Chávez names his price

Juan Cristóbal says: - This buried little nugget in state-owned wire service ABN is startling in its honesty.

In it, Under-Secretary Francisco Arias Cárdenas very clearly declares what Chávez wants in exchange for returning relations with Colombia to a semblance of normalcy: a face-to-face meeting with Barack Obama.

According to Arias, the region's diplomats should not waste their time organizing summits with Uribe. The OAS, Lula and the rest are all barking up the wrong tree, Arias says, because Chávez's beef is no longer with Uribe but with Obama. Only Obama, he claims, can give Venezuela the guarantees it needs regarding the military agreement between Colombia and the U.S.

In criollo, "yo no vengo a hablar con los payasos, vengo a hablar con el dueño del circo."

After much huffing and puffing, after declaring wars and announcing troop movements on national TV, after $4 billion+ in weapons purchases, we now know it was all the price we needed to pay to get Chávez his much-desired photo-op in the Oval Office.

Remarkable, ain't it?

Not red enough for VTV: Squalid media and revolutionary discontent

Juan Cristóbal says: Many of Venezuela's public servants are mad. They, the red-wearing base of the Revolution, are mad because they don't get paid, because their places of work are under-equipped and they don't have benefits. Mostly, they're mad because they've been promised collective bargaining that never materializes and because their dignity is being trampled on.

But if you didn't watch Globovisión, you probably wouldn't know this.

The list of ironies and internal contradictions of the Bolivarian Revolution is long. One of the more notable recent additions is the fact that Globovisión, one of chavismo's most overused scapegoats, has become the outlet of choice for rank-and-file chavistas with an itch to bitch against the government.

A brief scan of what's been in the news lately could give you a flavor of massive dollop of irony involved.

Here we see a video of the very angry employees of the government-run Hotel Alba Caracas (what used to be the Caracas Hilton before Chávez ... never mind). The employees, more than 400 of them, are incandescent because they haven't been paid and are being harassed by management. They complain about their appalling working conditions - chefs decry the lack of butter, laundry attendants fret over washing machines that don't work. And Globovisión is the only channel there, listening and reporting.



Government oil workers in Anzoátegui State, in eastern Venezuela, are also causing a ruckus. They denounce the government for not signing a new collective bargaining agreement. Union leaders are quick to point out that they will defend their rights just like they "defended the industry during the oil strike of 2002-2003." Globovisión is there to air their frustration.



The government's postal service is also in upheaval. Workers carp that their rights are being trampled upon, saying that "socialism is not being applied here." Unions are being harassed and so they are sending a message to "Comrade Hugo Chávez" ... in case he's watching Globovisión. The union leader interviewed rues that all media has been invited, but only Globovisión came, bitterly singling out a State media that won't air their views.



Apparently, chavismo has not grasped just how dangerous a disgruntled postal worker can be.

Workers from the El Algodonal hospital, west of Caracas, also criticized the government recently for their terrible working conditions. They talk about the crime spree inside the hospital, the lack of doctors and the scarcity of supplies. The person interviewed alerts us that the hospital's Emergency Room has been shut for a year. Another group of workers says they haven't been paid in more than two months, that there's no water, and that sewers run openly next to the hospital.



Retired National Assembly workers also aired their beef in downtown Caracas recently. More than a thousand former workers made a fuss because their pensions haven't been paid. Again, Globovisión carried it prominently.



Even in far-off Portuguesa state, Health Ministry workers use Globovisión as a vehicle to air their grievances about the capacity of their manager and their working conditions. At least these workers managed to get the attention of a chavista Assembly-woman.



And this is just a flavor from the past few days.

But scan VTV's web page and there is no mention of the hotel maids, the oil workers, the El Algodonal ladies, or any of the other government employees who are up in arms. Off-script revolutionaries are strictly verboten on "the channel of all Venezuelans".

The workers' gripes stick to a well-defined script. Worker says she is "with the process", a necessary qualifying statement in order to keep her job. Worker then pledges allegiance to Comrade Chávez and to socialism. Worker goes on to complain that the government is a mess and demands a piece of the petro-pie. Worker reminds the viewer that she and her compañeros are with the process - just in case it wasn't clear. Worker hands it off to fellow worker with a different gripe. And so on...

Once in a while, the worker on the screen will express their surprise and disappointment at the fact that Globovisión is the only channel willing to listen. In a way, Globovisión has become the de facto voice of the proletariat. One would hope the proletariat would ask themselves where they will take their grievances if their beloved "comrade" fulfills his pledge to shut down the only TV channel willing to take them seriously.

