Speaking truth to power, Cuba-style

Juan Cristóbal says: - Blogger extraordinaire Yoani Sanchez fights for her rights. In Spanish only...

Former communist guerrilla blasts state intervention in the economy

Juan Cristóbal says:

(With my apologies to Teodoro-groupie Quico, but that headline wrote itself.)

In today's Tal Cual, Teodoro Petkoff sensibly butchers the Chávez administration for involving itself directly in every last corner of the economy and making a mess wherever it pokes its nose. I was stratled by the tone of the piece, specially considering who the messenger is.

The Venezuelan government has a knack - the understatement of the day - for involving itself in the direct production of goods and services that could be supplied better and more cheaply by private industry. Every time, yes, every time it does so, the results are sub-par and all Venezuelans end up poorer for it. Teodoro echoes this idea more strongly than I recall him ever doing so, and for that he earns two thumbs up from me.

It's funny that a right-wing talking point like that could come from a man like Petkoff, no ifs, ands, or buts. It's not just that he's correctly framing Chávez as the anti-Midas that he is, it's that he does it so vehemently. It's as if he's channeling his inner Margaret Thatcher.

Now, the issue with this argument has always been how to sell it. How can we convince Venezuelans that state-owned enterprises are a waste of money, that when the chavista heads of the Venalums, the Banco Industriales and the Venirans of the world call for the government to "capitalize" their companies, we all end up paying? Where is the outrage when the government announces its foray into the hospitality industry? Where is the outcry when we hear our tax money will be used to sell cars?

After all, explaining this is just a matter of math: it's a whole lot easier to simply pay workers in these companies wages for doing nothing than have them be a part of a company where you also have to pay bribes, managers, distributors and foreign suppliers, with all the "surplus" pricing that comes with it.

It's also a lot less time consuming for government decision-makers who, instead of focusing on these empty shells, should be thinking about education, national security and crime. How much time does Chávez spend coming up with funky names for his new companies?

The fiscal and welfare consequences of a badly-run state-company are unequivocally sub-optimal relative to simply giving the workers cash.

This is an issue some Venezuelan politicians have meekly tried to sell, and time and again, they retreat. Ultimately, it always proves easier to just continue doing what we're used to and keep feeding the statist beast.

But how can we break this vicious cycle?

We may never find out.

The curious case of the missing panic

Juan Cristóbal says: As the government's authoritarian noose tightens, and next year's Legislative elections draw ever nearer with zero progress on a unity platform, it's fair to ask: is it time to panic yet?

Panic is underrated. It can be just the thing to get you going. As the great Billie Jean King puts it, "pressure is a privilege." But it can also shut you down. Deer, meet headlights.

Politicians who figure out how to turn their moments of panic into "the fierce urgency of now" are often the most successful. Frankly, in Venezuela, we could use some of that fierce urgency.

Surely, some opposition politicians are panicking, but none are panicking constructively. Come to think of it, it's our leadership's total inability to do constructive panic that's been spinning me into, well...a panic.

That's the first thing that crossed my mind when I read that the government is apparently considering bringing forward the Parliamentary elections currently scheduled for December 2010. According to El Nacional's sources in Miraflores, the government is seriously pondering holding the elections as early as March. Some deputies have admitted they have discussed the issue, and you know it's true when Darío Vivas says it ain't.

A move like this would catch the opposition with their pants down, and it wouldn't be the first time. All the talk about unity would have to give way to real results, and the shift would need to happen yesterday. A change in the schedule would dramatically compress the time available for selecting candidates and raising funds.

It shouldn't have to be like this. Here we are in October, and the progress on choosing unity candidates can be measured in millimeters. The alarm has been sounding for months, but our guys can't hear it.

We've been saying since at least February that the congressional elections are the central issue we face, that failure will seal our chances until at least 2018, that the work needs to begin right away. Nobody seems to understand this.

Leopoldo Lopez has brought up the idea of primaries, and I have enthusiastically boarded the bandwagon. But his failure to bring specifics to the table - in fact, his failure to even sit at the table - has all but doomed its chances. And while there has been much huffing and puffing about "reaching consensus" or "using opinion polls," so far, these debates have the air of a carrito-por-puesto discussion instead of the desperate urgency of a firefighters' huddle by the side of a blaze.

Tranquilo, chamo, we have all the time in the world, right?

Well, we don't. People may not remember, but Manuel Rosales didn't begin his Presidential campaign until the idea of primaries had fizzled (yes, we've been down this road before) and the World Cup had ended. In fact, the precise date of Rosales' selection was August 9, 2006, less than three months before the election.

With so little time to pick a team, settle on a message, and campaign, is it any wonder we got our asses handed to us? That's what "consensus" gets you - a weak candidate with an incoherent message selected way too late.

Regardless, the discussion of primaries vs. consensus vs. Pérez the Mouse deciding unity candidates would be completely beside the point if the schedule changed. The CNE throwing down the gauntlet should, in theory, force our politicians to zero in and focus on finding a solution, any solution, quickly.

Don't count on it. Instead, our Scotch-soaked, 360°-haunting geniuses are busy worrying about the OAS, visiting hunger strikers, collaborating on fluff pieces and, generally, avoiding jail. But where are the politicians telling people the truth - that unless we start playing as a team now, not only will we lose the 2010 elections badly, we will also have sealed our fate for 2012?

Some of our politicians are feeling the panic and acting on it, but it's not the good type of panic. Instead of running around like headless chickens or fleeing to Lima, they need to jujitsu that pressure into stamina. They need to do their job.

Catch My (Authoritarian) Drift?

Quico says: In the Guardian today, Rory Carroll manages the impossible: getting a major first world paper to buckle down and give detailed attention to Chávez's authoritarian drift. No cutesy hook hung around Miss Venezuela, no quirky angle with El Vergatario. Not even a clear news hook. No bullshit at all. Chávez's drift towards authoritarianism is the story.

Well halle-friggin'-lujah....

Listen, lets get real. Stories like this one are always going to be rare. When they appear, they're never going to generate the kind of torrent of click-throughs that you get whenever Chávez does that thing he does and starts decreeing that underwear must be changed every half hour and worn on the outside, so they can check.

Carroll's story isn't sexy. Its forlornly imprisoned generals and its exquisite neoscholastic distinctions between imperfect democracies and authoritarian regimes with democratic characteristics won't send you rushing to twitter the link. Like Venezuelan reality, the whole thing is just grim.

Nobody likes grim.

But, more and more, stories like this are vital.

