public signs of their alliance began to emerge. It was in this year that Venezuela joined Cuba and Syria as the only nations to vote against a U.N. Atomic Energy Agency resolution to report Iran to the Security Council over its failures to abide U.N. sanctions to curtail its nuclear program. In 2007, during a Chavez state-visit to Tehran, the two nations declared an “axis of unity” against the United States. Additionally in the diplomatic arena, Ahmadinejad has made recent visits to Latin America, and Chavez has personally helped initiate relationships between Iran and Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Ecuador.

In June, while protesters lined the streets of Tehran demonstrating for democracy and basic political rights following the substantial allegations of fraud in the re-election of Ahmadinejad, Chavez publicly offered him support. As the regime cracked down on political dissent, jailing, torturing and killing protesters, Venezuela stood with the Iranian hard-liners.

Iranian investments inside of Venezuela are on the rise and ambitions of nuclear cooperation between the States are no secret.

Scores of Memoranda of Understanding between the two Nations have been signed in recent years relating to:

• joint technology development
• military cooperation
• banking and finance
• cooperation with oil and gas exploration and refining
• mineral exploration
• agricultural research

In April 2008, Venezuela and Iran entered into a Memorandum of Understanding pledging full military support and cooperation. It has been reported that since 2006 Iranian military advisors have been embedded with Venezuelan troops. Asymmetric warfare, taught to members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Hezbollah and Hamas, has replaced U.S. Army field manuals as the standard Venezuelan military doctrine.

According to a report published in December 2008 by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Venezuela has an estimated 50,000 tons of un-mined uranium. In the area of mineral exploration there is speculation that Venezuela could be mining uranium for Iran.

On the financial front, in January 2008, the Iranians opened International Development Bank in Caracas under the Spanish name Banco Internacional de Desarrollo C.A. (BID), an independent subsidiary of Export Development Bank of Iran (EDBI). In October 2008, The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed economic sanctions against these two Iranian banks – BID and EDBI – for providing or attempting to provide financial services to Iran’s Ministry of Defense and its Armed Forces Logistics, the two Iranian military entities tasked with advancing Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

My office has learned that over the past three years, a number of Iranian-owned and controlled factories have sprung up in remote and undeveloped parts of Venezuela. These factories have emerged in small towns in interior Venezuela with a lack of basic infrastructure and simple amenities like restaurants and groceries. The lack of infrastructure is offset by what experts believe to be ideal geographic locations for the illicit production of weapons.

Evidence of the type of activity conducted inside the factories is limited. But given their location and secretive nature we should be concerned that illegal activity might be taking place. That is so, especially in light of an incident in December 2008, in which Turkish authorities detained an Iranian vessel bound for Venezuela after discovering lab equipment capable of producing explosives packed inside 22 containers marked “tractor parts.” The containers also allegedly contained barrels labeled with “danger” signs. I think it is safe to assume that this was a lucky catch and that most often shipments of this kind reach their destination in Venezuela.

And let there be no doubt that Hugo Chavez leads not only a corrupt government but one staffed by terrorist sympathizers. The government has strong ties to narco-trafficking and money laundering, and reportedly plays an active role in the transshipment of narcotics and the laundering of narcotics proceeds in exchange for payments to corrupt government officials.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently published a study requested by Senator Richard Lugar examining the issue of illicit drugs transiting Venezuela. The study reported a high level of corruption within the government, military, and law enforcement that has enabled Venezuela to become a major transshipment route for trafficking cocaine out of Colombia. Intelligence gathered by my office strongly supports the conclusion that Hezbollah supporters in South America are engaged in the trafficking of narcotics. The GAO study also confirms allegations of Venezuelan support for FARC, the Colombian terrorist insurgency group which finances its operations through narcotics trafficking, extortion and kidnapping.

In July of this year, in a raid on a FARC training camp, Colombian military operatives recovered Swedish-made anti-tank rocket launchers sold to Venezuela in the 1980s. Sweden believes the recovery demonstrates a violation of the end-user agreement by Venezuela, given that the Swedish manufacturer was never authorized to sell arms to Colombia. Venezuelan Interior Minister Tareck El Aissami, a Venezuelan of Syrian origin, lamely called the allegations a “media show,” that is “…part of a campaign against our people, our government and our institutions.”But Venezuela’s link to terrorist organizations does not stop with FARC. Particularly alarming, within the ranks of Chavez’s corrupt government lie supporters of Hezbollah.

