Monday, September 08, 2008

Chavez' appoints Al Aissami to replace badass Chacin And how about Chavez' sardonic sense of humor, removing "badass" Chacin from the Ministry of the Interior today and replacing him with none other than Tarek Al Aissami, the only high Venezuelan official whose picture was submitted as evidence in the Miami Maletagate trial. I guess Chavez juts wanted to make sure that the link to the Venezuelan Government by the men charged goes to the highest possible places. Talk about timing! Or simply adding some fuel to pyre of the Miami trial? 11:35:03 PM    comment []

Direct Flight to backwardness in Venezuela Today the Homeland Security Department issued a warning about the fact that it has been unable to check security procedures at Venezuelan airports from which flights go to the US. This is due to the lack of cooperation of the Venezuelan Government. I was planning to write about it, but Veneconomy sent this opinion piece this afternoon that simply said it all: Direct Flight to backwardness by Veneconomy For many years, Venezuela was given a Category II rating by the US aviation authorities, which meant that Venezuelan airlines were prevented from flying to the United States. In 2006, after making many adjustments to meet international standards, complying with endless technical requirements, and undertaking extensive modernization in the area of infrastructure, the National Civil Aviation Institute (INAC) culminated a long process for recertifying Venezuela in Category I, as a result of which domestic airlines were once again able to fly their routes to the United States under the Venezuelan flag and with Venezuelan crews and Venezuelan registered aircraft. However, this progress seems to be about to suffer a setback. This weekend, the US Department of Homeland Security reported that it had been impossible to determine whether or not Venezuelan airports and direct flights between Venezuela and the United States complied with the security rules established by the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO). According to press reports, this impediment is apparently due to the fact that the Venezuelan authorities have refused to allow the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to inspect Maracaibo and Valencia airports alleging that, under international security standards, the only agency entitled to conduct these inspections is the ICAO, which has a visit scheduled for January 2009. VenEconomy respects the INAC’s legal right to reject the visit by representatives of the TSA. But it costs nothing to be polite, and Venezuela has always extended this courtesy to US government officials in the past. However, according to Nelson Bocaranda, the government’s intolerance has reach such a pitch that the INAC has threatened to eliminate some flights of US airlines between the US and Venezuela. VenEconomy considers that an inspection of this type would be most timely at this moment, when there is a clear conflict of interests in this area in Venezuela. A single person occupies the presidency of the INAC, the Executive’s Coordinated Air Transportation Service (SATA), and the airline Conviasa. In other words, the supervisee is the same person as the supervisor. For example, this three-hatted president would have to answer questions from the US security representatives such as: Why did you allow the Conviasa aircraft, which crashed a few days ago in Ecuador, to do a night flight when international standards indicate that, if an aircraft does not meet all air navigation standards, it should only fly during the daytime? or, Why, if it was a well-known secret that some pilots took illegal shortcuts when departing from MéridaAirport, the INAC did not take the necessary measures? Had they done so, perhaps the accident of the Santa Bárbara Airline, in which so many lives were lost, could have been prevented. In short, it seems that the US transportation security authorities are sending a very important message on the state of airport security in Venezuela. 8:39:20 PM    comment []

A guide for understanding freedom of speech in Venezuela A guide for understanding freedom of speech in Venezuela by Teodoro Petkoff in Tal Cual I don’t know if it is a coincidence, but what is happening to the Villegas brothers, Vladimir, Mario and Ernesto is something that should be in Ripley’s. Besides the curious detail that three members of the same family, reporters all three, have been victims of measures that if they are not repressive they are quite close, the case of the three Villegas' could serve well to the “revolutionary tourists” to understand well how it is that freedom of speech is handled in Venezuela. These good souls, like Ignacio Ramonet and Danny Glover, when not the kids from the Unified Spanish Left, always have on the tip of their tongue the topic of freedom of speech in Venezuela. One explains to them that certainly, there is no censorship here and that in some media outlets you can say all you want against the Government and its owner. One attempts to clarify that this is due more to the fact that these people do not allow the Government to intimidate them with its pressures, threats and blackmail, but that quite a few of these media outlets have been broken and become “accommodating” to the Government. Then, so that they understand well how things work, here is the Villegas case. Mario, the oldest, who is not pro-Chavez, works as a professional at the tax office SENIAT, but because as a columnist for El Mundo he has spared no effort to criticize and point out things about the regime, SENIAT sent him to Santa Elena de Uairen in the border with Brazil. Vladimir, the second oldest, pro-Chavez but not unconditional nor the type to shut up, has just been fired from the TV Station run by Maripili Hernandez, precisely because his opinions do not adapt themselves to what "I the Supreme" expects from his followers. Ernesto, the third one, one of the anchors of channel 8, who is also pro-Chavez, came out to defend the cameramen attacked by the top Capo. “Coincidentally” his morning program has been suspended since then. Do you Sean Penn now understand how things work in Venezuela? 8:20:57 PM    comment []