The view from your window: Alexandria

Alexandria, Virginia, USA. 6:40 AM

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Venirán...pero, ¿será que después se devolvirán?

Quico says: So, in this era of participatory and protagonic democracy, what would happen to you if you flat out refused to discuss a labor contract with the workers you hired? How do you think LOPCYMAT inspectors would take it if you failed to supply them with adequate safety equipment and refused to even talk to them about breaks?

How do you figure the government would react if you just fired, willy-nilly, some two-dozen workers who were trying to organize a labor union in your non-union factory? How do you think Chávez would react if those fired workers filed a complaint against you at the local Labor Inspectorate, won, got a ruling ordering you to hire them back, but you still refused to put them back on the payroll, ignoring the Labor Ministry point blank?

You could never get away with stuff like that in the revolutionary workers' socialist paradise that is Chávez-era Venezuela, right? I mean, you'd get expropriated right away, wouldn't you?

Of course you would...unless you happen to be the government of Iran and your business is making knock-off 80s Peugeots, in which case Chávez would shower you with praise you and throw in a little unpaid advertising on the side.

The View from Your Window: Perth

Perth, Australia

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Merentes's line in the sand gets washed away by the very first wave

Quico says: There's one thing monetary authorities need more than anything else: credibility. When a Central Bank chief commits to a policy goal, he has to make sure he has the tools at his disposal to really make it happen. In a world of rational expectations, the general belief in a Central Bank's ability to make its policy commitments stick is one of the most powerful determinants of a Central Bank's actual ability to make its policy commitments stick.

So how credible did Central Bank of Venezuela chief Nelson Merentes's target to keep the parallel rate below BsF.3.45 per dollar turn out to be? Ermmm...not very.

As you know, I'm not actually allowed to tell you the parallel rate today, but between you and me and 27 million other people, it rhymes with thive dolivars firty cents per bollar. That's nearly three times the 60% gap Merentes says it's the most he'll allow.

In other words, the market had one look at his announcement, had a good chuckle, and went right on doing what it'd been doing.

It's easy to laugh it all off, but this stunning monetary own goal could really undermine Merentes's hold on the economy down the road. Once the market starts to discount the Central Bank's announcements, the bank's ability to actually keep a handle on the macroeconomy starts to evaporate: cuz Merentes can do what he want to the macroeconomic aggregates he control, but if people don't believe he's going to really do what it takes to achieve his goals, the market will just keep eating his announcements for breakfast.

Update: A reader retorts that, to be fair, Merentes only said the bolivar would rally to Bs.3.45 by early December, not right away. That's true, as far as it goes, but irrelevant. If Merentes had any credibility, the bolivar would've rallied today.

To see why, ask yourself this: if you truly believed that the bolivar would rally to 3.45 by December, what would you do? Simple: you would rustle up as many dollars as possible and run, not walk, to the permuta market to buy bolivars at 5.40 while you still have the chance.

Then you'd sit pretty.

Come early December, you would take your bolivars and use them to buy dollars at BsF.3.45 a pop. Do that and you turn each October dollar into $1.56 in December - a better than 50% profit margin in just a couple of months.

I believe the technical term for that is "a killing".

Now, you're not the only one able to do that calculus. Anyone can. If the market had taken Merentes seriously, tons of people would've followed that reasoning and tons of money would've rushed to get in on the deal, lining up to buy up bolivars in the permuta market ASAP.

Via normal supply and demand - i.e., lots of dollars chasing relatively few bolivars - the rush itself would have driven up the value of the bolivar in the parallel market. In other words, we would've seen a mad scramble for bolivars in the permuta market, and that scramble would have continued until the gap between the expected value of holding bolivars and the expected value of holding dollars had been erased.

Which means that, if investors collectively had any confidence in the government bringing the permuta market to heel by December, we'd already have the evidence: the bolivar would've rallied to (near) 3.45:$ today.

That's rational expectations.

The fact that the bolivar rally stalled at 5.40:$ tells you all you need to know about how seriously the markets took Merentes. They laughed off his announcement, man.

Off Target

Quico says: The imbecilities of Venezuela's Foreign Exchange Control Regime just keep piling up one on top of another, accumulating in layers that some future archeologist of macroeconomic incompetence will have to peel back one at a time. The latest is Central Bank chief Nelson Merentes's announcement that the gap between the official dollar exchange and the parallel market - which, mind you, doesn't officially exist - shouldn't exceed 60%.

In effect, Merentes is announcing an upper target for the permuta rate, committing the central bank to keep the parallel rate below BsF.:$ 3.45. Trouble is, the permuta rate has been well above that, trading at a gap that's more like 150%.

But that's just the start because, idiotically, it's actually against the law for me to tell you exactly what the permuta rate is. That means that the single most important number in the debate on Venezuelan macroeconomics today is strictly verboten, off-limits...what's the word I'm looking for? Censored.

Now, think this through for a minute. Venezuela now has an official exchange rate. And an official target for the unofficial exchange rate. But we can't mention what the actual unofficial rate is. Which, effectively, means we're not allowed to know if we're meeting Merentes's target or not because - stay with me now - we now have public targets for secret variables!

And, come to think of it, we're now committed to defending an exchange rate we don't admit exists!

Apples and Oranges: A Parable of Distorsiolandia

Quico says: OK, time for a thought experiment/parable.

Welcome to Distorsiolandia, a land of simple rural folk where everyone works in agriculture. Distorsiolandia's economy is so simple, in fact, that the country has no money. It's not really necessary, because Distorsiolanos produce only two goods: apples and oranges. It's a tropical place, mind you, so there are a lot more oranges around than apples.

In fact, there are three times as many oranges as apples in Distorsiolandia. So its GDP looks something like:

Remember, we said there's no money in Distorsiolandia, but there is trade. As people barter apples for oranges, they soon settle on the terms of trade between them: one apple is worth three oranges.

In other words, the price of an apple is three oranges, and the price of an orange is one-third of an apple. Not having discovered money, Distorsiolanos have to quote the price of each product in terms of the other.

And those price, of course, match the relative scarcity between them.

One day, a radical revolutionary people's government comes to power in our fictional little country on the back of a radical redistributive discourse.

The revolutionaries rail against the way a parasitic elite has hoarded all the oranges, making them far too expensive for regular people to afford. So they decree that, from now on, the price of an orange will be controlled: for an orange, you can charge no more than one-quarter of an apple.

Which means that, instead of three oranges, an apple will buy you four.