This bizarre pattern underscores the vital role that independent media plays in a well-functioning society. On VTV, revolutionaries are useful as props, as abstract tokens of support for the whim of the leader. The second those revolutionaries transcend that role and acquire any depth, any complexity, any individuality, they become dangerous provocateurs to be silenced rather than citizens to be served.

We've been very critical of Globovisión's harsh, strident anti-Chávez content on this blog. But when the channel does what it should - report the news and tell the stories nobody else is telling - it plays a pivotal role in the preservation of what little democratic space we have left.

Villa del Tukiti

Quico says: Don't miss Mac Margolis's epic mauling of Villa del Cine, Hugo's vanity movie studio, in the current issue Newsweek. To wit:

Just inside the studio gates, a man-made canal leads to an artificial stream and lakebed—but there was no water in them when I visited recently. Indoors, the corridors and edit bays are vacant except for one or two stray techies in jeans and tennis shoes. Rows of sewing machines lie idle under dust covers in the costume atelier. An electrical fire earlier this year knocked out most of the studio's work-stations, forcing producers, editors, seamstresses, carpenters, and engineers to relocate. "Here is Studio 1. Six to eight different film sets can fit in here," a perky Cinemaville PR aide chirps, opening the door to an empty warehouse.

The entire thing is couched in this kind of hyper-acerbic tone. Just brutal. Great fun.

[Hat tip: EC]

The Universal Yawn

Quico says: The really remarkable thing about the reaction to Chávez's latest obscene little warriorist hissy fit against Colombia is the sheer universality of the disinterest it elicited. You'd think that when the head of state of a country that's just come out of a five year weapons buying orgy openly announces imminent war on his neighbor people would worry, at least a little bit. What's bizarre and, in a way, heartening, is the extent to which that didn't happen following Sunday's loon-a-thon.

With the exception of this alarmist little rant from no-less-discredited-a-figure than former president Carlos Andrés Pérez (still, remarkably enough, alive and kickin'...his foot into his mouth) reaction to the war that-exists-only-in-Chávez's-head has been remarkably clear-eyed: the equivalent of a national roll-of-the-eyes, swiftly followed by speculation that the guy must be really hurtin' for a way to rally the faithful if we've entered the Rhetorical Galtieri phase already.

This is certainly Teodoro's reading, and the main vibe I get from scanning oppo responses. Nobody seems to be in any doubt that this is a smoke-curtain: what passes for an official response to the overlapping water/electricity/crime crises now buffeting the country.

The whole narrative about a virtual US occupation of Colombia and the imminent threat of gringo-prodded invasion is too weird, too unhinged to take at face value. This may, indeed, come to be remembered as one of the most catastrophic misreadings of a declared presidential intention in the Chávez era, but I really don't think so.

Instead, what I'd say to my Colombian friends is this: Hugo Chávez has decided to cast you in the role of villain.

He's been pushed into it for lack of a better alternative: Barack Obama doesn't really make a credible bogeyman, and the Venezuelan opposition is too disjointed and threadbare to really work in that role anymore. That's a real problem for Chavismo. By its nature, chavismo needs an enemy: an external threat it can vilify and rail against and use to justify any and every authoritarian excess at home. (How long until protesting students are arrested on suspicions of working for DAS?)

Chavismo's internal logic demands an enemy: a totally evil other to put flesh on the bones of the little Manichaean melodrama inside Huguito's head. And now, you're it.

It's not a pleasant fact, but it's a fact.

For Chávez, it's not important that an enemy be real, or recognize itself as an enemy, or even be much interested in what happens in Venezuela at all. The only thing really required of you in this role is that you be - that you exist long enough and semi-plausibly enough to play Dr. Moriarty to his Sherlock Holmes...at least in his supporters' eyes.

As we in the Venezuelan opposition can certainly tell you, it's not a nice role to be cast in. And yet, it's a role. He can't force you to really inhabit it, and the only way you can lose is if you take the bait. So try to grasp the dynamic at work here, and take a deep breath. A very deep breath. In fact, for your own sake, my advice is to join us...in the universal yawn.

The view from your window: Parque Central

Caracas, Venezuela. 11 am.

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War games

Juan Cristóbal says: - Once in a while, Quico and I get emails from readers in Colombia asking about Hugo Chávez’s latest antics vis-a-vis their government. Since yesterday Mr. Chávez decided to up-the-ante on the war talk and spent several minutes saying everyone should get ready for war, I assume Colombians' anxiety over their neighbor to the East is on the rise. The question that begs asking is where this is headed. Are we going to war with Colombia?

