The View from Your Window: Washington

Washington, DC - 12:39 p.m.

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Ending the Tsunami of Paja on Gringos in Colombia

Quico says: First things first: under current geostrategic realities, the notion that the US could mount an invasion of Venezuela (or Ecuador) from Colombia is nuts. Bonkers. Plain crazy.

Nobody with a passing acquaintance of the Obama administration's foreign policy, or the US's budgetary constraints, military capabilities, political realities or strategic interests could take such an idea seriously. There's so much that's wrongheaded and bizarre about the claim, there's very little point in even going through all the various reasons why it's simply not believable.

We need to be perfectly up-front about that as we dissect Hugo Chávez's claim that the recent US Military Agreement with Colombia (which does not open US military bases there and does not lead to a sharp spike in the presence of US military personnel there) is some kind of prelude to a US invasion of Venezuela.

Once we discard the pretext, I can think of two possible reasons why Chávez might react quite as strongly as he has to a stepped up US military presence in Colombia. It's one of two things. Either,

A- He's planning to do something drastic that fundamentally alters the US geostrategic calculus in the Andean region.

or

B- The talk of invasions and cross-border wars is a rhetorical smokescreen: really, he's trying to help his allies in the Colombian conflict (hint: not the government.)

The first possibility, while not quite impossible, strikes me as far-fetched. There is only one action Chávez could undertake that would alter the US geostrategic calculus sufficiently to make an invasion exit the realm of straight-out science fiction and enter that of strategic possibility: making a serious attempt to produce nuclear weapons.

This is not impossible, and certainly Venezuela's otherwise-difficult-to-fathom alliance with the Ahmadinejad/Khamenei regime in Tehran should give us pause. Nonetheless, the technical barriers involved are massive, and the risks seem too big for anyone to face.

I think the much more likely scenario, therefore, is B-: the latest hissy fit about a gringo invasion is cover for an ulterior motive.

Lets review the bidding, here:

1. Chávez's alliance with FARC is an open secret.
2. Chávez arms FARC.
3. Chávez allows FARC to use Venezuela as its rearguard.
4. High ranking chavista officials aid FARC's narcotics operations.

This we all pretty much know, and the US and Colombian intelligence services know for sure....from that, it's no stretch to conclude that Chávez's end-game vis-à-vis the Colombian conflict, his ultimate goal there, is for FARC to win the war and establish a friendly government in Bogotá.

That's - to put it mildly - an unrealistic aim. But within the bubble of hyperleftist lunacy Chávez has created around himself in Miraflores, the possibility of FARC eventually winning the war in Colombia and toppling the democratically elected government has obviously not been discarded. Indeed, it sure looks like this is Chávez's end-game for Colombia. And it's because that's Chávez's ultimate goal there that preventing any escalation of US involvement there is a priority.

In raising a stink about the recent military deal, Chávez is simply going to bat for an ally. Not at all unlike what he's tried to do for Zelaya in Honduras. His ally is threatened, so Hugo tries to use the power resources at his disposal to help out. No more, no less.

But, from the Colombian point of view, should the fact that your neighbors are allied with the narcoterrorists on your soil count as a reason to back down? I really don't see it.

The View from Your Window

Washington, DC: 11:30 a.m.

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Uribe and Obama should scrap their deal

Juan Cristóbal says: - As you probably know, the recent controversy surrounding Venezuela and Colombia has to do with an agreement allowing the US Armed Forces to use 7 military bases inside Colombian territory. The deal has caused a diplomatic firestorm. The combination of hot air coming from Miraflores and the carbon footprint from Uribe's seven-countries-in-five-days tour will probably cause significant chunks of the polar ice caps to disappear. More significantly, Chávez’s threats to cut off all trade with Colombia should be taken seriously. The question begging to be asked is whether it's all worth it.

I think it isn't.

Breaking commercial ties with Colombia would be terrible for Venezuelans. Not only would the price of everything from cars to blumers increase by having to find other, more costly partners, but the distance and the lack of established distribution chains means these hikes would likely be accompanied by significant shortages. Chávez’s further threats to respond by going shopping in Moscow for even more military hardware would only add to Venezuelans' misery.

Let's face it, there is nothing Venezuelans gain from this policy and, quite frankly, little Colombians gain. Many commentators, from Andres Oppenheimer to National Security Adviser Jim Jones, have said the agreement is no big deal and would not add to the number of troops already in Colombia. If that's the case, why push for it then?

Colombia also has a lot to lose. Uribe is being forced to explain domestic policy to friendly neighbors, and usually balanced Presidents such as Uruguay's Tabaré Vásquez have come out unconvinced his idea is a good one. More importantly, Uribe's move would embolden the more disagreeable sectors of Colombia's opposition. Just today we learn Chávez is holding high-level meetings with Colombia's disgraced former President Samper, and tomorrow he meets the Colombian opposition. And besides, it's not like Uribe owes the US many favors after the Democrats in Congress have essentially shelved the Colombia-U.S. Free Trade Agreement.

This is a bad move for the US as well. Whatever extra mobility they gain by placing themselves in Colombia's bases is offset by the credibility they lose in a region that has shown much goodwill toward American policy in the last few months. Is it really worth it to anger its allies in order to appease its military establishment who persist in fighting a misguided war on drugs that, frankly, is not showing much in the way of results? Can't they simply do whatever they were meant to do with this agreement, only do it using some other, more informal arrangements, without so much pomp?

This deal is bad for Uribe, bad for the US, bad for the US's image in the region, and most of all, bad for Venezuelans. Let's see, that's four bads, no goods.

The agreement gives Chávez the perfect excuse to rally around the flag and ignore the important domestic issues he should be paying attention to. Uribe and Obama should scrap it.

The View from Your Window

Taunus, Germany: 7:18 p.m.