People love oranges, so this decree makes the government very popular indeed. Lots of people who were happy to hold apples - back when an apple would only buy three oranges - now come forward to trade those apples for four oranges a pop.

But notice what the decree doesn't do: it doesn't change the underlying distribution of apples and oranges in the economy. You still have just three oranges around for every apple.

The relative scarcity of the two products hasn't changed: apples are still 3 times more scarce than oranges.

That means that, at the new price, the total stock of apples in the economy can buy more than the total stock of oranges. If everybody who has an apple tries to trade it for four oranges, you soon realize there are too many apples around chasing too few oranges. Soon enough, every orange has been sold off, but you still have people holding apples, wanting oranges, and finding nowhere to buy them.


What you end up with, in other words, is Orange Scarcity. At the government set price, there are simply too many apples chasing around too few oranges.

Now, notice what's happening here. There are oranges around. And there are apples around. There are people with apples who want oranges. And there are people with oranges who want apples. The only thing that's keeping the two apart is the government set price. Orange holders just sit there, holding their oranges, because they realize that, at that price, selling an orange only makes you poorer.

The revolutionary people's socialist government sees this and is outraged!

"Hoarding!" it cries, "speculators!"

Soon, the government is sending off soldiers with Kalashnikovs to round up people who are holding oranges and refusing to sell them for the controlled price. It makes them do a perp walk, holds them up to public contempt, blaming them in front of the cameras for the fact that people can't find any oranges in the shops! It never for one moment occurs to them that, at the price they've set, there simply aren't enough oranges to satisfy all the apple-holders in the system!

What happens next is also clear enough. If sellers aren't allowed to hold oranges and buyers can't find anyone to sell to them at 0.25 apples, soon enough somebody will decide to sell oranges on the down-low, for 0.33 apples a piece.

Of course, you're not allowed to do this openly, so you have to sneak around. A black market for oranges crops up. Soon, the government cracks down, threatening permuta orange sellers with jail and - here's the precious part - actually blaming them for the rise in the price of oranges!

So the government faces down the distortions created by one policy intervention - fixing the price of oranges - with another intervention: jailing black-market orange-mongers. But that second intervention itself creates a distortion. By making orange-selling riskier, it ensures black-market oranges will sell at an even more inflated price, since orange-mongers will now demand a risk-premium for participating in this dangerous illegal activity. So instead of 0.33 apples, they may demand 0.4, or even half an apple for an orange. By now, orange-buyers are out of options: they're bound to pony up.

And how will the government face up to the distortions created by the policy it implemented to confront the distortions created by the previous policy it had implemented?

You guessed it! By implementing yet another policy that brings with it yet another distortion!

Will they take over the Orange processing and distribution system? Will they threaten orange farmers with jails if they don't plant enough oranges? Who can tell? The sky is the limit!

Welcome to Distorsiolandia, where the solution to the problems created by one distortion is always...another distortion!

Lost in the thicket of laws and regulations that this kind of thinking generates is a simple insight: no bureaucratic dictate can change the fact that if there are three oranges out there for every apple and you force people to hand-over four oranges for an apple, oranges are gonna run out as sure as night follows day.

What's scary is that that thought, simple as it is, will cause a chavista's head to implode. When these people say they're against capitalism, what they really mean is that they're against arithmetic.

[Hat-tip for the "distorsiolandia" thing: AA, which, come to think of it, I'm not even sure if she reads the blog...]

The view from your window: Olanthe

Olanthe, Kansas, USA. 6:25 PM.

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"I'll have a second serving of crazy please"

Juan Cristóbal says: - We've discussed the insanity of the government's recent bond extravaganza here and here. The great Miguel summarizes the whole carnival here.

What does the government do?

Why, announce there will be more bonds to come!

Yup, that's right. More debt, more arbitrage, more corruption. Just what the doctor ordered.

I guess this proves Alí Rodríguez does not read this blog...

(Hat tip: Capablanca)

This socialism thing is hard!

Juan Cristóbal says: -

"It's hard to build socialism in this country."

Wise words coming from the mouth of chavista apparatchik Aristóbulo Istúriz.

Socialism is hard, he claims, because "state employees" want to be "shareholders." Instead of building socialism, they are prey to their old habits, fighting for personal vindication, focused on trying to get a bigger share of the state-owned-enterprise pie.

Istúriz then comes to a fateful conclusion: "If we don't change consciences, there will be no revolution."

Sigh. Ten years on and they are still wondering where their revolution is.

Of course consciences haven't changed. The government's model to sustaining power has been to enhance the expected value of rent-seeking while endlessly repeating that rent-seeking is bad.

Bad, that is, for everyone else except the guys on top. With this logic, is it surprising people aren't buying this "Bolivarian socialism" gimmick?

Take health care. The government's health system is a disaster, and all they can think of is "re-launching" what hasn't worked in the first place. The crisis has reached such proportions that Chávez himself acknowledges up to 50% of Barrio Adentro modules are abandoned. Is it any wonder the government's allies are worried about next year's elections?

Earth to Aristóbulo: if you really want state employees earning less than half the cost of the basic food basket to stop squabbling over oil rents, why don't you start by sending a team of auditors to go ask some real questions about how exactly it is that Ricardo Fernández Barruecos got to be worth $1.6 billion dollars even before he got control of Banco Canarias, BanPro, Bolívar Banco and Banco Confederado? Or ask Wilmer Ruperti to take you on that big yacht of his and ask him, in between sips of '78 Romanée Conti, to tell you where he thinks the Revolution went off the rails.

These whopping internal contradictions are one of the reasons why they're finding it so hard to control the working class, one that refuses to be brainwashed when the evidence of the regime's corruption is all around them.

People aren't stupid. They were sold "socialism" but once the petro-feast dried up, all they were left with was crime, official apathy, a stalling economy and the unmitigated rise of a new crony-capitalist class. Even the few things they accomplished ended up in the trash heap of negligence amidst an orgy of rent-grabbing. Before creating the Ministry of Popular Power for Conscience Modification, can we clarify whose conscience it is that needs reprogramming?

Come to think of it, Istúriz's words are not all that wise. It's not socialism that's hard - what's hard is getting people not to notice the hare the government is handing them ... is meowing.

The Bonos Soberanos Scam for Dummies

Quico says: Oh goody...an excellent excuse to make some powerpoint slides!













































And just keep in mind, while this is happening, the government is shutting down panaderías and auto parts store for - I shit you not - "excessive profits".

Plop!