In fact, Mr. El Aissami, who at one time headed Onidex, the Venezuelan passport and naturalization agency inside the interior ministry, is suspected of having issued passports to members of Hamas and Hezbollah. There are also allegations that El Aissami and others affiliated with Hezbollah are in charge of recruiting young Venezuelan Arabs who are then trained in Hezbollah camps in Southern Lebanon. Onidex is now headed by a very close friend of El Aissami; the two attended the same university and the friend is also reported to have ties to Hezbollah.

In June 2008, a Venezuelan national of Lebanese origin, Ghazi Nasr al Din, was added to the OFAC list of specially designated global terrorists and barred from accessing U.S. financial institutions and the U.S. banking system. He’s a Venezuelan-based Hezbollah supporter who served in the Venezuelan Embassy in Syria, and was later appointed to the Venezuelan Embassy in Lebanon where we believe he currently serves as the Embassy’s Director of Political Aspects.


The relationship we are discussing today was underscored over the past few days during Chavez’s visit to the Middle East. This past weekend, after meeting with Ahmadinejad in Tehran, both leaders reiterated their pledge to stand up to imperialist nations. Ahmadinejad said, “expansion of Tehran-Caracas relations is necessary given their common interests, friends and foes.” Without providing details, Chavez was quoted as saying that with Iran’s help he plans to build a “nuclear village” in Venezuela. Supporting Iran’s claims that its nuclear ambitions are for peaceful purposes, Chavez stated, “there is not a single proof that Iran is building a… nuclear bomb.” The matters I am about to discuss belie that claim.

II. Ties to Venezuela Make Iran More Dangerous

In the past year my Office has publicly announced two investigations that highlight the efforts of Iran to procure weapons materials despite U.S. and international economic sanctions designed to prevent Iran from developing long-range missile capacity and nuclear technology for military purposes. Our efforts uncovered a pervasive system of deceitful and fraudulent practices employed by Iranian entities to move money all over the world without detection, including through banks located in the jurisdiction I am responsible for protecting – Manhattan. Why did Iran go to these lengths? I believe the answer is simple: In order to pay for materials necessary to develop nuclear weapons, long-range missiles, and road-side bombs.


I believe the nature of Iran’s relationship with Venezuela makes for a more dangerous Iran. The Iranians, calculating and clever in their diplomatic relations, have found the perfect ally in Venezuela. Venezuela has an established financial system that, with Chavez’s help, can be exploited to avoid economic sanctions. As well, its geographic location is ideal for building and storing weapons of mass destruction far away from Middle Eastern states threatened by Iran’s ambition and from the eyes of the international community.

To demonstrate the Iranian regime’s commitment to advancing its nuclear ambitions and long-range missile capacity, I would like briefly to describe the cases brought by my office. The tactics used in these cases are instructive and should send signals to law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and military commands throughout the world about the style and level of deception the Iranian’s employ to advance their interests. This is particularly important in examining the threats posed by the deepening ties between Ahmadinejad and Chavez.

In January of this year my office announced a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.K. bank, Lloyds TSB. From 2001 – 2004, Lloyds, on behalf of Iranian banks and their customers, engaged in a practice known as “stripping,” in which the bank intentionally participated in a systematic process of altering wire transfer information to hide the identity of its clients. This process allowed the illegal transfer of more than $300 million of Iranian cash despite economic sanctions prohibiting Iranian access to the U.S. financial system. We currently have investigations into similar misconduct by other banks.

In April of this year we announced the indictment of company called Limmt, and its manager, Li Fang Wei, a rogue provider of metal alloys and minerals to the global market. Limmt’s business included selling high strength metals and sophisticated military materials, many of which are banned from export to Iran under international agreements. Limmt was also banned by OFAC from engaging in transactions with or through the U.S. financial system for its role in the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to Iran.

Our investigation revealed that despite sanctions, Li Fang Wei and Limmt used aliases and shell companies to deceive banks into processing payments related to the shipment of banned missile, nuclear and so-called “dual use” materials to subsidiary organizations of the Iranian Defense Industries Organization. Please note the first version of this statement refers only to U.S. banks. In fact, banned materials were generally purchased in Euros and processed through European banks.