The short answer is no.

It's easy to talk about war when you don't bother explaining the specifics of how that war is supposedly going to take place.

In the modern world, there are many ways you can wage war. You can wage a war the old-fashioned way like Saddam did in the early '90s, or the modern way, a-la Donald Rumsfeld. You can do what the VietCong did, or what Al-Qaeda is doing now. But whether by air, by land, by sea, by the Internet or by an army of renegade militants willing to blow themselves up, there is one thing all these tactics require: a plausible course of action.

As it stands, it's hard to conjure up a plausible scenario where all these winds of war translate into an actual, palpable guerre between the two sister countries. Because, what exactly is it that Chávez is telling us to prepare for? And after we're ready, what next?

An air war? Really? Venezuela doesn't have the air power to make a serious dent in Colombia's military infrastructure, and if it did, Colombia has the US covering its back. Starting an air war with Colombia would be suicidal.

A ground war? Most Venezuelan generals have a hard time summoning the strength to stir a glass of 25-year old Scotch with their pinky. The Colombian army is much larger and better equipped than the Venezuelan army.

A guerrilla war? Yeah, like that's gonna work. The Colombian army has been waging a guerrilla war for almost fifty years now. They triple us in experience. As the saying goes, cuando tú vas, yo vengo.

Militant war? Check. Technological war? Check.

The only plausible reason to take the President seriously is if the government expected Colombia to invade Venezuela. But really, does anyone outside the Kool-Aid drinking left believe Colombia (and the US) are going to invade Venezuela any time soon?

Think of the headlines - Nobel Peace Prize-winning US President launches invasion of Venezuela. Makes perfect sense, right?

The only question that remains is why The Fat Warmonger in the Palace would be talking about this.

Easy - the more you talk about war, the more you get the Evos and Lulas of the world to worry about you. Cheap talk of war keeps the talking noggins at Globovisión busy for a couple of days and provides a welcome respite from all the talk about flashlights and buckets. Firing up the guns of war gives you insight into the barracks, and may ultimately provide clues as to who is with you and who is not.

It's understandable that Chávez's words cause discomfort in Bogotá's political circles. Cachacos are, after all, a cultured lot, genetically programmed to be repulsed by the ordinary antics of Veneco power players. But you shouldn't let your prejudices guide your perception of what is real and what isn't.

So my message to my Colombian friends is this: ignore him. It's not about you. When un certain bouffon starts talking crazy about war, the only war that should concern you is the shouting match between the voices in his head.

Chávez is part crazy, part astute political animal. So while the crazy voice may be asking for a war, the rational one knows that would be his doom, just like it was for Videla and Galtieri. That's the voice that is likely to prevail, the only one you really need to pay attention to.

The view from your window: Chicago

Chicago, Illinois, USA. 4 pm.

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The expected begins to happen

Juan Cristóbal says: - Courageous Cuban blogger Yoani Sánchez was briefly kidnapped from the streets of Havana by unidentified thugs and beaten. Her harrowing account is here, in Spanish.

PS.- Alek Boyd has met the woman and has a unique take on this.

Owning up to one's bad calls

Juan Cristóbal says: - Barely a week after we were declaring the Honduras crisis all but over, we get news the agreement has collapsed.

Not only that, a US Senator and leading Micheletti supporter is claiming the US will recognize the outcome of the election, with or without Zelaya.

This takes a ton of pressure off of Micheletti's shoulders and severely diminishes US bargaining power. It also hurts the notion that the US is playing a new ball game in the region.

Somebody pass me a towel.

Game Over

Quico says: Over on BoingBoing, loyal reader and one-time avid gamer Guido Nuñez Mujica has this lovely, meaty rant on the government's just approved ban on video games it deems violent.

As a non-gamer myself, it's easy to overlook how sensitive the gaming-ban is for some people, so I especially liked Guido's passionate description of the way gaming burrows its way into people's identities. It made me realize that gaming may not matter to me, but it definitely matters:

This situation is painful to behold. Even if I barely game at all these days, I am a gamer at neocortex. I spent countless hours solving puzzles, riddles and fighting monsters in dungeons. I rescued Toadstool many times, only to be told that thanks, but my Princess was in another castle, later I joined Link and rescued Zelda from Agahnim and Ganon, using the Master Sword and the Silver Arrows. I got the Zantetsu sword and cut metal, I summoned Ifrit, Odeen and Behemoth. From Dragoon, I became a Paladin. I sneaked on Big Boss' fortress in Zanzibar and stopped doomsday with Solid Snake. I fought along a Double Dragon trapped on a Final Fight, using my Killer Instinct in a Mortal Kombat in which only the greatest Street Fighter would come alive. I was Linked to the Past by a Chrono Trigger, my Soul Blazing, as I lived my Final Fantasies, Wandering from Ys, arriving to a Lagoon, to learn about the Secret of Mana, and finally understood that there is Ever More to life.