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The Other Media Crisis

Quico says: Everyone knows that the Big Crisis affecting Venezuelan journalism is that the news business just doesn't gel with a government congenitally allergic to criticism. Chavismo now openly advocates substituting a free and vibrant press with a subservient, quasi-statist "community media". But the open intimidation and harassment the private media faces is only one aspect of the problem, and perhaps not even the biggest one. The biggest one is that, today, essentially every news-gathering organization in the country - except for one - is losing money.

Circulation figures for major newspapers are a tightly held secret in Venezuela. Reliable sources tell me that El Nacional, for instance, is now circulating fewer than 20,000 copies every weekday. Yes, you read that right. El Universal I don't know about, but is unlikely to be far above that.

In fact, the only Venezuelan newspaper that is financially viable these days is Ultimas Noticias, which rides its tabloid sensibility to a respectable (yet far from awesome) circulation tally in the low-to-mid six-figures on weekdays. That allows them to break even while everybody else is losing money.

Tal Cual? A money hole. Globovisión? A charity case. Notitarde? Beyond hopeless. Every news organization in the country except for Ultimas Noticias loses money.

In effect, this means that organizations lacking a powerful financial backer - like Tal Cual - operate under insanely tight constraints. Our newspapers are precarious operations run on a shoestring by badly underpaid staff perennially one fine away from going under.

Meanwhile organizations enjoying the support of powerful, deep pocketed backers can keep operating, not as commercial enterprises but rather as personal projects. El Nacional exists purely because Miguel Henrique Otero subscribes to the kamikaze school of financial management, no other reason. El Universal survives because Andrés Mata thinks poking Chávez in the eye is good fun. If these products were run as by purely commercial standards, they would've closed years ago. And however outsized their martyr complexes might be, even the Zuloagas and Oteros of this world will run out of money eventually.

Except, of course, if your backer has the largest oil reserves in the Western hemisphere. One of the scary things of this phenomenon is that soon we may face a reality where the only newspapers that survive are Ultimas Noticias and Chavez-propaganda pieces such as Diario Vea, supported by the inexhaustible budget for government advertisement and its barely-hidden policy of rewarding favorable editorials.

While tempting to blame this, too, on Chávez, the financial crisis afflicting our newspapers is merely the Venezuelan expression of a worldwide phenomenon. Circulation is falling everywhere. Advertisers who can go on Craig's List for free have no reason to hand over their hard earned cash to a newsroom. Eyeballs are moving off the page and onto the web, and this would be happening even if Luisa Ortega Diaz had never been born.

Underlying global trends in media consumption patterns could be doing as much to doom Venezuela's traditional news organization as Chávez is. And the Venezuelan media - barely able to survive in the incredibly hostile atmosphere chavismo creates - just don't seem to have a plan to deal with it at all.

To be fair, they're not alone. The SF Chronicle and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer couldn't crack that nut either. When even Conde Nast is closing magazines and firing staff, it's clear that the media can run, but they can't hide.

Over the next few years, people worldwide are going to have to get used to a radical shift in the way news gathering is financed and organized, and a lot of commentators are talking in horrified terms about a kind of "gap": a period after the legacy-model is dead and buried but before anything rises up to replace it.

How that shakes out, I don't know. I do know that, if we're to survive the twin onslaughts of chavismo and the Other Crisis, "Citizen Journalism" is going to have to kick it up a notch and complete the transition from meaningless catchphrase to working model of news gathering in a big hurry.

Juan Cristóbal and I will do our part. Will you?

Lingering questions from Chávez’s press conference

Juan Cristóbal says: - Hugo Chávez gave an off-limits-to-the-locals press conference today. In it, he went in depth about the AT-4 missile launchers belonging to the Venezuelan Armed Forces and found in the hands of the FARC.

He gave a few explanations. What follows are his explanations as I understand them, and the questions that I'm still left wondering about.

I obviously wasn't there, and it's entirely possible these questions were answered, so if you have more insight or if you saw the ghastly thing, please share your info.

Chávez says: "The rocket launchers were stolen in 1995."
I ask: If that's the case, why didn't you tell the Colombians two months ago when you were alerted of their finding? Why did you not share this information with the Swedish government? And why wasn't the Colombian government aware these weapons had been stolen? Are the Venezuelan Armed Forces in such a state of disarray that it takes more than two months and a diplomatic incident with two countries to simply locate the precise fate of military weaponry? Who is going to take the blame for this delay?

Chávez says: "The rocket launchers had already been used and were useless."
I ask: Did the FARC not know this? Why would they be careful to stowe these weapons in remote parts of the jungle if they were basically useless military junk? How do you know they had been used already? And if that is the case, why is the Colombian government concerned? Are you suggesting the Colombian government doesn't know the rocket launchers were useless/had been used? Or are you suggesting they are feigning outrage over nothing?

Chávez says: "Serial numbers can be easily manipulated."
I ask: So, are you saying the serial numbers were manipulated in this case? If so, what are the real serial numbers of the rocket launchers? And if so, how do you know the ones Uribe found were the ones stolen in Cararabo? Are you saying the Swedish government is looking for an explanation based on fake serial numbers? And if they can be easily manipulated, who are you claiming manipulated them? Have you communicated all of this to the Swedish government? Have they accepted your explanation?

I'm just wonderin' ...

The View from Your Window

New York, NY: 1:35 p.m.

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The View from Your Window

Heidelberg, Germany: 3:23 p.m.

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Prominent chavista pans new Media Law

Juan Cristóbal says: - Former Constitutional Assembly member and former Ambassador to Mexico Vladimir Villegas wrote a stinging op-ed piece trashing the new Media Law under discussion in the legislature. Villegas, who is also a former president of government mouthpiece VTV, sensibly blasts the law for "legalizing censorship" and "criminalizing journalism."