Based on information developed by my office, the Iranians with the help of Venezuela are now engaged in similar economic and proliferation sanctions-busting schemes.

For years I have stressed the importance of transparency in financial transactions. In the realm of preventing money laundering and terror financing, the concept of “know your customer” is the starting point in any scheme designed to detect suspicious transactions. For wire transfers denominated in U.S. dollars, the transactions almost always clear through correspondent accounts in the United States, and usually at banks based in Manhattan. Ideally, Manhattan banks have a clear picture of the sender and beneficiary of the funds, even in cross-border transactions.

Venezuela is not currently the subject of a U.S. or international economic sanctions program that places significant restrictions on the ability of Venezuelan banks to conduct business with the United States, including accessing U.S. banks to clear international U.S. dollar transactions. Presently, banks in the U.S. processing wire transfers from Venezuelan banks rely almost exclusively on the Venezuelan bank to ensure the funds are being transferred for legitimate purposes. I have little faith that this is effectively being done, and the Iranians, aware of this vulnerability, appear to be taking advantage of it.

The ostensible reason the Iranian-owned bank Banco Internacional de Desarrollo (BID) was opened in Caracas was to expand economic ties with Venezuela. Our sources and experiences lead me to suspect an ulterior motive. A foothold into the Venezuelan banking system is a perfect “sanctions-busting” method – the main motivator for Iran in its banking relationship with Venezuela. Despite being designated by OFAC we believe that BID has several correspondent banking relationships with both Venezuelan banks and banks in Panama, a nation with a long-standing reputation as a money laundering safe-haven.

This scheme is known as “nesting.” Nested accounts occur when a foreign financial institution gains access to the U.S. financial system by operating through a U.S. correspondent account belonging to another foreign financial institution. For example, BID who is prohibited from establishing a relationship with a U.S. bank could instead establish a relationship with a Venezuelan or Panamanian bank that has a relationship with a U.S. bank. If the U.S. bank is unaware that its foreign correspondent financial institution customer is providing such access to a sanctioned third-party foreign financial institution, this third-party financial institution can effectively gain anonymous access to the U.S. financial system.

In Venezuela, Ahmadinejad and the hard-line Mullahs have found an ally who has stood by them as they crushed political freedoms and defied world consensus on its nuclear program. Both countries have pledged mutual scientific, technical and financial support. There is little reason to doubt Venezuela’s support for Ahmadinejad’s most important agenda, the development of a nuclear program and long-range missiles, and the destabilization of the region. For Iran, the lifeblood of their nuclear and weapons programs is the ability to use the international banking system to make payments for banned missile and nuclear materials. The opening of Venezuela’s banks to the Iranians guarantees the continued development of nuclear technology and long-range missiles. The mysterious manufacturing plants, controlled by Iran, deep in the interior of Venezuela, give even greater concern.


III. With Iranian assistance Venezuela is bound to become a destabilizing force in Latin America

So why is Chavez willing to open up his country to a foreign nation with little in shared history or culture? I believe it is because his regime is corrupt, hell-bent on becoming a regional power, and fanatical in its approach to dealing with the U.S. The diplomatic overture of President Obama in shaking Chavez’s hand in April at the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad and Tobago is not a reason to assume a diminished threat from our neighbor to the south. In fact, with the groundwork laid years ago, we are entering a period where the fruits of the Iran-Venezuela bond will begin to ripen.

That means two of the world’s most dangerous regimes, the self-described “axis of unity,” will be acting together in our backyard on the development of nuclear and missile technology. And it seems that for terrorist groups they have found the perfect operating ground for training and planning, and financing their activities through narco-trafficking.

Sound like the making of a story you’ve heard before? In 1962, President Kennedy stared down a nuclear threat to the United States when a leftist populist leader with a strong anti-American streak joined forces with the Soviet Union to bring nuclear weapons in close proximity to our borders. JFK ended the Cuban missile crisis through resolve and tough diplomacy. Although the same threat level does not yet exist in Venezuela, the United States needs to be focused on Iran’s expansionism wherever it occurs.