These games are a cherished part of my life, they helped to shape my young mind, they gave me challenges and vastly improved my English, opening the door to a whole new world of literature, music and people from all around the world. What I have achieved, all my research, how I have been able to travel even though I'm always broke, the hard work I've done to convince people to fund a start up for cheap biotech for developing countries and regular folks, none of that would have been possible hadn't I learned English through video games.

Now, thanks to the tiny horizons of the cast of morons who govern me, thanks to the stupidity and ham-fisted authoritarianism of the local authorities, so beloved of so many liberals, my 7 year old brother's chances to do the same could be greatly impacted.

Killer fact: in Venezuela, giving a child a toy gun is now more heavily punished than giving a child a real gun.

Be sure to read the whole thing.

The view from your window: Asunción

Asunción, Paraguay. 1 pm.

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Loser boasts of taking from winner

Juan Cristóbal says: - This video, secretly taped, shows the loser in last year's election for Caracas Metropolitan Mayor, chavista Aristóbulo Istúriz, explaining the raison d'etre and the modus operandi through which they simply took the winner's budget, and reassigned it to chavistas.

In other words, it's as if John McCain took away most of Barack Obama's budget and gushed about it.

(Hat tip: Pelao)

The view from your window: Addis Ababa

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 2:30 PM.

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The Huffington Post ...

Juan Cristóbal says: - ... discusses harassment of gays and lesbians at the hands of Venezuelan government goons. Check it out - I wonder what Sean Penn thinks about this.

BCVSA and The Exchange Rate that Must Not Be Named

Quico says: Two and a half years ago, when Chávez announced PDVSA would start manufacturing shoes and selling beans and I wrote this snarky little post about the acute outbreak of role confusion in Venezuela's institutions, I could not have imagined that the trend would reach the extremes it has. As the decade comes to a close, Venezuela faces a macroeconomic reality that is bizarre on so many levels that it seems almost normal that our oil company is now, effectively, our Central Bank.

It all goes back to this blog's favorite hobby horse: the dual foreign currency market.

Your economics textbook will tell you that a country's Central Bank is the public entity charged with issuing the nation's currency and preserving its value. Operationally, that usually translates into a mandate to fight inflation by keeping the money supply from growing too much, too quickly.

But in a port economy like Venezuela's, where the vast bulk of consumption goods are imported, inflation is driven as much by the price of foreign exchange as by the absolute amount of money in circulation. The reason is easy to grasp intuitively: if you eat a lot of imported rice at $1 per kilo, and the price of that dollar rises from Bs.2 to Bs.4, you've just imported 100% rice inflation via the exchange rate.

Which is why, in import-dependent economies like ours, managing the foreign exchange market is one of the Central Bank's main tools as it seeks to control inflation. After all, if you want to control the price of dollar-denominated goods, you would be well advised to control the price of the dollar.

Enter Venezuela's Alice-in-Wonderland exchange-rate system, where the gap between government-speak and reality gets wider every passing year. While the Central Bank controls the official exchange rate, this rate is increasingly irrelevant to the Venezuelan economy. Everybody knows that in Venezuela, the price of imported goods tracks the Voldemort Exchange Rate - you know, the one that must not be named.

Which makes the Central Bank an ever more marginal player in the management of the Venezuelan economy: its control extends only to the de mentirita exchange rate, not to the real one.

Over time, even the nullities that govern us were forced to come to grips with the obvious: that prices in Venezuela are highly sensitive to an exchange rate that's not supposed to exist. The policy of wishing it away was not sustainable. The catch is that there wasn't an evident way to intervene the other market without acknowledging its existence.

To come to grips with the no-kidding exchange market, the authorities needed to find some highly opaque, politically docile institution with lots and lots of dollars on hand that it could spend off-budget and off-adult-supervision and with an upper management greedy enough to jump at the chance to manage the Voldemort market...and, well, in Venezuela that brief describes just one entity.