He claims the law is not needed because current Venezuelan libel laws are sufficient, and the Constitution has additional provisions regarding the right to respond to information broadcast by the media. He also blasts the government for closing 34 radio stations, saying that the excuses given by Communications Czar Diosdado Cabello about this being "an administrative decision" are bunk.

Read the piece here . The only question one is left with is why Villegas still calls himself a chavista.

Our Insane New Cycle

Quico says: Can you believe that the revelation that Venezuelan army AT4 rocket launchers were found in FARC's possession is less than one week old!?

After Twittergate, the Ley CDM, the closing of three dozen radio stations, Chávez's groin injury, Rangel Silva trying to get FARC anti-aircraft weapons, the P.R.-destroying, constitution-defying Electoral Processes Law being passed (boy that one flew under the radar), CNB broadcasting via loudspeaker (wait, doesn't sound count as a public airwave?!), Lina Ron's toilet emergency, and the 700 other important-but-not-flashy stories swept under the rug by all this mayhem, the AT4s story already seems positively ancient!

Créelo...it hasn't even been a week.

There's just no keeping up.

Sometimes I amuse myself by trying to imagine how the U.S. media might deal with any one story of comparable magnitude stateside - Michael Moore leads tear-gas raid against FoxNews! or Federal elections commission to Gerrymander all congressional districts nationwide to favor democrats! or Attorney General calls for Michelle Malkin to be jailed! - can you imagine?!

Any one of those would get wall-to-wall coverage on the cable news channels for weeks on end, setting off a constitutional crisis and a spate of resignations. Here, we're expected to take all that in in a single week...plus do things like laundry and brushing our teeth as well...it's not possible, I tell you.

Our news cycle is as hyperactive as our presi. Amid the ongoing crackdown on the media, the government fails to grasp that the way you really screw the papers is by...being boring!

Seriously, a government that generates this volume of news is, objectively speaking, a journalistic God send...bad for sanity, granted...but Venezuelan newsrooms don't know the meaning of the term "slow news day".

Gas del Bueno

Quico says: A group of some 35 pro-Chávez thugs, have just stormed Globovisión and tossed multiple tear gas canisters into the building. The group, led by notorious Chavista shocktroop leader Lina Ron, subdued the station's security personnel using firearms and wounded two people: a guard, and a local cop.

I don't like to throw words like this around. But on this occassion, it doesn't really feel like I have a choice:

What we're seeing here is fascism.

Fascism is a method for administering state violence in order to intimidate, harass and, if need be, jail, exile or kill dissidents into submission. What happened today in Globovision was a crime. The systematic use of such crimes on the part of the state as an intimidatory tactic to suppress dissent, that is fascism.

Funny how, in Venezuela, the word's lost its edge. It's been drained of meaning through overuse - together with a fair dose of deliberate propagandistic misuse - to such an extent, I have to wonder if it's even possible to rescue the original horror it conveyed.

You can't hear the word tossed around happily 300 times per day on VTV without it dulling your sense for its gravity. Its true meaning may be beyond our collective reach by now. But then, deforming language is part of the Chávez recipe.

Make no mistake about it, it is extremely grave.

#freemediave and the boiling media war

Juan Cristóbal says: -The government's takeover of 34 radio stations over the weekend has gained considerable attention. In spite of the bad PR it is getting and bound to continue getting, the assault on free speech is picking up speed. More closures have been announced, and the National Assembly will begin studying the Media Law as soon as Tuesday.

The remarkable thing is that since Venezuela's opposition is using tools such as Twitter to get the message out (under the topic #freemediave), the government has begun a hilarious, adolescent campaign to discredit that, too.

This press release from the government's ABN propaganda outlet should go into the Hall of Fame of chavista unintentional jokes. It childishly boasts that "#freemediave" has lost its spot in the top 10 Twitter topics - and yes, some poor chavista sap is actually tracking this stuff.

It claims the lack of popularity is probably due to the oppposition "not having solid arguments" or because they defend "illegal" radio stations instead of proposing "alternatives."

To those who have endured the government's eight-hour cadenas without a single coherent thought, blasting the opposition for not making solid arguments in 140 characters or less sounds like a joke. But in reality, it's the government's futile attempts to pretend this onslaught has anything to do with "arguments" what makes us chuckle. It's like a school bully saying, after beating the crap out of you, that he simply didn't find your logic all that convincing.

ABN informs its readers that Twitter's "official language" is "English" and suggests this non-fact is partly to blame for #freemediave's perceived lack of traction. It claims the problem is that the Twitter campaign is "aimed" at higher-income Venezuelans who represent less than 10% of the population, and ignores poor Venezuelans, who compose the majority of Internet users. In the government's eyes, poor Internet users do not use Twitter because ... just because (and, damn it, this guy will make sure that stays that way!.

It's not clear whether the point of the article is anything but boasting about ... something. What is clear is that the government does not understand Twitter nor its power yet.

The government's assault on free speech marches on, and it will use all the tools available (oil, media, judicial repression, undeserved hubris, bad grammar) to fight the coming backlash.

Moratinos = Franco

Juan Cristóbal says: - Over the weekend, Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Angel Moratinos opined that the freedom of expression situation in Venezuela is "satisfactory." Reports linking that view to the sweet deals the Venezuelan government recently signed with Spanish company Repsol YPF are...well, "destabilizing the State's institutions."

(Kudos to the brilliant Rayma Suprani for that cartoon).

Mutatis Mutandi

George Orwell might have said: In our country, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the abolition of Proportional Representation, the arbitrary seizure of private firms , the open politization of the judiciary and the closure of opposition radio stations, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of chavismo.

Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. An electoral law is approved to ensure 51% of the votes land you 95% of the seats in parliament, and this is called "deepening electoral participation." Armed troops arrive unannounced to seize a firm a family has spent a lifetime building and hand it off to a clique of well-connected chavista bureaucrats: this is called "establishing the social property system". Judges are harassed, physically intimidated, threatened and eventually fired for resisting pressure to rule against regime opponents, and this is called "revolutionary justice". Hundreds of dissident radio stations are shut down, their employees lose their jobs, and the views they broadcast are silenced: this is called "democratizing the radioelectric spectrum" or "ending the broadcasting latifundia." Journalists are threatened with long jail sentences for stepping over any one of a dozen loosely defined, desperately blurry lines in criticizing the regime, and this is called "protecting the mental health of media users."

Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Luisa Ortega Diaz's Ley CDM. He cannot say outright, ‘I believe in censoring dissidents when you can get good results by doing so’. Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

‘While freely conceding that the Chavez regime exhibits certain features which imperialist champions of bourgeois free speech may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods...’

[The original text.]

The View From Your Window

Tokyo, Japan, 34th floor, 4:15 PM.

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Play it again, S.A.M.

Quico says: Simón Romero's NYTimes story today detailing new evidence of Venezuela's continued, close cooperation with FARC will send a chill down your spine.

We learn that he-who-shall-soon-have-the-power-to-block-access-to-Caracas-Chronicles, Gen. Henry Rangel Silva, was involved in helping to provide FARC with Russian made, man-portable SA-7 Surface-to-Air-Missiles (SAMs).

If true - and the Times says it doesn't know whether the deal went through in the end - this would be exceedingly sensitive. Because, think about it: how many tanks actually see combat in Colombia?! Not a lot. Those unguided Swedish AT4s - while certainly cool to look at and exceedingly unpleasant if fired in your general direction - were never going to be game-changers in the Colombian conflict.

But everything the Colombian army does it does with helicopters. Give FARC the means to shoot down choppers and the Colombian conflict changes dramatically, which is why having SAM-toting guerrillas running around below the forest cover is basically the cachaco brass's worst nightmare.

In the end, the part that alarms me the most is that a bichito brutish enough to help FARC get its hands on guided missiles is soon going to be running the State Telecoms company.

May Diosdado agarrate us confesated.

E Pluribus Chigüirum

Quico says: El Chigüire Bipolar long ago cemented its position as the place for the most incisive, wicked and hilarious satire in Venezuela today. But their last few posts - especially adapted to the Ley Contra Delitos Mediáticos (CDM) - have been superlative. That friggin' rat has more chispa in its little toe than most of us have in our whole families.

Viva Hillary!

Quico says: Read my little paean to Hillary Clinton for her role in the Honduran crisis over on TNR's mass blog, The Plank.

Want primaries? Join the Facebook group

Juan Cristóbal says: - Remember the idea of opposition primaries? Now there's a Facebook group promoting it. It's never too early to jump on this bandwagon...

The View from Your Window

Dublin, Ireland: 1:53 p.m.

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What God Giveth, Godgiven Taketh Away

Quico says: So, guess who is the first chicharrón to go public with enthusiastic support for Luisa Ortega Díaz's fascist little aberration of a "Media Crimes Law"?

Diosdado Cabello, of course.

It figures. Because, come to think of it, every time I see reports like this one detailing the multiple, well documented corruption allegations facing Diosdado, and then realize that, instead of whiling away his afternoons in a prison the guy is still Infrastructure Minister, in charge of the Telecoms regulations, and, in effect, the second most powerful person in my country, I'm overwhelmed by a powerful "sensation of impunity".

Turns out that, under the new law, writing something that makes me feel that way will land you in jail for two to four years...how very, very convenient!

Pardon me while I retch.

PLOP! Chronicles: Micheletti Asks Arias for Help Reinstating Zelaya

Quico says: And now for something completely different: The New York Times reports that Honduras' de facto president Roberto Micheletti has come around and now favors returning democratically-elected-then-deposed-nutter Mel Zelaya to the presidency, along the lines of the Arias mediation plan. The paper reports Micheletti's biggest problem now is building support for the San José Accords within Honduras's extremely polarized institutions.

Coming just days after Hillary Clinton blindsided the golpista elite by securing a document from the Honduran army ratifying their "unrestricted support" for the Óscar Arias mediated negotiations, Micheletti's U-Turn could constitute one of the most stunning breakthroughs for US foreign policy in the region in a long time.

Of course, putting Zelaya back in office is only half the battle for Honduras's beleagered democracy. Ensuring he can't abuse that office between now and November's elections is, arguably, the trickier half.

Still, we should pause to realize just how much more effective US diplomacy in the region has gotten in the span of just a few months. Without bluster, without threats, without marines or expeditionary forces or provocative gestures, the gringos now seem to be on the verge of squaring the Honduran circle: restoring the democratically elected leader while at the same time safeguarding the nation's constitutional institution from his attacks.

Nobody said it would be easy, and such a settlement still has powerful enemies. But Foggy Bottom is much closer to pulling this off today than seemed imaginable even 24 hours ago.

Protecting the poor, defenseless narcopetrostate from its unspeakably horrid citizens

Juan Cristóbal and Quico say: What would you say is the opposite of human rights? These days, in international usage, the defense of human rights seems to refer largely to measures that protect citizens from abuses of power against them by the state.

If we sign off on that definition, then Prosecutor General Luisa Ortega Díaz's speech to the National Assembly today must count as the diametrical opposite of human rights. Her speech, and the "Special Media Crimes Bill" she introduced, were nothing less than an impassioned plea to defend the poor, defenseless chavista narcopetrostate from abuse at the hand of its feral citizenry.

In effect, Ortega Díaz is calling for citizens who exercise their right to free speech "wrongly" to face long prison terms. That's not even the rabid escaulido twist on what she said, that's just ... what she said!

Nobody has been a harsher critic of the opposition media's many and serious shortcomings than this blog. But we need to keep our wits about us. What Ortega Diaz is proposing is a system certain to fill up Venezuela's jails with journalists, media owners and bloggers who, in one way or another, anger members of the new governing elite.