Conclusions
The Iranian nuclear and long-range missile threats and creeping Iranian influence in the Western Hemisphere cannot be overlooked. My office and other law enforcement agencies can play a small but important role in ensuring that money laundering, terror financing, and sanctions violations are not ignored, and that criminals and the banks that aid Iran will be discovered and prosecuted. We all know that stopping the flow of illicit funds has a direct correlation to curbing wrongful conduct. But certainly law enforcement in the U.S. alone is not enough to counter the threat effectively.

As for Venezuela, the world must no longer assume that Chavez is bluffing when he speaks. It is important that the public generally, and responsible government officials in particular, be aware of the growing presence of Iran in Latin America. And it is necessary to urge Venezuela’s neighbors to understand the sinister implications of Iran’s presence in the region. Brazil, whose constitution prohibits nuclear weapons, can play a significant role in influencing Chavez. Finally, the U.S. and the international community must strongly consider ways to monitor and sanction Venezuela’s banking system. Failure to take action in this regard will leave open a window susceptible to money laundering use by the Iranian government, the narcotics organizations with ties to the Venezuelan government, and the terrorist organizations that Iran supports openly.

Robert Morgenthau is the District Attorney for New York. He made these remarks at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC on September 8, 2009 at a symposium sponsored by The American Interest and Global Financial Integrity (GFI). Global Financial Integrity (GFI) promotes national and multilateral policies, safeguards, and agreements aimed at curtailing the cross-border flow of illegal money.

Morgenthau has received numerous awards and honors, including the Citation of Merit (Yale Law School), the Emory Buckner Award (Federal Bar Council), the Fordham-Stein Prize, the Thomas Jefferson Award in Law (University of Virginia), the Brandeis Medal (University of Louisville Law School), and the Distinguished Public Service Award (New York County Lawyer's Association). He has been the Manhattan DA since 1974.

The View from Your Window: Lavalleja

Lavalleja, Uruguay - 6:08 p.m.

Send us the View from Your Window: caracaschronicles at fastmail dot fm

Please ensure the window frame is visible, and tell us the place and time the picture was taken. And don't try to "pretty it up" - just show us what you see when you look up from the seat where you typically read the blog. Files should be no bigger than 400 KB.

Crabs in a bucket

Juan Cristóbal says: - It's hard to understate the disarray in Venezuela's multi-colored, multi-generational opposition movement. The tsunami of legislation the government has barraged us with have left people with a sense of deja funk, a feeling that we should just aflojar las nalgas and resign ourselves to giving up what little civil liberties we have.

Ideas come and go, but none of them seem to find any traction, in part because the people proposing them are not committed to the idea nor to their own message.

Rummaging through the Internet, I found this interesting transcript of an online chat Leopoldo López held with readers of Noticias 24. What I liked about it is how disciplined it seems, how Leopoldo continues to press his case for primaries as the only path to an organized, legitimate opposition movement.

Leopoldo remains on message throughout, a welcome development for opposition politicians. He says winning the Assembly is the strategic goal, and kudos for framing it this way. In order to achieve that, we need a unity roster- anyone who doubts that hasn't read the new Electoral Law. The only way to achieve unity is to hold primaries. Backroom dealings in Caracas will not work because - well, because they've never worked. C follows B follows A.

It's really quite simple. Primaries have the added benefit of bringing people into the decision-making process, an inclusion that is severely lacking on the other side of the trenches. Most importantly, there is no real reason not to do it. It's the only way to get the opposition movement we need - a well-funded national organization with credible leaders able to connect with people.

In his words, we need to stop behaving like "crabs in a bucket," bringing down the lonely crab trying to climb out. And yet, the curious thing about his proposal isn't that people are tearing it down, it's that nobody seems to be willing to address it. Somehow, Leopoldo is being treated as some random unemployed citizen, muttering to himself in a corner in Plaza Francia. El loquito, pues.

López should not be underestimated. He may be out of a job, but like it or not, he's one of the opposition's most popular figures. It's high time to take this proposal seriously, and if there are reasons out there not to do it, then they should be debated. Ignoring this discussion only perpetuates the cycle where Chávez sets the agenda. It only presages our defeat.

Next year's Assembly elections are crucial, and unless the opposition manages to take it, it will perfectly predict the outcome of the presidential election of 2012. Either we get to work, or we're looking at eight more years of this, at least. The stakes couldn't be higher, and yet our leaders insist on ignoring the best idea out there.