Chavista porn

Juan Cristóbal says: - Our chavista readers complain that all our blog does is talk smack about the government nonstop. That's a fair criticism, so I decided to throw them a bone.

Here is a video of your revolution in action. A farm is being taken over, no ifs, ands or buts. The pristine procedures and the group of red-shirted "facilitators" should make your heart flutter. And Willian Lara's supporting role should get him a nomination. Asi... asi... asi es que se gobierna.

Selling bonds, selling our future

Juan Cristóbal says: In what the government is hailing as a positive development, the Chávez administration has just "sold" $5 billion worth of bonds in order to ease pressure on the black market exchange rate. The auction was hailed as a huge success - reports indicate demand for the papers was more than twice what was available, the black market rate is going down, and everyone is happy.

Funny, because when you really think about it, the only thing the government was "selling" was our future.

It's all in the wording. By framing this as a "sale," the government makes it appear as if it's just doing a bit of business.

"Sale" is a word filled with positive connotations. When you have a "yard sale", you're being frugal, getting rid of some excess knick-knacks and bringing in some extra cash. When a business "sells" more, it's doing well. Sales are good - good for buyers, good for sellers.

Except selling bonds isn't like selling stuff at a garage sale. When you "sell" a bond, you're really issuing an IOU. All you're selling is a claim on the government's future revenues, a share of everyone's future taxes, a right of ownership on future oil revenue streams - yours, and your kids'.

Now, I'm not opposed to new debt in principle. New debt can be good - if you use it for things that create value in the long term, like improve our roads, building schools or advancing technology. Those are all assets that will presumably lift the country's potential GDP and raise productivity, and all of them may justify going into debt.

But that's not what is going on here. Most of this money will go to pay for current government spending, things like salaries, subsidies, and military purchases. The money will end up in the hands of people who will, sooner or later, want to convert it into dollars and take it out of the country - either through the permuta market, or indirectly, by buying imported stuff that does not help the country's productivity, and has to be financed with dollars. And the bonds themselves are convertible into US dollars, which means the buyers will sell them in New York for cold, hard greenbacks.

This supposed "sale" is, in reality, a massive uptake of debt for the sake of the powerful. The government is borrowing so the rich, the almost-rich and the well-connected can buy cheaper dollars, hold on to them, and perhaps sell them in the domestic market when the economy deteriorates further. The government is taking on debt to appease speculators, most of whom are in the upper classes, and not a few of which are in the Chávez-spawned parasitic crony-capitalist cohort popularly known as the Boli-bourgeoisie.

This being Venezuela, the bond "sale" was about as transparent as a burqa. The government's attempt to explain the details was a disaster and resulted in brokers illegally creating money supply in order to get in on the game. The allocation of the bonds was anything but transparent.

Instead of hailing the government's latest "sale of bonds," we should call things what they are. The government didn't sell anything. Chávez is borrowing in the name of all to pay for capital flight by a few.

I don't think it sounds so pretty when you frame it that way.

Chávez numbers tank just when it matters the least

Quico says: Teodoro Petkoff spills the beans today on Chávez's god-awful poll numbers these days. In the latest IVAD (Seijas) poll, Chávez gets whooped by two-to-one margins on all kinds of domestic issues (the electoral law, private property, whether he's a threat to democracy) and by closer to three-to-one margins on most foreign policy questions (how he's dealing with Colombia, with the US, etc.)

All this from a Seijas poll, mind you - we're talking about the government's in-house "serious" pollster, who's had a pronounced pro-government lean in the past.

The August poll even has Chávez losing in the generic "would you vote for Chávez or for another candidate?" question, which - forget about 50% - now puts Chávez below 40%.

Read all about it here

What's ironic is that all this happens as Venezuela enters a period when poll numbers really don't matter any more. Back in the "hybrid regime" days, when our authoritarianism was at least competitive, these poll numbers would've been a real problem for the government.

These days? Hell, the guy just got through telling us how Gaddafi is to Libya as Bolívar was to Venezuela! He's well past caring.

The view from your window: Cabudare

Cabudare, Estado Lara, Venezuela. 8:30 AM.

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Only in Venezuela, part 58,271,943

Quico says: The thicket is everywhere:

It seemed like a minor bureaucratic change at the time: in March 2008, the government led by president Hugo Chávez downgraded the import status of books. Once listed as “essential goods”, all imported books would now require government certification, either demonstrating they were not produced domestically, or else not produced domestically in sufficient numbers. In practice, this means that for all titles they want to import, publishers or distributors have to submit an application describing the books in question and request that a share of foreign currency be allocated for their import. (In Venezuela, the government regulates the use of foreign currency for imports.) These applications are then reviewed by a government bureaucrat, who has the power to decide how many copies will be imported.

The decisions the government has made over the year that the law has been in force seems somewhat arbitrary. For example, the international bestseller The Secret could reasonably be expected to sell ten thousand copies or more, yet only several hundred were approved. What’s more, publishers must then wait six months to reapply to import additional copies — by which time demand may have dropped.

[Hat tip: CL.]

The View from Your Window: Concón

Concón, Chile: 6:45 p.m.

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An Oppo Fit For Primaries

Quico says: Throughout the day yesterday, Juan and I had a sprawling big fight about his Primaries post, all revolving around the question: is there any way the oppo leaders we have can be imagined signing on to an agreement like this?

After sleeping on it, here's my view: it's imaginable. Hard to imagine, but imaginable. But only, only, if there is very substantial pressure from below. In fact, it's going to take a virtual intra-opposition insurgency to get it done.

Right now, the calculus for the party bosses - Omar Barboza, Ramos Allup, Julio Borges and whomever-ends-up-least-maimed-by-the-COPEI-dust-up - is straightforward. Select candidates in a smoke-filled room - como toda la vida - and your own power, standing and status within the opposition is strengthened. Let grubby voters select them via primaries, and you start to become superfluous. Ergo, if possible, avoid primaries.

Simple stuff. These guys are weighing up costs and benefits and coming to their own conclusions. That what's best for them doesn't happen to coincide with what's best to the opposition (or the country) is neither here nor there. That's public choice for you.

So it's not enough to say you want primaries. You have to spell out what you're going to do to get them. Convincing us primaries are the best thing from your point of view or from the country's point of view isn't good enough, because it's not you or "the country" that's going to make this decision. This decision is going to be made the day Barboza, Ramos Allup, Borges and COPEI-survivor-man (plus assorted hangers on) sit up in bed, weigh up their costs and their benefits and conclude, "shit, if I don't support this primaries thing estoy jodido..."