The brazenness and scope of her speech is chilling. The thoughtcrimes "media crimes" that the esteemed Ortega Diaz wants to make punishable with jail are expressed in terms vague enough to be essentially boundless.

For Ortega Diaz, journalists should be criminally liable not just for what they write, but also for the perceptions that the things they write create in their readers. Anyone who uses the mass media to communicate something that disturbs "social peace," "mental health" or "public morals" can end up in jail. Her bill calls for the incarceration of anyone who, through their use of mass media, "destabilizes the State's institutions." Anyone who broadcasts anything that may cause "hatred and hostility" toward people based on, among other things, their "ideology or political affiliation" will end up in the slammer.

Standards like those are vague enough to be replaceable by a single word: everything. Every single thing a journalist writes is bound to lead someone somewhere to create a perception different from the one Ortega Diaz thinks is right. Every single opinion a blogger writes that may cause someone out there to hate a specific politician will make us criminal in the eyes of this deranged fanatic.

(Woooops...we just called her a "deranged fanatic"...that's two to four years in jail for us!)

In effect, Luisa Ortega Díaz's bill would outlaw free speech in Venezuela, plain and simple. Her proposal constitutes the most brazen authoritarian leap this country has seen since the days of Pedro Estrada.

The View from Your Window

Houston, Texas - 2:45 pm

The View from Your Window

Caracas, Venezuela: 11:32 a.m.

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Bazooka Hugo

Quico says: The Case of the Swedish Bazookas makes it clear that something very odd is happening in the bonkers-at-the-best-of-times world of chavista foreign policy. The Venezuelan government is no longer in the business of providing explanations, half-assed apologies, or even the odd preposterous-but-face-saving denial in the face of incontrovertible evidence of meddling in its neighbors' affairs. More and more, its response is based on simple force: back off!

To this day, I'm not really clear if the official Venezuelan line is that the Venezuelan-owned Saab Bofors AT4s found in the hands of the FARC got to Colombia before Chávez came into office, or that they got to Colombia after Chávez took office but it was all the deed of some rogue officer and had nothing to do with government policy, or that it's all a big lie and the FARC never had Venezuelan bazookas and this whole story is all just a Colombo-Swedish conspiracy set up in Langley, or that Aliens from the planet Opsidion 5 telepathically transported the AT4s out of a Venezuelan armory and into the Colombian jungle as part of some intergalactic practical joke.

Each of those might be considered an account of what happened. Not all of them, needless to say, can be considered equally convincing. But each, in its own way, could be taken as an explanation.

The problem isn't that we never got a good explanation, it's that we never got an explanation at all.

They can't even say they were blindsided by the revelation. Yesterday, Casa de Nariño - Colombia's Miraflores - announced that, as long as 8 weeks ago, they had disclosed to the Venezuelan government that Venezuelan AT4 rocket launchers had been found in FARC's posession. That means that Jane's public disclosure of the find could not have caught Venezuelan diplomats unaware.

So, if I'm getting this right, Casa Amarilla - Venezuela's foreign office - had two months to think up some excuse, some sort of justification, any kind of marginally-coherent discourse about the find, but they just sort of never got around to it. Which kind of reminds me of that old afroman song...

I was gonna justify those AT4s, but then I got high
I could've lied and patched things up with Colombia, but I got high
Now I'm recalling ambassadors, and I know why
Because I got high
Because I got high
Because I got high

Nowhere in the Venezuelan response have I seen any direct mention of the AT4s themselves, which is odd considering they're at the center of the crisis.

The closest we've gotten is Chávez's oblique suggestion that anyone could stamp any serial number on the side of any gun. Leaving aside the fact that the Swedish government is not likely to be drawn into this controversy if indeed the serial numbers were fake - something that could easily be verified - if the weapons found in Colombia have adulterated serial numbers, the Venezuelan military should have no trouble producing the original weapons with the serial numbers matching those the Colombians reported to Saab Bofors. Logically, if the weapons found in Colombia aren't really Venezuelan, the original AT4s should still be under Venezuelan control, right?

Show me the bazookas!

In the event, Chávez won't get pressed into that discussion cuz he knows he got caught. Which is why his response is basically a tsunami of bile, a rapid fire succession of threats and insults that manage to escalate the crisis without ever offering any kind of account - sane or otherwise - for how it is that high-tech Venezuelan military hardware ended up in the hands of a terrorist organization.

It's genuinely baffling. Once you get over the shock, though, you have to surmise that the very explanation-less-ness carries a message here. It's an implicit admission rolled into a contempt-filled refusal to be held accountable all snugly tied up in the threat to cause a major diplomatic/economic crisis in Colombia if such delicate accusations are ever aired again.

It makes for a worryingly Kim Jong Il-ish diplomatic crouch. Chávez appears ready to simply start cranking up the crazy as a way of getting his opponents to back off.

This time, the threats were strictly economic. Next time?

Hat tip: Lorenzo Albano. You saw it first, man.

The View from Your Window

Madrid, Spain - a few months ago.

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What's missing in this press note?

Juan Cristóbal says: - The Governor of Lara, Henry Falcón (PSUV), went out onto the streets of Barquisimeto the other day, got on a steam-roller and proceeded to turn more than 400 confiscated firearms into pancakes. The accompanying press note carried the news, with Falcón stating that the public destruction of weapons is part of a plan to disarm the civilian population and decrease the crime rate. The curious thing? The note says nothing about socialism nor Chávez.

Falcón is a model for how a chavista Governor should behave. He is apparently pragmatic, talks about the issues and thinks about public policies that make sense instead of advancing an abstract ideological agenda only to get on the government's good side. By tacking on to the center and presenting the more human face of chavismo, he managed to get 73% of the vote, by far the best result of any governor elected last November, from either side.

Listen to him talk after being elected and he is crystal clear. Chavismo should "take stock of itself" and stop basing its campaigns on "discrediting other people." He suggested Chávez should focus on tackling crime, more effective social policy and work on infrastructure.

