Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Reporter Poleo sentenced to six months in jail Reporter Patricia Poleo is sentenced to six months in jail after she was found guilty of defamation of Minister of the Interior and Justice Jesse Chacon. Chacon sued Poleo over her publication of a picture of a soldier holding a gun over the dead body of a civilian at the state's TV channel. Let's examine the charges and the evidence: Poleo published a picture of an armed soldier over a dead body the day of the November 1992 coup. -Did Chacon participate in that November 1992 coup? YES -Was Chacon present at the TV channel where the picture was taken? YES, he was part fo the attacking force. -Was Chacon armed that day? YES, definitely. -Did Chacon fire his gun that day at VTV, where innocent civilians were killed? Witnesses say YES! -Did he kill anyone? Nobody knows, but we don't know if the man in the picture killed anyone either. So, the only thing you can accuse Poleo of is of misidentifying Chacon, the rest is all true! So where is the act of defamation? Saying that the picture is him, does not affect Chacon's reputation (which is what defamation is all about!), what damages his reputation is saying he was there, he fired agaisnt innocent civilians and may have killed them. But these are all true! Of course, the Chavez administration just wants Poleo intimidated and jailed. 10:46:07 PM    comment []

The enemy within: Chavez' military folly continues President Hugo Chavez continued playing the external enemy threat card in his speeches, seeing ghosts everywhere in order to distract from the failures of his Government. Like a modern poor version of Don Quijote, Chavez sees windmills everywhere. Besides the US invasion, which he has focused on for the last few weeks, he started ranting about the fact that NATO was using an invasion of Venezuela in its training exercises, which was quickly denied by NATO itself. As if this was not enough, he also responded to supposed statements by Colombian President Uribe saying that unless Venezuela changed, it would isolate itself. Chavez kept saying he would wait to reply to see if the statements were true, but proceeded to answer to them anyway, not once, not twice but three times. The Colombian Foreign Minister denied that Uribe had even made reference to Venezuela while in Japan, but the damage to Venezuelan diplomacy was done as Chavez proceeded to say this is all part of the US plot against Venezuela. This is all of course a textbook strategy for autocratic regimes: since personality cults, fear and propaganda can only carry you so far, you need to create the external enemy in order to reinforce the support of the loyalist and keep on your side those that are doubters because of the lack of accomplishments and progress by the Government. These strategies have been clearly posed by Sakharov and recently presented in clear form in Sharansky’s “The case for democracy”, a must read for anyone that believes in freedom, democracy and human rights. But Venezuela is becoming increasingly a militaristic country, run by an autocrat who now controls all of the structures of the state, including the military, who wants to merge the population with the Armed Forces and who finds glory in the bloody days of the beginning of the Republic, who talks about “the civic military unit, forming citizen soldiers and soldiers who are citizens…people and soldier, soldier and people, you are the most sublime expression of the civic-military fusion which today becomes the strongest column of the Bolivarian Venezuela”. Who talks about sovereignty or death, who calls traitors those who do not understand the meaning of the newly created reserves. Yes, Venezuela enters deeper into the territory of Chavez’ folly today, that project that may irreversibly ruin this country for decades to come, whose only objective is to preserve this madman in power. And the madman is equally surrounded by Generals, who not only believe in reincarnation and support his folly, but cry openly when people applaud him because he is a patriot or justify the existence of the newly created two million men reserve by comparing Venezuela to the State of Israel, “where every man is a soldier”. Meanwhile his Vice President uses swear words to say that Chavez is great because he sent “el Imperio al carajo”, an empire who in 1998 decided not to pay attention to Chavez and let him be, but that Chavez tries to awaken at every step with his continuous rape of democracy, democratic institutions and justice, in this unfortunate country. Meanwhile the death of 19 Venezuelans is celebrated three years later as a day of “dignity” as there is total impunity in the investigation of these deaths, let alone the over one hundred people injured that day. Sadly, of the 19 deaths, people are jailed for only two cases, because they may involve the Metropolitan Police controlled at the time by an opposition Mayor. The other 17 cases are not even being investigated, as the Prosecutor, the same man in charge of enforcing the law in Venezuela openly says the National Guard refuses to turn over evidence to his office, which simply proves what a joke he has made of that office which has simply become another servile unit of the revolution and Chavez’ autocratic power. In the end it is Chavez that has become the external enemy to all Venezuelans. Driven by the bearded Cuban fool, he tries to introduce values that violate our nature and sovereignty. Venezuelans are not militaristic, they do not hate, they admire the US, and they don’t want the country to become another Cuba. They just want a better tomorrow, which has been constantly denied to them in the last thirty years. But Chavez, the enemy within, just has grandiose plans for himself, not for his people, which in the end can only have a sad ending for our poor country. 8:38:02 PM    comment []

The Mcarthyist list of Chavismo:Case 4: Accused of being a spy for imperialism Case 4: Accused of being a spy for imperialism by Teodoro Petkoff in Tal Cual Ms. Ana Kosa was fired from Fogade on June 15th. 2004. She had worked there for four years, since March 2000. In May 2004, a little before her firing, she was sent by Fogade to do an apprenticeship at the OAS in subjects related to her specialty. When she came back, she was kicked out. She does not know if they consulted the list of Adolfo Tascón, but she does know the reason for her firing: she was accused of… ”being a spy for imperialism”. For the frame of mind that prevails in Fogade, after its leadership was assumed by the summa cum laude lawyer Jesus Caldera Infante, there could be no doubt that Mrs. Kosa had to be a CIA agent. How could it not be for a person, like Mrs. Kosa, who worked for 21 years at the US Embassy as part of the local personnel? It is obvious that if she quit the US Embassy in 1999 was because she received instructions from Langley, Virginia, to infiltrate the Venezuelan civil service and perform spying functions for the empire. Moreover, a woman with 21 years at the US Embassy had to be a CIA star. Of course! Romulito Henriquez, Caldera’s predecessor, never noticed that he had been penetrated. For the shrewd lawyer from Trujillo state, former member of COPEI, this detail did not escape him, thus, a few days alter his arrival at his new position he signed the letter firing Ms. Kosa. The new Board of the organization could breathe easier. The eyes of the empire were no longer looking over them. Although its is probable that they also disconnected the DirecTV set box, just in case Deputy Pedro Carreño was right when he alerted about the bidirectional screen through which the big Brother from the North had us under surveillance. Here we are facing a pure and simple witch hunt. Arthur Miller, the great American dramatist, wrote one of his best pieces, The witches of Salem, just in the middle of the McCarthy frenzy in the mid-fifties of the last century. Recalling the hanging of the women accused of being witches in that Maine (??) town three hundred years earlier, Miller made a lucid argument against intolerance, against prejudices and against social segregation. It was his way of calling attention to north American society to the terrible harassment of Senator Joe McCarthy against those who in his list, like in the Tascòn list, appeared as communists. It was men like Miller who made possible that that nation from the entrails of its deep democratic tradition reacted and got rid of the fearsome McCarthy. The gringos defeated their own version of fascism in democratic fashion. . In this diminished hours, Arthur Millar is also talking to us and in particular to Venezuelan intellectuals. 12:24:46 PM    comment []