The View from Your Window: Brisbane

Brisbane, Australia - 3:59 p.m.

Send us the View from Your Window: caracaschronicles at fastmail dot fm

Please ensure the window frame is visible, and tell us the place and time the picture was taken. And don't try to "pretty it up" - just show us what you see when you look up from the seat where you typically read the blog. Files should be no bigger than 400 KB.

The View from Your Window: Caracas

Colinas de Bello Monte, Caracas, Venezuela - 2:22 p.m.

Send us the View from Your Window: caracaschronicles at fastmail dot fm

Please ensure the window frame is visible, and tell us the place and time the picture was taken. And don't try to "pretty it up" - just show us what you see when you look up from the seat where you typically read the blog. Files should be no bigger than 400 KB.

The View from Your Window: Prior Lake

Prior Lake, Minnesota - 1:10 p.m.

Send us the View from Your Window: caracaschronicles at fastmail dot fm

Please ensure the window frame is visible, and tell us the place and time the picture was taken. And don't try to "pretty it up" - just show us what you see when you look up from the seat where you typically read the blog. Files should be no bigger than 400 KB.

Drooling on the lens of his Sincerity-cam

Juan Cristóbal says: - The quote of the day comes from the Venice love-fest between Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez and Oliver Stone:

"I used the real man," Stone said. "I hope you realize how dynamic he is in the movie. What I like about the film is you see how sincere he is on camera. You don't see a guy who is a phony. He's not a dictator."

Stone's advisors for the film? Major PSFs Tariq Ali and Mark Weisbrot. Enough said.

Mopping up the airwaves

Quico says: Chávez henchman Diosdado Cabello's decision to shut down another 29 radio stations (but which ones?) sounds very much like a mopping up operation. Because, between the first set of closures last month and the Heavy Duty self-censorship now evident on Venezuelan radio, most of the heavy lifting has already been accomplished. Just a few insufficiently cowed private stations remain and, as we can now see, not for much longer.

Actually, "mopping up" is pretty much the order of the day here. Because instituting a dictatorship, in practice, is all about closing down the possibility of mounting a serious challenge to the government by monopolizing the institutional and social spaces you need to organize people politically. By and large, the work of instituting a dictatorship in Venezuela has been accomplished. At this point, they're just tidying up the loose ends.

The somber tone in yesterday's anti-Chávez march - long gone are the days of oppo bailoterapias - bears out that even the most hardened of escuálidos know how bad the odds against us are by
now.

The View from Your Window: Providence

Providence, Rhode Island - 12:10 p.m.

Send us the View from Your Window: caracaschronicles at fastmail dot fm

Please ensure the window frame is visible, and tell us the place and time the picture was taken. And don't try to "pretty it up" - just show us what you see when you look up from the seat where you typically read the blog. Files should be no bigger than 400 KB.

The Feisbukisation of Protest

Quico says: Time was when strongmen could put a stranglehold on society's capacity to organize itself against them just by setting up a censorship board and throwing a few dozen journos in jail.

But the world has changed, and citizens these days have options. Clamp down on the traditional mass media, and folks have alternatives beyond the old hand-cranked mimeograph, samizdat model. Who needs a mimeograph when you have Facebook!?

And so, the big shindig is today at noon, local time, in three dozen cities around the world. Look for your meeting place here.

Anybody care to hazard a guess as to the level of violence at the Venezuelan marches?

Maintaining Radio Silence

Quico says: I hadn't wanted to mention it, but I guess this post blows my cover. I'm in Caracas again, working on a couple of projects. When I'm in town, I always spend a lot of time listening to the radio, catching up with the one bit of the Venezuelan public sphere I really don't have access to abroad. The experience this time has shaken me.

In a word, it worked. Shutting down those 34 dissident stations two months ago has brought an arctic freeze over free expression on the radio. You can spend an evening in Caracas going up and down the dial and never once hear any critical political content at all. It's staggering.To a shocking degree, critical content about the government is just not available on the radio anymore.

Now, as always, most of what's broadcast is music. There's still a decent amount of talk radio, though. On the private stations, it consists of a mix of baseball games, evangelicals urging you to pray hard to the holy spirit, teenie-boppers talking about teenie-bopper stuff, and fluffy health and lifestyle shows about the benefits of macrobiotic shakes or multiple orgasms. On the state-owned stations and the misnamed "community" broadcasters ("parastatal" is more like it), all you get are ranting chavistas, all day, every day.