Sure, he's chavista, although for a while last year the government was so mad at him they briefly expelled him from the party. Like a good soldier, he dutifully worked for the Constitutional Amendment.

And yet - I have to respect his autonomy, his willingness to break the mold and follow his own insight. It's a refreshing sight: a chavista who cares about outcomes, speaks his mind, is not afraid of criticizing his own party, and somehow manages to get away with it.

The View from Your Window

Oslo, Norway - 8:30 p.m.

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Coming Out FARC

Quico says: Last week's revelation that high tech Swedish anti-tank missiles have been seeping across the border from the Venezuelan military into FARC's hands reminded me of nothing so much as Ellen's much hyped-up coming out in 1997: it's not that it was actually a surprise, it's not as though we didn't all know. It's just that, now, it's official: Venezuela arms FARC.

We have the serial numbers.

The rocket-launchers' Swedish manufacturer confirms the match. We have the emails detailing the entire handover process culled from Raul Reyes's laptop - y'know, the one I'm talking about: the one that Marulanda, in Mono Jojoy's voice, certified as real. We even - deliciously - have Venezuelan General Clíver Alcalá pushing FARC to grab more bazookas than they'd originally agreed.

Maduro's bizarre non-sequitur of an undenial - "these stories are part of a brutal campaign against Venezuela" - smack of the utter loss for words of someone just plain caught with pants in ankle position. No seas comemierda, Nicolás. We have the serial numbers.

Update: Actually, Bill Cosby cracked Madurothink years ago... "I was gettin' a bazooka for you!"

Blog The Plank

Quico says: A version of my rant from this morning is now over on The New Republic's mass blog, The Plank.

Check it out.

The View from Your Window

Austin, Texas - 7:50 pm

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Please ensure the window frame is visible, and tell us the place and time the picture was taken.

The Tenth Anniversary of a Slap in the Face

Quico says: It was hard, this weekend, seeing those images of Hugo Chávez celebrating the tenth anniversary of the 1999 Constituent Assembly. Presidential saches and speeches; pomp and (what passes for) circumstance (in the bolivarian republic.) All this public splendor to celebrate the drafting of a constitution that, as Teodoro Petkoff's bon mot hazs it, reads more and more like a subversive pamphlet, so far removed are its norms from the day-to-day reality of the way power is exercised in Venezuela.

Those of us who like to write about the way the constitution is nullified, day-by-day, in Venezuela have something of a long-tail problem: a relatively small number of flashy, highly visible violations (you know the list: the right to private property, the separation of powers, the apolitical nature of the military) grab all the attention, while a much larger constellation of less spectacular outrages barely merit a mention. Call them the B-List Violations: a long list of also-rans in the unconstitutionality stakes.

My own impotent outrage typically centers on the almost-entirely-forgotten Article 23. It's an article of staggering ambition that, for some reason, you almost never hear anything about. Article 23 actually makes international human rights treaties constitutionally binding within Venezuela, as well as directly applicable by all Venezuelan courts.

That means that, in theory, you should be able to go up to a Venezuelan judge and cite your rights in, for instance, article 13 of the American Convention on Human Rights (to wit: the right to free expression may not be restricted via indirect means, such as the abuse of official controls on newsprint, on radio frequencies, or of inputs and goods used to broadcast information, in order to impede the free communication of ideas) and that norm is supposed to have constitutional status, superseding any and all Venezuelan legislation on the matter. Taken seriously, Article 23 would revolutionize Venezuelan justice.

Somehow, though, TSJ never got the memo. Nor did anyone else. It's just weird: nobody seems to know about Article 23. You never hear Marta Colomina all huffed up and horrified at its total desuetude. And Prof. Colomina very rarely passes up the chance to get all huffed up and horrified.

But it's there. Article 23 is. Not because aliens from the planet Zorgon put it there. Not because the CIA conspired to sneak it in. It's there because the 94%-chavista constituent assembly put it there in 1999. You know the one I'm talking about, right? The one Chávez went to commemorate this weekend? That one!

Today in TalCual, Miranda State Education Director Juan Maragall focuses on another of these also-rans. Everybody knows that the Constitution says that tenured judges have to earn their seats through "public competitions" - concursos públicos de oposición - where political criteria cannot be taken into consideration. But did you know that, according to article 104, the same thing applies to schoolteachers? Few outside the profession know that...nor should they, as article 104 has become another serial dust-gatherers.

In practice the main qualification you need to get a nice, steady job warping the minds of small children is a PSUV membership card.

Of course, if you're accepted into the profession without a concurso you don't get tenure. You can only be taken on as a substitute or interim teacher, meaning you can be fired by the Education Ministry at any time and for any reason, or no reason at all. Totally exposed, you end up becoming a kind of lower-court-judge-of-the-classroom: at all times, you are one-insufficiently-chavista-remark away from seeing your livelihood vanish.

In Maragall's phrase, the practice of appointing most teachers as interim or substitutes has started to spawn its own juridical framework: recent Education Ministry resolutions make it a prerequisite to have entered the profession as a sub, or as an interim teacher - that is, discretionally - before you can even go to concurso. So, the status quo is that you can now only opt for tenure if you've been picked discresionally, a dedo, without your credentials ever having been evaluated in open competition.

That's how easy it is to upend the Venezuelan constitution. No need to bother with referendums or amendments or reforms or any of that jazz. An education ministry resolution does the job.

It'd be an interesting, if somewhat morbid, exercise to go through all 350 articles of the 1999 constitution and try to figure out precisely how many have been subverted like this, sotto voce, without anyone much talking about it or acknowledging it out loud or even quite realizing that it's happened.

And amid all this, VTV forces us to watch Chávez celebrating the tenth anniversary of...of what, exactly? It's never been clear to me. Over time, I've come to see the 1999 Assembly as one of the most bizarrely nonsensical public spectacles in these ten years of intensely bizarre public spectacle.

