¡¡VOTA CHAVEZ 2087!! ¡Siete Años Mas!
Friday, August 24, 2007
Financial Times On Venezuela's Oil Windfall
Chávez’s iron grip on economy ‘unsustainable’
By Benedict Mander in Caracas Published: August 23 2007 22:36 \
Also, what seems like a postcard from 1977, when people would have scoffed at the idea of a Viernes Negro in February 1983, so Let The Good Times Roll!
Boom signals take-off for Venezuela’s jet-set By Benedict Mander in Caracas
Published: August 23 2007 22:36
By Benedict Mander in Caracas Published: August 23 2007 22:36 \
President Hugo Chávez’s tightening grip over Venezuela’s economy is generating distortions that economists fear could, paradoxically, eventually lead to a loss of control.Price controls, currency controls and negative real interest rates are just some of the elements that have contributed to one of the highest rates of inflation in the world and a substantially overvalued exchange rate.
“This regime is not sustainable. It is only propped up by the high price of oil,” says Jose Guerra, a former director of research at the central bank. “Venezuela has already experimented with these policies in the past and it ended up going broke.”
The controls introduced by Mr Chávez are, in part, an attempt to offset the inflationary effects of large-scale government spending, afforded by record oil prices, to boost economic growth. ( note: the government's income from the petroleum
market is 800% of what it was before Chavez was elected in 1998) In this, the government has succeeded: growth has averaged 12 per cent in the past three years, leading to a drop in the rate of poverty from 43.9 per cent when, Mr Chávez was first elected in 1998, to 30.4 per cent in 2006.
This has won Mr Chávez increasing levels of support from the electorate, who are expected to vote in favour of his proposed reforms to the constitution in a referendum that would allow him to be re-elected indefinitely.
But his economic policies have triggered high levels of consumer demand that now far outstrip the economy’s productive capacity, with negative real interest rates providing consumers no incentive to save their cash.
Unbridled spending combined with price controls that are intended to check the inflationary effects of such policies has lead to scarcity of basic goods such as milk, eggs, beans and beef.
To counter this, imports have tripled in the past three years in an effort to make up for the economy’s inability to support demand. But rising inflation and an increasingly overvalued exchange rate will continue only to make imported goods even more attractive, just as non-oil exports become too expensive on world markets. This would make Venezuela ever more dependent on oil, which accounts for almost 90 per cent of exports.
Ironically, one of Mr Chávez’s key policies is to stimulate “endogenous development” to steer Venezuela away from its dependence on oil.
“If the price of oil suffers a significant world decline, the retail sector will not be able to support the current level of imports without the country sliding into immediate trade deficit,” says Mark Turner, an analyst at Hallgarten, who adds that central bank reserves would not last long under such pressure. “Recession would be a real threat to the economy as well as the administration running it.”
But (Chavista) Mark Weisbrot, an economist at the Centre for Economic and Policy Research, argues that the Venezuelan economy “does not fit the mould of an ‘oil boom headed for a bust’.” He says that a large current account surplus, rising foreign exchange reserves, and low levels of external debt are enough to insulate the economy from any imminent danger, although he concedes that the currency is at least 30 per cent overvalued in relation to the dollar. “This is something that will have to be remedied if Venezuela is going to pursue a long-term development strategy that diversifies the economy away from oil,” he says. However, he concedes that the government is reluctant to devalue due to the effect this would have on inflation.
Also, what seems like a postcard from 1977, when people would have scoffed at the idea of a Viernes Negro in February 1983, so Let The Good Times Roll!
Boom signals take-off for Venezuela’s jet-set By Benedict Mander in Caracas
Published: August 23 2007 22:36
From a wealth of picture-postcard Caribbean beaches to the magnificent table-top mountains that inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Lost World, Venezuelans have no shortage of domestic holiday destinations to choose from.
However, surging oil wealth and the restrictions of a dollar-pegged, overvalued currency are driving unprecedented numbers of Venezuelans to travel overseas on holiday, with the number of international flights jumping 45 per cent last month over the previous year.
“It’s never been like this, it’s extraordinary,” says Maria Falvay, a sales executive for Pegasus Travel in Caracas. “If you want to fly out of Venezuela over the next few weeks you might as well forget it, we’re fully booked. At the moment we’re taking bookings for December.”
Flight sales so far this year have risen by 28 per cent to $428m (€317m, £215m) compared with the same period in 2006, while the number of tickets issued is 40 per cent greater.