You sporadically come across an extreeeeemely vanilla "finance" or "economics" show on a private station that, with some bravado, and stuck in between pieces lauding Empreven and touting the business opportunities created by Alba, might obliquely note that allowing real currency appreciation might have something to do with deincentivating local industry.

When they cut to commercial, half the advertising is for Cantv.

As one of my contacts here noted, the key to understanding the current trend towards militant self-censorship isn't just the 34 radio stations the government shut down: it's the none-too-subtle hint Conatel chief Diosdado Cabello gave when he said his agency is actively looking into 220 other radio stations' paperwork as well.

Thing is, Conatel never published the actual list. Diosdado never specified which stations he was looking into. So if you're a radio station manager, you have no way of knowing if you're on the list or not. Elementary caution dictates that you have to assume that you are. So, effectively, the sword of Damocles is hanging over the lot of them. Under those circumstances, nobody's willing to take a chance.

It may be that I'm listening at the wrong times. Apparently Marta Colomina is still ranting away on UnionRadio and we're just on different schedules. But the contrast with the way radio was just three months ago is staggering. More than once this trip I've devoted a solid 2 or 3 hours to parading up and down the radio dial checking out what's on and heard NOTHING you could consider critical broadcasting. Nothing at all. Nothing.

I have seen the face of communicational hegemony. And it's ugly.

The View from Your Window: Greenwich

Greenwich, Connecticut - 3:01 p.m.

Send us the View from Your Window: caracaschronicles at fastmail dot fm

Please ensure the window frame is visible, and tell us the place and time the picture was taken. And don't try to "pretty it up" - just show us what you see when you look up from the seat where you typically read the blog. Files should be no bigger than 400 KB.

A contrast in leadership

Juan Cristóbal says: - In the face of the chavista onslaught on civil liberties, it would be nice if the opposition showed some leadership, a path that may just get us out of this mess.

The recipe according to Antonio Ledezma is to hit the streets and go to the OAS. The recipe according to Leopoldo López is to organize communities and stage primaries to select unity opposition candidates, with the ultimate goal of taking back Congress next year.

I don't know about you, but to me it's clear only one of these guys has an actual plan. And you can't defeat a military regime like Chávez’s if you don't have a plan.

The View from Your Window: Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires, Argentina - 1:40 p.m.

Send us the View from Your Window: caracaschronicles at fastmail dot fm

Please ensure the window frame is visible, and tell us the place and time the picture was taken. And don't try to "pretty it up" - just show us what you see when you look up from the seat where you typically read the blog. Files should be no bigger than 400 KB.

Richard Blanco's Death Sentence

Quico says: It's hard to write something cheerful about Venezuela these days. The tenor, the saña, of the chavista onslaught on civil liberties is now so aggressive it's hard to know what to do with the huge well of despair that comes over you when you contemplate it.

The new rules of the game are clear: every time there is a protest there will be violence. Chavista thug squads like the one in San Cristobal will make sure of that. And every time there is violence at a protest, the opposition will be blamed for it, and its leaders will be tried. Luisa Ortega Diaz vows to charge them with "civil rebellion" - an offense that could justify jail terms measured in decades.

Over 2000 Venezuelans have already been charged with criminal offenses related to protests so far in the Chávez era. The number looks set to rise quickly.

Protesting is, in effect, banned. The constitution's civil rights guarantees are, in effect, suspended.

It's not, of course, the first time Venezuela has had a regime that imprisons large numbers of people for political reasons. But it is the first time a repressive government refuses to grant any differential treatment to its political prisoners, as opposed to run-of-the-mill choros.

Under Pérez Jiménez, political prisons were, at least implicitly, recognized as such: segregated from common criminals and housed together in political jails. Even Gómez, whose political prisons were famously brutal, didn't (as a rule) mix in political prisoners with street thugs.

Rómulo Betancourt and Raúl Leoni - whose governments were locked in a no-kidding shooting war with guerrillas openly committed to the violent overthrow of the democratic regime - recognized that political prisoners had to be afforded certain guarantees while detained.