How you do this, operationally, is an open question. I have no specific idea how it is that you create a climate where saying you're against primaries is seen as utterly unacceptable, tantamount to coming out against motherhood and apple pie. I guess making sure these guys get asked about it every single time a microphone is put in front of them is a good start.

The second consideration here - and I think this one is too easily dismissed - has to do with resources. To an extreme that I think most oppo supporters find difficult to comprehend, the oppo parties are just flat broke. I mean, really broke. Not-sure-how-I'm-going-to-pay-my-mobile-phone-bill broke. Can't-actually-afford-to-implement-any-of-the-thousands-of-good-ideas-people-come-to-me-with-every-day broke.

The natural base of donors you might expect them to go to for funds are tapped out: terrified of Disip finding out they finance the opposition and utterly certain that a bolivar given to the opposition is a bolivar wasted because these guys are just never going to come to power.

Now, campaigning costs money. The travel costs money, the ads cost money, the billboards cost money, the events cost money, everything costs money. The opposition doesn't have it. And organizing the actual primary costs money. Voting stations cost money. Ballots cost money. Counting infrastructure costs money. Information campaigns cost money. The opposition doesn't have it.

Now sure: when you're not the one having to write the checks that are going to bounce all over town like vulcanized little tokens of your pelabolismo, it's easy to sort of wave that away, to figure "well, c'mon, they just gotta do better," or even "hey, the excitement a primary campaign would create will be its own financing boom." Maybe. What's for sure is that, from the insiders' points of view, they've been working their butts off for years now trying to step up their fund-raising and have been finding an extraordinarily, unprecedentedly hostile atmosphere for it.

So the demand for primaries is, at this point, a little bit like shouting at a homeless man again and again at the top of your voice demanding that he go get a suite at the Ritz-Carleton and then rolling your eyes in disgust when he starts to tell you about the obstacles.

Which comes back to saying that what we need is not so much primaries as such. What we need first is something subtly different: an opposition political establishment able to hold primaries, in two senses. First, because its leaders are drawn to them as a result of their own, hard, cold cost-benefit analyses, and because the material resources are in place for candidates to actually compete and the event to actually be held.

But then, the debate needs to be different. The question isn't "primaries/no primaries." The question is "an opposition able to hold primaries/an opposition unable to hold primaries."

The indefatigable push for primaries

Juan Cristóbal says: - As most of you know, I've become a strong supporter of holding opposition primaries. In my view, they would be good for our chances of winning the upcoming Parliamentary Elections, good for the country, and good for the ultimate goal of stopping Chávez.

But the idea, first proposed by Leopoldo López and now supported by Yon Goicoechea, among others, is not getting a ton of traction.

Part of it has to do with the lack of details, but a big chunk of it has to do with the typical laziness in our political class, with their whiny attitudes and their disgraceful tendency to get discouraged at how haaaaaard it is to be the opposition to a dictatorship.

Their knee-jerk reaction to reject proposals that takes power away from them and puts it in the hand of their constituents is, in a way, totally understandable. If things keep going the way they are, the decision over the Assembly elections will likely evolve into a huge fight between those who want popular participation and those who want to preserve the power that the status quo gives them.

Still, it’s early enough in the process to believe a rational discussion can still take place.

An op-ed piece today by Eugenio G. Martínez goes a long way toward focusing the discussion. Martínez lashes out with abandon, listing a barrage of questions for this and other proposals. Are we going to have 167 primaries?, he asks. Who can vote in the primaries? Is a "consensus better"? Who will make the decision in this "consensus"? Who will make the ultimate decision?

And on he goes, circling around one basic question: do we have our s**t together?

Well, we don't. But one way to start getting it together is by asking the right questions, and that is what Martínez gets right.

The next step consists of knowing what we are discussing, bringing down our options from the terrain of the hypothetical to the realm of the concrete, and arguing about that.

It's easy to dismiss primaries as overly complicated, expensive, ill-defined behemoths when they have not been properly defined. It's much harder to do that when you're discussing a very specific, limited proposal.

So, in light of his fair questions, and in view of the fact that a lot of the opposition's traditional talking heads have proposed a vague and uninspired combination of primaries and consensus, I have the following proposal that tries to reach some sort of middle ground. Here goes.

1. We hold primaries by state.
   
2. Súmate is in charge of organizing the logistics.
   
3. Primaries are open to any and all voters.
   
4. Each voter chooses one political party.
   
5. Parties do not have to be restricted to official organizations recognized by the CNE and, in fact, can be open to anyone. For example, we can think of "Movimiento Estudiantil" as one of the options available.
   
6. Voting is manual, following the successful experience in Aragua last year.
   
7. Ahead of the vote parties make proposals to the voters, pointing out who their likely candidates and platforms will be.
   
8. Campaign are based on these personalities and proposals, with the understanding that by voting for these parties, people are really voting for these people.
   
9. Once results are in, the parties come together in state-wide "Mesas de Unidad."
10. Each party gets votes in the "Mesa" in proportion to the votes they got in the primary. So if, say, in Zulia, UNT gets 45%, Movimiento Estudiantil gets 30% and PJ gets 20%, then those would be the proportion of votes in the Mesa de Unidad for each party or group.
    
11. The Mesa then determines unity candidates for that state, with the "order" in which they are listed based on party negotiations, opinion polls and natural leadership.

If we did it this way, the rosters of candidates would broadly reflect the results obtained in the primaries, plus or minus a few "special cases."

Each party would decide who their eligible candidates are according to their own internal rules. The decision of which "tarjeta" to list the unity roster under would be based on a more detailed understanding of electoral rules, and acknowledging the fact that if a party does not register candidates, it may be deemed illegal.

The way I see it, this makes the process simpler and faster. You don't turn primary voting process into a complicated disquisition on the merits of individuals, and you get a mix of popular participation and political negotiations.

Most importantly, you weed out parties that don't really count for much.

You don't like this proposal? Fine - lay out your reasons.

Think Súmate is not capable of organizing this? Let's hear from them, or let's propose an alternative organization.

Do you think it's too expensive? Ok, give me a cost estimate. But keep in mind that opinion polls are expensive too, and the Scotch that will be served in those closed-door meetings where this mythical "consensus" will be reached ain't gonna come cheap either. If we're going to argue the merits of each proposal on the basis of costs, let's! But let's do it with actual figures. And be prepared to argue why we can have a potazo for Globovision but not have one for a more organized, better opposition.