For months now, PDVSA has been more or less openly intervening the parallel dollar market, sporadically stepping in to keep the Voldemort Rate from climbing too high. But...that kind of macroeconomic management is supposed to be the Central Bank's job...ergo, PDVSA is, in all but name, the new Central Bank: BCVSA.

What we have in Venezuela is an all-but acknowledged dirty float, a system where the government accepts that the currency's fluctuations are beyond its control but nonetheless steps in now and then to manipulate the exchange rate.

The problem with this - aside from the whole "illegal", "unconstitutional," yada yada boring counter-revolutionary stuff people like me always write - is that it's insanely, incredibly opaque. Billions of dollars are at stake in a market that the government actively fosters and periodically intervenes, but whose existence it can't acknowledge.

Maybe a "self-loathing float" is a better description: what we have here is a heavily meddled with float that the government refuses to even talk about, subject to interventions it sure as hell won't let anybody audit. The truly remarkable thing would be if such an extraordinarily cash flush, deliriously opaque arrangement didn't breed a mass of corrupt practices.

Take a moment here to think through the possibilities. If you have the inside information to accurately time the fluctuations of the Voldemort Market, you suddenly put yourself in a position to make genuinely obscene amounts of money off of that information. Say you know that BCVSA plans to intervene tomorrow, selling $200 million to operators to take 20 cents off of the Voldemort rate. You just go to your bank, borrow some dollars, use them to buy bolivars, sit tight, and sell the bolivars tomorrow, when each of them is 20 cents more valuable. Then you pay back your bank and you pocket the difference. Money for nothing and chicks for free, no risk involved.

Sure, 20 cents may not sound like much, but do this kind of thing on a big enough scale and you can make millions and millions of dollars. Which is why I'm convinced that every time the secret dollar ticks up or down 20 cents, another batch of Bolivarian millionaires is made.

Now, imagine you're working in BCVSA and you're in a position to directly decide when you're going to step in to inject dollars into the Voldemort market. In that situation you're not just able to profit for yourself handsomely, but you're also in a position to make or break fortunes all around you.

One call to your friend with that tip and you've turned him into an instant millionaire. The same call, recorded by spies in Miraflores, earns the Executive Power the unwavering loyalty of the civil service reaping the benefits of the Revolution's discretion.

That's the stuff power is made of in the Chávez era.

There is simply no way a system that works on such levels of secrecy and opacity and that handles the kinds of sums BCVSA handles is anything less than writhing, heaving cesspool of corruption. The benefits from diving in are too strong, and the disincentives are practically non-existent.

Reproduced Verbatim

The North Korean State (what other kind is there?) News Agency says:

National Seminar on Juche Idea Held in Venezuela

Pyongyang, November 1 (KCNA) -- A national seminar on the Juche idea and the Songun politics took place in Venezuela on October 17 on the occasion of the 64th birthday of the Workers' Party of Korea.

Omar Lopez, chairman of the Venezuelan National Society for the Study of the Juche Idea, explained the essence of the Juche idea founded by President Kim Il Sung, saying that the idea is fully displaying its vitality in the Venezuelan people's efforts for building socialism.

Diego Antonio Rivero, chairman of the Venezuela-Korea Friendship and Solidarity Association, said that Kim Il Sung was the great leader of the Korean people and the world people as he led the socialist revolution and construction in Korea to victory and devoted himself to the cause of global independence. That is why the progressive people are still highly praising his immortal exploits, he added.

A professor of Bolivar University stressed that all the achievements made by the Korean people are a brilliant fruition of the Songun politics pursued by General Secretary Kim Jong Il. The cause of the Korean people facing down imperialism gives strength and courage to the world revolutionary peoples including the Venezuelan people and it has become a model of anti-imperialist struggle, he stressed.

A message of greetings to Kim Jong Il was adopted at the seminar.

Hat tip: SG

Update: In the comments section, GTAC adds:

This is not really a fringe group, even if they are small in numbers.

The Venezuelan far left splintered during the Guerrilla experience in the 60's-70's because of many tactical and strategic disagreements. The monolithic PCV, which was pro-USSR (a country which did not support guerrilla warfare by the late 60s), was then divided in a number of factions: pro-PRC, pro-Albania, pro-Cuba, Eurocommunist, School of Frankfurt types, and so forth.

Of course, there had to be a pro-Juche idea faction. This group was led by, among others, former guerrilla and philosophy professor Jose Rafael Nuñez Tenorio, who in 1969 published a book called “Bolivar y la Guerra revolucionaria”, basically creating the final blend of the Bolivar-as-antiimperialist-guerrilla-leader trope (already stated by Cuba and Juan Bosch in the Dominican Republic), stating that liberal democracy was in fact a dictatorship which had to be violently toppled, just as the Spanish Colonial power needed to be defeated. As the guerrilla failed, he was among the advocates of an alliance between civilians and ideologically oriented leftist members of the military.