Even Carlos Andrés Pérez, when he jailed the violent coupster who trampled on his vow to uphold the constitution and caused the deaths of dozens of people, not to mention attempted to kill him, nonetheless put Chávez in a wing of Yare Prison devoted only to people incarcerated for politically motivated offenses.

El Comandante apparently forgot all about that. Richard Blanco - the opposition municipal official in Caracas whose job involved overseeing public order - has been thrown, on highly dubious grounds, in the same jail Chávez spent a couple of years in. But Blanco is not being segregated from the run-of-the-mill criminals who've made Yare Prison a by-word for violence and brutality. Just tossed in to fend for himself, together with the 11 other municipal employees similarly charged for protesting and denied bail pending trial.

Putting a near-cop like Blanco in a jail like that amounts to a death sentence. Chávez knows it. Luisa Ortega Diaz knows it. Everybody knows it.

Update: A historically minded reader tells me at least some political prisoners in the Gómez era were tossed in with common criminals. I guess that means we've reached the level of democratic development we had then.

The View from Your Window: Bogotá

Bogotá, Colombia - 11:58 a.m.

Send us the View from Your Window: caracaschronicles at fastmail dot fm

Please ensure the window frame is visible, and tell us the place and time the picture was taken. And don't try to "pretty it up" - just show us what you see when you look up from the seat where you typically read the blog. Files should be no bigger than 400 KB.

The Reason Cesar Pérez Vivas is Going to Jail

Quico says: Looking at this clip, it's hard not to think of the old Superman comics where the Man of Steel (Sidorman?) got stuck in Bizarroworld - the cube-shaped planet where everything is the opposite of the way it is on earth. Here's some amateur video taken of the reception that the basically peaceful march organized by Pérez Vivas got in San Cristobal last week:



Just so it's clear: Táchira State Governor Cesar Pérez Vivas calls a march to protest the new Education Law. The march is peaceful, up until it's basically ambushed by chavista activists throwing rocks and bottles from a rooftop. We have the videotape to prove it. And the violent fascist who has to get tried over it is...Cesar Pérez Vivas.

The View from Your Window: La Uvita

La Uvita, Costa Rica - 12:03

Send us the View from Your Window: caracaschronicles at fastmail dot fm

Please ensure the window frame is visible, and tell us the place and time the picture was taken. And don't try to "pretty it up" - just show us what you see when you look up from the seat where you typically read the blog. Files should be no bigger than 400 KB.

The Face of Chavismo Today

Quico says: More than anything or anyone else in Venezuela today, it's Luisa Ortega Díaz that scares me. There's something spontaneous, heartfelt, deeply honest about the Prosecutor General's commitment to authoritarianism that creeps me out to the core.

In this startling communiqué issued today, Ortega Diaz puts in a strong audition for the role of Postergirl for late-stage chavismo. Unembarrassed by her sneering contempt for dissent, uninterested in maintaining a minimal façade of democratic tolerance, suffused with aggression against anyone who questions her ideological certainties and ideologically committed to using state power to crush them, to listen to Luisa Ortega Diaz is to verify the far outer reaches to which the boundaries of acceptable discourse have been pushed in Venezuelan officialdom.

It's funny to think back now on how we used to loathe the old Fiscal General, Isaías Rodríguez. Time was when we figured we couldn't do any worse than him for a Fiscal. With the benefit of hindsight, though, we can see that however much of a tool Isaías might have been - and, make no mistake about it, he was a monumental tool - the guy's lethargy ended up shielding us. The sheer bureaucratic torpor Isaías exhuded from every pore in his greasy little body ended up blunting the danger he presented to our freedom. Too stupid to inflict much damage, too unimaginative to grasp the power of his office and the possibilities it afforded him, installing Isaías in the Fiscalía ended up being more about guaranteeing impunity to corrupt chavistas than about dismantling the remaining spaces for dissent in Venezuelan society.

Luisa Ortega Diaz is something else altogether. She doesn't just have the extremist ideology, she also has the energy, the clarity of vision and the sense of her own power to become a leading player in the drive to entrench a chavista dictatorship.

Because, lets be clear, her office is powerful: much more powerful than analogous offices in most other countries. It has a complete monopoly on deciding which criminal cases get tried and which don't. With no regional-level prosecutions, no private prosecutions allowed and no escape valves in things like Special Council or Independent Council statutes, the Fiscal General is the ultimate judicial bottle-neck, with total discretion to decide who gets a criminal trial and who doesn't.