The discussion should also center on the benefits. One of the main obstacles holding the opposition back is lack of organization. By allowing the electorate to decide who should get a seat at the table and, more importantly, who shouldn't, we would go a long way in streamlining the decision-making process while at the same time giving it some much-needed legitimacy.

Primaries aren't a panacea, but the lack of primaries will be our undoing. While some of the points against primaries (cost, complications) are valid, they are surmountable. Pushing the idea of primaries aside in favor of doing what we've been doing so far and which, frankly, simply has not worked - that's just suicidal.

Folks, this is not rocket science - if Colombia's opposition can have primary elections, there is simply no reason why we can't have ours. It's one thing to be a naysayer, it's quite another to propose real arguments.

A hunger for change

Juan Cristóbal says: - There is one news item we have neglected and we really shouldn't have: Venezuelan students and political prisoners held a massive, successful hunger strike during the past week.

The strike caught the attention of the opposition media, but more importantly, of the OAS. Secretary Insulza was sufficiently moved to oh-so-politely ask the Chávez administration to let the Interamerican Commision for Human Rights come to Venezuela for an inspection and see what all the fuss is about (pretty please). The strike also resulted in the liberation of Julio Rivas, a student leader, unjustly jailed for protesting a couple of weeks ago.

The Commission itself agreed to give the students a fair hearing and listen to their concerns. So far, Venezuela continues to refuse the Commission permission for a visit, and by doing so, bolsters the notion that it has something to hide.

I still have a problem understanding our side's love-hate relationship with the OAS. While some of us correctly decry the organism as an ineffective bureaucracy, devoid of moral authority and completely in the pocket of the hemisphere's neo-despots, others go to great lengths to get their attention.

Still, the students came across once again as committed, effective and untainted.

Doubts about their long-term staying power remain. The government's strange acquiescence to Rivas' freedom and their snickering glee in seeing the students take the spotlight away from politicians may signal they prefer them as potentially weaker, less experienced, less organized rivals.

Regardless, their hunger strike was a big hit and a PR bulls-eye, so hats off to them.

PS.- While we're on the topic of the young'uns - check out the newest member of the Venezuelan blogosphere, the student-centered No Goat and No Rope (in Spanish only). There's good stuff in there.

Any union you want, so long as it's mine

Quico says: There is one thing we can be sure about ahead of today’s oil-sector union elections: chavismo is going to win. Of the ten slates on the ballot, nine are broadly pro-Chávez. This should shock no one - virtually every anti-Chávez PDVSA worker was purged from the payroll following the 2002-03 oil strike.

So the question isn’t whether the opposition’s marginal Slate #5 or critical chavista slates like #1 and #9 are going to win. The question is which of the broadly pro-Chávez currents is going to take control of this key slice of the labor movement. And here things get murky right away, because there are chavista slates and then there are government-controlled slates, and the two are far from one and the same.

It's useful to recall that to be a pro-government aspiring PDVSA union leader is, in effect, to side with the boss. While broad ideological alignment with the government is the norm inside PDVSA, even the most ardently chavista of workers are understandably leery to vote for union representatives who are going to automatically side with the boss.

As it turns out, management appears to be spreading its money widely, trying to keep some financial links with whomever comes out on top. But management’s clear preference is for slate #7, (representing VOS, the "Socialist Workers' Vanguard") which has received aggressive, unembarrassed backing from management, helping out with money and logistics, threatening workers who don't toe the line, pulling down all other slate's advertising, stacking voting centers with VOS-friendly witnesses, working to "disqualify" 41 opposing slates' candidates, and even going so far as to enable a deliciously fake little sit-in by Slate #7 workers in PDVSA headquarters in La Campiña a couple of weeks ago.

The campaign has been full of mishaps. The actual election date has been pushed back no less than four times, as the government has struggled to define CNE’s specific role in the elections. In the event, the government’s gone so far as to activate a mini-Plan República, calling out military personnel to oversee the balloting and ensuring a National Guard presence is visible at every polling site.

The intimidatory edge of this kind of military presence is clear, and in a company that’s already established its willingness to throw the book at workers who prove insufficiently docile, it’ll take real bravery for workers to come out and support any slate other than Plancha 7.

It’s not easy for an outsider to get a read on the dynamics inside a campaign like this. Some labor watchers suggest an overwhelming win for Slate #7 would lack credibility inside the oil industry, and could set off the kind of acephalous labor unrest the government is keen to prevent. It may be more likely that a number of the most government-influenced slates will end up taking the cake. Or it may be that the independent chavista slates fight the government-controlled slates to a draw, thanks to the proportional representation system being used.

One way or another, oil-sector unions are a key asset for the government, and it’s easy to see Ramírez mobilizing the resources at his disposal to make sure he ends up with a labor movement that toes his line in contract negotiations.

One thing’s for sure: the vitality of independent labor within the oil industry is at stake today. So today’s elections are worth watching, even if there’s no proper way to forecast a result.

The view from your window: Lilongwe

Lilongwe, Malawi. 5:48 PM.

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The Shadow of Eligio Cedeño

Quico says: “Take Eligio Cedeño,” The Contact says, “to this day, I’ve never been able to figure out exactly how he fucked up.”

We’re sitting in one of these swank East Side restaurants whose ongoing existence don’t seem to jive at all with the extremist discourse coming out of Miraflores. After another sip of his diet coke, he goes on.

“It’s bizarre what happened to him. One day Eligio Cedeño is, as far as anyone can tell, a made guy, running his bank, you know, Bolívar Banco, doing business with the upper echelons of the bolibourgeoisie. Next thing you know he’s rotting away in a Disip cell, stuck there for years on end, with no formal charges, just sitting there. I mean, it’s been three years and they haven’t even charged him yet. I guess they’re talking about bringing down some bullshit ‘ilícito cambiario’ charge, but that’s after three years like that, detenido.

The place is quiet on a Monday night. We’ve finished eating now and are now waiting for the coffees we’ve ordered.

“So what happened? Common sense would suggest he screwed up big time with someone you just plain don’t mess with in this regime. But who? How? Nobody I know has a reasonable explanation...”

The Contact is driving at a larger point here. He’s just getting going, really.

“What I’m getting at is that it’s easy to overegg the parallels between this elite and previous ones. Everybody in the bolibourgeoisie these days is an Eligio Cedeño en potencia: one slip away from winding up behind bars, with no recourse, nobody to call on for help.