The best way I can make sense of it is that for Chávez, the constitution is a fetish. Not in the contemporary, sexual sense of the term, but in the older anthropological one: a kind of amulet, a magical thing whose powers are embodied in its physicality, in its life as object, and are quite independent of anything actually written inside. It's the little book itself that interests Chávez, the physical embodiment of his claim to legitimacy. But his claim, ultimately, is mystical rather than legal - based on a metaphysical consubstantiation of leader and pueblo that cannot be mediated through anything so humdrum as a set of formal legal rules.

And so the little blue book came to be used as a kind of magic charm, waved around in inverse proportion to how often it was actually read, much less interpreted or - heaven forbid - applied.

In the end, reading the constitution - taking it seriously as text - is a profoundly counterrevolutionary thing to do. It can only lead to the kind of apostasy you keep finding in this blog - hell, earlier in this post, even - where an interpretative discourse is developed to compare the legal standard set out in the text to the reality instantiated day-to-day by those who wield power in Venezuela.

Discourses like those are inherently destabilizing to a regime like Chávez's. They insert human intelligence where it is least wanted, least tolerable, most dangerous. When you take the constitution seriously as text, when you set out to interpret it rationally, you interpose yourself between the caudillo and the masses, limiting and qualifying his claim to authority over them.

To do so is to meddle in the mystical link between them. And chavismo cannot put up with such an affront: it needs to silence it. Because, in the end, to read the constitution with fresh eyes is as close to apostasy as you can come in the secular religion that is chavismo.

Ten things we learned this week

Quico and Juan Cristóbal say: As we cross the proverbial finish line by posting our 100th post of the week, here are a few things we learned along the way.

1. Blogging this much is really, really hard. No, really.

2. It's actually not that hard to find topics to blog about. The half-baked ideas and general nuttiness coming out of Caracas, Tegucigalpa and anywhere chavismo's tentacles dare to reach simply boggles the mind. It's figuring out what to say about this stuff that's hard.

3. One US dollar will buy you about 18 lempiras.

4. While the comments section suffered a bit, we felt the quality of the comments was much higher.

5. Juan Cristóbal does better with high frequency blogging than Quico. Juan had a ball this week, Quico almost went bald...

6. In Honduras, the money is called "Lempiras".

7. Our readers are the best. Quico's inbox is bursting with views from y'all's windows. (We'll get to them little by little!) We were afraid we might lose readers due to the overwhelming pace, but readership is up 18% this week. Thanks!

8. The quality of the posts was somewhat lower, for obvious reasons. But we also felt weirdly liberated. All that pressure to post ends up leading to cathartically devil-may-care writing!

9. That girl in the bikini is smokin'.

10. It's just like Mel Zelaya to finally set foot back inside Honduras right as we finish the marathon...prick!

Have a good weekend everyone. It's less to a saner schedule for us from Monday.

Post 100 of 100. And they said it couldn't be done!

Bolívar = Stalin, and other pearls of wisdom from the sick minds still tending the rump Noticiero Digital

Quico says: Anybody remember Noticiero Digital? In its time, it was genuinely pathbreaking: the first site that made Venezuelans stop and realize they could get their news faster online than on traditional media. Then Frank de Prada sold the thing, made a bundle, ran off to do Noticias24 and all the traffic soon followed him, while Noticiero Digital slowly degenerated into, well, basically a space for this kind of lunatic rant:Yup. Those guys are convinced Chávez is subtly trying to persuade us Bolívar is just like Stalin. Totally insane? You betcha...but kind of entertaining too.

(I am unable to confirm, btw, rumors to the effect that the current owner of Noticiero Digital is married to one Miguel Henrique Otero.)

Post 99 out of 100. Dizzy!

Chávez accuses Barack Obama of planning to invade Venezuela

Juan Cristóbal says: - Here you have it, in his own words. A preposterous idea if I've ever heard one, but one Chávez used to justify a huge military buildup.

Post 98 of 100 ... finish line is ever closer.

Mental Health Break - El Saladillo Chronicles

Juan Cristóbal says: -

Post 97 of 100 ... this makes me all verklempt...

The Original and The Best

Quico says: Credit where credit is due: in the overcrowded field of snivelling pro-Chávez sycophants and propagandists, nobody does it better than Mark Weisbrot. His LA Times OpEd today finds Herr Whitebread in fine form, with one of those finely-honed, long-rehearsed, the-media-and-the-establishment-are-lying-to-you rants certain to make respectable white West Coast liberals rally to his cause. Not for Weisbrot the maximalist polemical style of, say, Green Left Weekly: I'm sure that's how he thinks, but he's too savvy, too aware of the way traditional leftist discourses would turn off his target audience to go down such an rhetorical dead end. By the time you're through reading this stuff, you'll swear Mel Zelaya is a monaguillo, Hillary Clinton is Rumsfeld in drag, and we have always been at war with East Asia...he's just that good.

Post 95 of 100. Panblanco Chronicles.

A girl in a bikini

Quico says: This is a girl in a bikini. I could come up with some kind of justification for what she's doing on my blog, but that would be so un-N24...

Post 95 of 100. Just couldn't help myself.

Our unbearable military fetish

Juan Cristóbal says: - Ever notice how every single freakin' holiday in Venezuela is an excuse for a military parade? Simón Bolívar’s birthday, the 5 de Julio, the 19 de Abril. Even for Christmas the President goes around military bases presenting his "saludo navideño." Mind you, this didn't start with Chávez. Some genius before him came up with the idea of turning the commemoration of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on the Fifth of July - a civic act if I ever saw one - into the God-forsaken "Día del Ejército." So how about starting a holiday like the "Día sin Militares" - kind of like the "Día de Parada," only we go around pretending the Armed Forces don't even exist.