This could mean nothing, unless you take into account that Núñez was founder of the Vth Republic Movement, a member of its National Tactical Command, and one of the men inside the board of the Chávez’ 1998 presidential campaign: he gave an interview with Duno and Mieres to El Nacional’s revista PRIMICIA, which exposed the mid-to-long term plans of a potential Chávez presidency: the dismantling of congress and the Judicial power through the constituyente; the penetration and eventual dissolution of the Armed Forces, Central Bank, and the de-technocratization of PDVSA.

As member of the MVR, he was posthumously elected as Senator for Caracas in 1998, unable to serve as a congressman because of his death in October. During his funeral, which I attended as a curious UCV student and which was held at the Patio Cubierto del Rectorado, the late professor Núñez’ coffin was draped with… a North Korean flag!

What's happening in Táchira?

Juan Cristóbal says: - The border is closed.

Two National Guardsmen were murdered.

Nine Colombians were murdered last week.

What's going on? Is this related to the government's crackdown on the illegal smuggling of gasoline?

If you're on the ground or have relatives in the Land of Presidents, tell us what you know.

The view from your window: Montreal

Montreal, QC, Canada. 31 October 2009, 5:00 pm.

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Is Iberdrola scamming Venezuelan taxpayers?

Juan Cristóbal says: Why does it cost 39% more than average for a Spanish company to build a power plant in Cumaná than anywhere else in the world? Why does it cost 12% more than its next most expensive project anywhere in the world? And what does it take these days to get anyone in Venezuela to take a hard look at these numbers?

These are just some of the questions arising from the deals now being struck between the Spanish government, Spanish multinationals and the Chávez administration. Using estimates from the International Energy Agency, I've argued there is no way the 1,000 MegaWatt (MW) combined-cycle electric plant being built in Cumaná for 1.4 billion Euros is being purchased at market rates. The multi-million dollar overcharge is out in the open.

Of course, whether or not you believe you're being overcharged depends entirely on how reliable you think the benchmark is. If you believe the IEA is a questionable benchmark, then on the face of it, there is no way of knowing whether the Iberdrola project is based on real costs or whether something far more sinister is at hand.

As it turns out, there is another set of benchmarks available: Iberdrola's combined-cycle projects in other parts of the world.

As we said in the previous post, Iberdrola's project costs Venezuelan taxpayers 1,400 Euros per KiloWatt (kW) of installed capacity. To get that number, simply divide 1.45 billion Euros by the 1 million kW capacity the plant will have (1 MW is 1,000 kW, so 1,000 MW is 1 million kW).

The question that begs asking is: what were the costs of Iberdrola's other combined-cycle projects? Let's see.

- In Lithuania, it is building a 440 MW plant for 330 million Euros. The cost of the Lithuanian plant is 750 Euros per kW.

- In Algeria, it is building a 1,200 MW plant for 1.47 billion Euros. The cost of the Algerian plant is 1,225 Euros per kW.

- In Russia, it is building a 403 MW plant for 311 million Euros. The cost of the Russian plant is 771 Euros per kW.

- In Qatar, it is building a massive 2,000 MW plant for 1.63 billion Euros. The cost of the Qatari plant is 815 Euros per kW.

- In Latvia, it is building a 420 MW facility for 300 million Euros. The cost of the Latvian plant is 714 Euros per kW.

The numbers don't lie. The Cumaná project is, by far, the most expensive combined-cycle power plant in Iberdrola's investment portfolio.

There may just be a perfectly valid reason for all of this, but I doubt it. What possible explanation, other than corruption, can there be for such a difference? Are Iberdrola's stockholders aware that, because they list their ADRs in the New York Stock Exchange, Iberdrola would fall under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act? What does European legislation say about this? Why aren't European MPs looking into this?

And why are Venezuelan journalists simply ignoring this issue?

Venezuelan taxpayers deserve an answer.

Headline of the Year

Quico says: I dare you to click on this and not laugh.

Go on, click.

You laughed, didn't you?

Oh sure, a second later you caught yourself. You realized this isn't actually funny at all. You felt vaguely guilty that you couldn't contain that chuckle. The man is dead, for god's sake. It's no joke.

But admit it, before all that, you chuckled.

[Hat tip: CL.]