“And that’s the thing, these guys – the Fernández Barruecos and Arné Chacóns and Torres Cilibertos of the world – none of them can sleep easy at night. Sure, they’re making obscene amounts of money today. But...that’s today. Tomorrow? Nobody can guarantee them any kind of continuity. Nobody can tell them for sure that some internal enemy isn’t going to go and whisper a few bits of nastiness in Chávez’s ear and he’s going to get pissed off and the next thing they know they’re going to wind up across the hall from Eligio Cedeño at Disip.”

“That makes all the difference, because the kinds of agreements, the kinds of guarantees the bolibourgeoisie enjoys, they’re all tacit; shot through with insecurity. You hear these casual parallels drawn with Putin's Russia, but it’s really not like that.

“I mean, think about it. In Russia the cards were on the table. It was explicit. Putin sat down with a handful of favored businessmen and layed out the ground rules: ‘You’re going to stay out of politics, support me when I call you for a favor, and in return I’m going to stay out of your hair.’ See? Clarito.

"Those may not be formal property rights the way an academic thinks of them, but it comes to the same thing: they can rest assured. Which means they can plan for the future. Invest. Think about going abroad to invest, even. In a way they were more like the American robber barons at the turn of the last century: maybe they got to where they are through unspeakably coño’e’madre tactics, but once there, they could transition, become real businessmen, think strategically, invest, plan. Our new elite can’t do that, because none of them has a real guarantee that Chávez isn’t going to throw the book at them for one offense or another, or that some rival isn’t going to pull a Cedeño on them.

Our coffees come, but The Contact barely looks at his. He’s in full flow now.

“And in a way, it’s much worse this way. Because if you’re in a kind of Russian situation, if you started out as a gangster but you have some kind of stability, some kind of certainty to your property rights, self-interest propels you to start acting in ways that create value for society as a whole. So, there you have Lukoil: a product of plunder, no doubt, but also a proper multinational corporation now, a real, professionally run company that does R&D and surveys its investment opportunities and works purposefully to grow and develop and expand and create value and power for Russia.

“Our new elite never acts like that. Cuz it wouldn’t make any sense for them to act like that. They’re in a position to make money today, but next week, who knows? So their time horizons get compressed: the incentive structure they face is pushing them to try to make as much money as they can as fast as they can and two weeks from now is already the ‘long-term’ as far as they’re concerned. That’s the tragedy here, that’s why our brand of corruption tends to settle into all-out kleptocracy rather than mutating into a productive elite.

The Contact leans back and pauses to take a long breath.

"The entire bolibourgeoisie lives under the long, dark shadow Eligio Cedeño throws from his Helicoide cell. That’s the thing, man.

The view from your window: Stockholm

Stockholm, Sweden. 5:49 PM.

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Roy Chaderton: manipulative liar

Juan Cristóbal says: - These days, chavista diplomacy goes from one embarrassment to the next.

On the heels of giving Lybian dictator and major headcase Muammar Gaddafi our country's highest civilian honor, Venezuela's Ambassador to the OAS, Roy Chaderton, has falsely accused Venezuela's opposition of officially recognizing the Micheletti administration in Honduras.

Speaking in no less a venue that the OAS's Permanent Council, Chaderton claimed the Venezuelan opposition "had officially recognized the Micheletti administration through their shadow foreign Minister (Milos Alcalay)."

Chaderton is lying, and he knows it. Venezuela's opposition has been clear in rejecting the coup as well as Zelaya's illegal moves which prompted it. The Venezuelan opposition does not have a "shadow" foreign minister, and Alcalay does not speak for the opposition. Regardless of whether or not Alcalay was recognizing Micheletti (and even that is not clear) it's clearly a personal position.

If Roy Chaderton's staff did its work, it would not give him blatantly false information to spread in the halls of the Panamerican Union. Instead of slandering fellow Venezuelans and dragging us into a hemispheric fight that has nothing to do with the Venezuelan government's serious human rights violations, Ambassador Chaderton should do his work and stop playing politics in front of the hemisphere's diplomats.

Chaderton's objective is clear. By creating this straw man, he is trying to taint the Venezuelan opposition to Chávez just when opposition students wage a hunger strike in the OAS's offices in Caracas to call attention to the plight of Venezuela's political prisoners.

OAS diplomats would be fools to not see through this shameful ploy.

Cadiva Chronicles

Juan Cristóbal says: The government's multi-billion dollar subsidy to the upper-middle classes, in the form of artificially cheap dollars, is an ongoing focus of this blog. This twisted social program we like to think of as Misión Cadivi has made billionaires out of a handful of arbitrageurs and seeded distortions throughout our economy. But one point we've neglected is the way Cadivi degrades those who decide to play along, wasting their time while limiting their freedom and their ability to move about the globe.

Cadivi's new regulations highlight how far the government is willing to go to control just where you can travel and how much you can spend. According to El Nacional, starting January of 2010, here are some of the rules you will have to comply with in order to participate in this social program which, let it be said, is the only legal way to purchase foreign currency:

• You will be assigned a maximum of $2,500, but only if you are traveling to Europe, Asia and some cities in the US (says nothing about Canada or Australia). It's not clear what cities in the US this covers, but you can be sure none of them are in Florida. The banks are doubtful if there's a realistic way to implement this.
• You need to apply for dollars each time you travel.
  
• You will have to notify your bank and Cadivi of the dates of your trip, as well as the precise location(s) you're planning to visit.
  
• You will only be allowed to use your credit card abroad during the dates that your bank expects you to be abroad.
  
• If you receive approval for, say, a 10-day trip, and after the fourth day you have maxed out your allocation of cheap dollars, Cadivi will audit you and you can be charged with "exchange rate crimes."

Some of these rules may already be in place, some of them may indeed be an improvement. I honestly can't keep track of all the regulations. There just isn't enough space in my RAM for this stuff.

I should consider myself lucky, I guess. Venezuelans wanting a vacation abroad obsess about their Cadivi allocation. It starts with the mad process of getting your bank to even accept your application papers. People can (and do) get their applications rejected for placing the identifying sticker on the wrong place of the specified application file folder - the very center, say, instead of the upper third. No violation is niggling enough for a Bank to let slide. After all, processing your Cadivi app is nothing but cost to your bank. They have no incentive at all to be helpful.

Once they've gotten through all that and left the country, Venezuelans will talk to each other incessantly about whether or not their credit card "worked." They go to great lengths to find an ATM that will give them the permitted amount of cash per trip. Some of my relatives are experts at knowing the rules and maxing out their benefits. My sister in particular has become such a pro that we've begun calling her "Cadiva" - whatever your question about Cadivi, she has the answer.