That's the power Luisa Ortega Diaz has. And there really isn't any ambivalence to her views: protesting against the government is attempting to undermine the stability of the state, and will be prosecuted. When you considered the parallel stranglehold chavismo has over the courts, there's no ambiguity left at all. Venezuela is quickly becoming a place where disagreeing with the government in public is an offense punishable with jail time. And Luisa Ortega Diaz has taken on her task of ensuring that goal is reached with simply terrifying glee.

The View from Your Window: Berlin

Berlin, Germany - 4:20 p.m.

Send us the View from Your Window: caracaschronicles at fastmail dot fm

Please ensure the window frame is visible, and tell us the place and time the picture was taken. And don't try to "pretty it up" - just show us what you see when you look up from the seat where you typically read the blog. Files should be no bigger than 400 KB.

Ding Dong, Seniat Calling

Quico says: Seniat has just announced they are shutting down Avon Cosmetics de Venezuela for 72 hours for not filling out their VAT forms properly. Headquarters, one factory, and 11 commercial offices are affected.

Which, I think, gives you a sense for just how unhinged from real Venezuelans' values the government's gotten. I mean, can they really survive the backlash once the better half of the country goes all lipstickless and hyper-cuaimatized? Don't these people have daughters? And what's next...shutting down the Blackberry network for backtaxes?! Or - gulp - going after the brewers?

That, right there, is the final frontier. When you see the government shutting down the beer-makers you know it's the final straw.

The View from Your Window: Washington

Washington, DC - 5:35 p.m.

Send us the View from Your Window: caracaschronicles at fastmail dot fm

Please ensure the window frame is visible, and tell us the place and time the picture was taken. And don't try to "pretty it up" - just show us what you see when you look up from the seat where you typically read the blog. Files should be no bigger than 400 KB.

You Can't Quit, You're Fired!

Quico says: Leopoldo López just got kicked out of UNT. Kicked out. Of UNT. Swirl that around in your brain for a bit. It's really crazy.

I don't know the exact circumstances that led up to this. I would guess this was a pre-emptive expulsion, meant to take the sting out of his imminent storming out. One way or another, one thing's clear: the guy's earning himself a bit of a reputation as, erm, not a team player. Prima donnaish and caudillesque in a deep way only superficially papered over by the technocratic shtick, LL is quickly earning, on the right, the moniker Guillermo García Ponce kept for so long on the left: General de División.

Note: Latest reports are that this story is not true. I'm as confused as you.

The View from Your Window: San Fernando

San Fernando de Apure, Venezuela - 12:38 p.m.

Send us the View from Your Window: caracaschronicles at fastmail dot fm

Please ensure the window frame is visible, and tell us the place and time the picture was taken. And don't try to "pretty it up" - just show us what you see when you look up from the seat where you typically read the blog. Files should be no bigger than 400 KB.

Amsterdam on Nelson on A11 on Huffo

Thanks to everyone for wedding wishes. I declare this break over.

Quico says: The April 11th crucible will not be forgotten. Check out Robert Amsterdam's bit on Brian Nelson's book on April 11th over on the Huffington Post. It, and the accompanying interview, should be read widely.

Seven years on, the controversy surrounding the coup simply will not be put to sleep, because how you interpret the coup is how you interpret Chávez:

"If you believe that the opposition initiated the violence; that they placed gunmen at the head of the march and wanted to cause deaths to spark a coup, then Hugo Chávez is a victim," wrote Nelson in his email to me. "But if you believe that the Chávez government initiated the violence; that the National Guard troops and loyalists opened fire on the march to keep it from surrounding the palace, then Hugo Chávez is not the victim, he is the aggressor. (...) If this is what you believe, then Hugo Chávez has lost his legitimacy and he should, at the very least, be placed on trial."

No wonder chavismo is so keen to debunk his research.

The View from Your Window: Caracas

Los Palos Grandes, Caracas, Venezuela - 9:37 a.m.

Send us the View from Your Window: caracaschronicles at fastmail dot fm

Please ensure the window frame is visible, and tell us the place and time the picture was taken. And don't try to "pretty it up" - just show us what you see when you look up from the seat where you typically read the blog. Files should be no bigger than 400 KB.