Juan Montalvo had it right. Colombia es un colegio, Ecuador es un convento, y Venezuela es un cuartel. Sad, really.

Post 94 of 100 ... and I'm ready for this to end...

PSF bandwagon welcomes new member?

Juan Cristóbal says: - Spike Lee is in Caracas today, speaking at the Cinemateca Nacional. Wonder what he'll have to say...

Post 93 of 100 ... largando la chicha...

CC and the MSM

Juan Cristóbal says: - As we close our final day of the Sullivan challenge, one of the interesting things this experience has brought home for me is how dependent blogging is on the information provided by the mainstream media (MSM). Our "business model" goes somewhat like this: we try and find out what's going on via Noticias 24, or Tal Cual, or El Universal or Globovision, and then we comment on it, and you people pitch in with additional insights. Once in a while we talk about things nobody is talking about, or write more deeply-felt, cerebral stuff. So while we rightly bemoan the status of the MSM, we must acknowledge our parasitic relationship with it. In fact, if the MSM goes away, I dunno what we would end up writing about. You can go ahead and call us hypocrites.

Newspapers all over the world are going bankrupt. Just yesterday, for example, my local newspaper printed its last edition after 174 years in circulation. So is too soon to start imagining a Venezuela without El Nacional or El Universal?

You know that's coming. Sources say that circulation for El Nacional is at a paltry 20,000 editions daily. El Universal, with its higher-brow attitude, can't be doing much better. As the demographics change and Internet penetration goes up, people are getting more and more of their news online and from the TV.

Not all of this is Chávez’s fault. In fact, I venture to say most of it isn't. This is a worldwide phenomenon that has its roots on the way technology is changing and on the emergence of sites such as Craigslist or eBay that provide low-cost competition to those pesky ads newspapers get their revenues from.

But it also has to do with how Venezuelan newspapers have decided to suck their way to the grave. Sometimes, reading Venezuelan newspapers makes me so angry with their lack of quality, I can't wait for them to close shop and finally get what they had coming to them.

And yet, here we are, free-riding on their work. It's a scary new world we are entering, one fraught with opportunity but also with significant perils. Because once the only reporters are those working for VEA and Panorama (you know those guys won't go out of business), where will we get the truth from?

Post 92 of 100 ... be careful what you wish for ...

Freedom to sell your car

Juan Cristóbal says: - One of the most frustrating aspects of watching the (in)action of the Venezuelan opposition is that nobody seems to make an eloquent case for freedom. Ultimately, what the government's policies boil down to is a complete and utter takeover of the freedom of Venezuelans, freedoms one Simón Bolívar, born 226 years ago today, gave his life to secure. Can there be anything less Bolivarian than stripping Venezuelans of their basic rights? Case in point: the current discussion regarding the proposed Law for the Car Sector.

In case you haven't heard, the government is now discussing a law whereby it will regulate (and I mean really, really regulate) the prices and profits that car dealers can make. Currently, getting a car in Venezuela takes months of waiting and bribing. Typically, you don't have a choice on the type of car, the features, or the color - once your number is up, you buy what you can get.

Hell, there is even a scam going on between dealers and banks. If you don't work through the bank the salesman gets a commission from, you're essentially placed at the bottom of the list. This happened to my brother, who wanted to pay for his car in cash and had the door slammed in his face.

All this is the product of heavy regulation. From the import permits to get the parts to the dollars needed to buy them, from the wages your workers make to the gas that goes into the car - every single step of the process of buying and owning a car is regulated. And the auto sector is in crisis. Coincidence?

Well, the government's response to the crisis is, unsurprisingly, more regulation. With this new law, the government will set dealers' margins at 15% of the wholesale price (this in a country with rampant inflation). It will also ban the resale of a car within two years of having bought it, and if you get caught, you will have to pay a huge tax.

Gas, meet fire. Any eight-year old can understand this creates a whole series of perverse incentives. The likely product of these policies ranges from a black market of car registration to an increase in car theft.

And yet all these arguments against this policy fall somewhat short because they miss the basic point: this is an unacceptable takeover of the basic rights of Venezuelans. Because when the government forbids you to sell something that is rightfully yours, we are all less free, and we are all poorer.

Post 91 of 100 ... this challenge is affecting my marriage, Katy está cuaimatizada

Happy 226th Birthday, Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad!

Quico says: On big B's birthday, I'll share this bit from page 50 of John Lynch's biography, where he describes Bolívar's trip to London as, essentially, ambassador for the First Republic in the summer of 1810:

On occasions, from his rooms in Duke Street, Bolívar made his own way around London. He was thrown out of a brothel when one of the girls mistook him for a homosexual demanding services that were not on offer. When he tried to calm her with banknotes she threw them into the fire and raised the rest of the house: 'Imagine the scene, I spoke no English and the prostitute no Spanish. She seemed to think that I was some Greek pederast and created a scandal that made me leave faster than I had entered.'

Is there another historical character who we've heard more about and know less about?

Post 90 of 100. What exactly did he ask that girl to do?!

The View from Your Window

Singapore - 12:55 p.m.

Post 89 of 100. Don't want to lean on the VFYW thing too heavily, but...

Horseshoes and Handgrenades

Quico says: As far as pro-Micheletti agi-prop goes, this video puts the golpista case as well as such a thing can be put:Trouble is, close only counts in horseshoes and handgrenades. It does you exactly no good to go through all the various ways what you did was legal and then gloss over the big, bad, stinking illegality at the center of it all: putting Zelaya on a plane in his pajamas.

In fact, all this video does is beg the question: if you had such a compelling legal case for arresting the president and putting him on trial, why did you have to muddle your message with such a visible illegality?

Oh, and you don't exactly cover yourself in glory when you fire journalists who use the word "coup" to describe your "coup" either, y'know?

Sorry UCD, but no cigar.

Post 88 of 100. Fools to the right of me, jokers to the left...