For those of us who don't live in Venezuela and are lucky not to be in Cadivi's system, it's a sad sight: grown men and women reduced to having to account for their every moment abroad to Papá Gobierno, subjected to numerous restrictions, always fearful that if they step a tiny bit out of line, they will be plucked from the system and never allowed back in. It's kind of like a holiday version of Nineteen Eighty Four.

It's a stark reminder that no matter how much distance you try and put between yourself and Chávez, he is always there. Because no matter how far you go, there's really no escaping the Revolution.

The view from your window: Harare

Harare, Zimbabwe. 8:30 AM.

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Tightening the noose

Juan Cristóbal says: When the government's "Media Responsibility Law" forced all radio stations to allocate five and a half hours of broadcasting per day to programming made by "independent national producers," many decried the move as one more step toward the end of press freedom in Venezuela. Since this didn't pan out quite so dramatically, last Friday, the government upped the ante and announced plans to directly assign three and a half hours (of their choosing) on every radio station to the specific programs and specific producers they like.

In effect, the rule would turn Information Minister Blanca Eekhout into a kind of nationwide Programming Director, with complete control over what can be heard on any given station for hours every day.

The new regulations appear to relate only to the radio, but are fuzzily drafted enough to have TV stations worried.

This, together with the shutdown of dozens of radio stations, as well as the muzzling of prominent opposition journalists Nelson Bocaranda and Marta Colomina and the increasingly evident rash of self-censorship, points the way to the media landscape of the future. It's not just TV it's after. The government won't rest until the radio is as accommodating as Venevisión.

The government's target audience is clear: people in Venezuela's urban centers, who spend two to three hours a day stuck in traffic, and who have begun voting against them. Pretty soon, all those voices telling them the Revolution is a failure will be gone.

Think about this the next time you hear Chávez or his fact-free, for-hire apologists rave about freedom of expression in Venezuela.

Graduating Out of the Axis of Annoyance

Quico says: It's tempting to dismiss Rodrigo Sanz's revelation that Iran is collaborating with Venezuela in an effort to secure high grade Uranium in Santa Elena de Uairén as mere posturing, or even just a slip of the tongue. That would be a serious mistake.

I believe Friday's announcement will come to be remembered as a turning point in the history of the Chávez era. When the time comes to partition our recent past, it will be remembered as the moment when Venezuela graduated out of the Axis of Annoyance and entered a geostrategic space it's never held before.

Here's why. For the last five centuries, a kind of Iron Law of Geopolitics has dictated that what happened in Latin America only made it onto the Big Powers' radar screens when events here got enmeshed in broader geo-strategic concerns.

For example, our Wars of Independence would've been of little interest to the great powers if it hadn't been for the Napoleonic upheaval, followed by the post-Metternichtian shake-out in European great power politics.

In the same vein, what Guatemala chose to do with its government in 1954 or Chile with its affairs in 1973 would've been of no particular interest to the rest of the world, but seen through the prism of the Cold War, they became important. And, of course, Fidel Castro never would've been anything more than an also-ran in the region's long history of megalomaniacal caudillos if he hadn't immersed Cuba in the USSR's global strategy to confront the US.

In the absence such trans-oceanic entanglements, what happens in Latin America should matter to Latin Americans only. Sporadically, an idealistic American president or a plunder-happy US company might decide to dip its toes in the region's politics as a way to burnish his credentials or fatten its bottom line, but only in ways that matter little beyond the borders of the country involved. In the event, Latin America only graduates to the first tier of geo-strategic concerns when it gets sucked into fights cooked up in the other hemisphere.

Whether he realizes it or not, Mining Minister Rodolfo Sanz did exactly that. It injected Venezuela right into the pre-eminent security challenge of the era. For the last 10 years, Chávez has been shadow boxing with the US. On Friday, Sanz shoved him into the rink.

Because we shouldn't fool ourselves: a nuclear armed Iran under the control of an aggressively anti-semitic, proudly extremist Islamic theocracy led by a man known to favor apocalyptic fantasies is a scenario none of the Western Powers can begin to countenance. The potential for Tehran to effectively hold the entire Middle East hostage, dictating terms to the entire region under the implicit threat of nuclear attack is too grave for Europe and the US to accept.

Some might argue that, during the Cold War, having two nuclear armed adversaries facing off against each other served as a stabilizing factor, helping keep the war cold. But there's one fatal flaw in that analogy: the Soviets did not have a death wish, the Iranians do.

That may sound over-dramatic, but the cult of martyrdom is one of the central tenets of Shia Islam, and the absolutely extreme version of Shiism the Iranian mullahs espouse has already led them to send hundreds of thousands of their own citizens to certain violent death. (If you think I'm exaggerating, read this.)

For people genuinely convinced that death in jihad is how you get to heaven por la puerta grande, the possibility of massive nuclear retaliation could easily come to be seen as an opportunity rather than a threat. After all, if you were seriously convinced that you had the chance to guarantee everyone you rule over a privileged spot in Paradise, wouldn't you take it? Wouldn't you feel you had a responsibility to take it?

It's the kind of calculus Israel's military planners are having to weigh every night before they go to sleep.

In the wake of the brazenly stolen presidential elections earlier this year and the grave disclosure over the facility at Qom, the sense of urgency over the Iranian regime's intentions is considerably heightened. Couple that with an aggressively nationalistic government in power in Israel, and the Western Powers could well be drawn into a military confrontation with Iran through no decision of their own, merely as fall-out from a go-it-alone Israeli attack.

This is the scale of the international crisis that Rodolfo Sanz - of all people! - delivered us into with his announcement on Friday. Preventing an Iranian bomb is the number one policy goal of the United States today. That's two. Venezuela is actively helping Iran secure the most critical input needed for such a bomb. That's another two. Two and two make...?

What we have in our hands is a game changer. The west simply cannot laugh off Friday's announcement as just another of Chávez's folkloric eccentricities, and the Chávez administration lame attempts at backtracking ("oh no, he meant the Russians were helping us!") are not believable. Helping Iran get the bomb isn't on a par with helping FARC smuggle drugs to Europe or with financing Ollanta Humala's campaign. It's not an annoyance. It's a first-tier strategic threat.

Chávez knows it. The Israelis know it. The Iranians know it. The Pentagon certainly knows it.

We're sailing into uncharted waters here.