That far exceeds the number of overseas travellers when previous records were set during Venezuela’s last oil boom in the late 1970s, when Concorde used to fly to Caracas.
According to Alejandro Grisanti, an economist at Ecoanalitica, the increase reflects the growing affluence in Venezuela pushing up overall consumption. This in turn is feeding the highest inflation rate in the region – 17.2 per cent in July.
Venezuela’s consumption is being fuelled by inflation that is outstripping interest rates so fast that consumers prefer to spend rather than see their money eroded in bank accounts. Banks are providing a further stimulus to spending through cheap credit.
Mr Grisanti argues that rising overseas travel is also a consequence of Venezuela’s overvalued currency, which has been fixed at 2,150 bolivars to the dollar since March 2005. On the parallel “black” market the dollar is now worth more than twice as much.
“The government is subsidising people to travel, effectively giving away the difference between the official and the parallel exchange rate,” he says.
Although currency restrictions have caused the parallel market value of the dollar to shoot up over the last year, tickets with international airlines are paid for at the official rate, so have dropped in cost compared with other consumer goods. Despite the scarcity of dollars at the official rate locally, Venezuelans travelling abroad can take advantage of an allowance provided by the government of up to $5,600 at the official exchange rate.
Travel agents point out that travel to Venezuela’s high-priced top destinations is now more expensive than a trip to the US, a favoured destination for Venezuelans. Nevertheless, internal flights so far this year have still increased by 37 per cent from 2006.
The problem is compounded by insufficient supply to keep up with demand for flights. Although international carriers such as American Airlines have asked to increase the frequency of their flights to keep up with demand, permission has not been granted by the government, which is seeking to protect local airlines.
Fewer international airlines now operate in Venezuela, with leading carriers such as British Airways and KLM having ceased to fly the route in recent years.
Umberto Figuera of the Venezuelan Airline Association admits that local carriers are unable to fill the gap in demand.
“The fundamental problem is that there aren’t any big local airlines that can cover the routes run by international airlines.
“Not a single one flies to Europe, for example. They just can’t compete,” he says. He believes that Venezuela’s airline sector needs a proper government policy to resolve its problems.
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Gepetto Disowns, Chavista Pilot Just Owns
linkThe man who made Chavez, who took him under his wing after Hugo was sprung from detention by a grateful Rafael Caldera,"urged Venezuelans to reject the proposed
changes to the constitution, stating that the (Chavez) will use the reforms to consolidate his hold on power and remain in office indefinitely" calling it "constitutional fraud"
You got too late smart, Miqui.
Unlike vivos like Friend-of-Antonini and, we're told, Ferrari-owner-for-Chavez
Wladimir Abad. This good Chavista seemingly didn't get the memo, for his anti-capitalist cred is shaky:
See For yourself: just enter abad, wladimir here
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
A Mule For Brother Hugo
"Mornings, Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson would sit at a table in the Key Biscayne Don Pan bakery for coffee and cachitos, a Venezuelan ham-filled roll. It had been his father, Don Guido's (!) routine at the Corazón de Jesús bakery in La Victoria, in Venezuela's Aragua state...
Antonini must yearn for those days of peaceful anonimity on an island of ten thousand where people aren't interested in their neighbor's past.
Argentinian, Venezuelan, U.S. and Uruguayan -at a minimum- justice and media have been searching for this man to clear up a two-week old mystery.
The mystery of the intended destination of a suitcase containing $790,550 in cash that was seized from him after his arrival in an executive jet at Buenos Aires' Jorge Newbery airport in the early morning of August 4th. His silence has been so extended that speculation regarding the secret he's keeping have grown with each passing day. There's talk about a campign contribution to the presidential campaign of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner; of an arms deal and a bribery payment; others say it's only the intercepted portion of a million-dollar level cash transfer.
The only thing certain people who are familiar with Antononi and his charcter are sure of is that he's not the brains behind the sophisticated operations attributed to him."Alejandro -hardly anyone calls him Guido- is like the good ole' barrio boy, the jolly fat man, whom you'd send off to do mischief and would never refuse", said one of his acquaintances who asked not to be identified.
Up to this point, the Affair of the Suitcase has led to the firing of several high level figures in the Argentine and Venezuelan petroleum industries, and the Argentine press asserts that the matter tainted the launch of Cristina Fernández's -the wife of the President of Argentina- campaign in Luna Park last week.
President Hugo Chávez's administration, which initially attributed the scandal to
CIA dirty tricks in cahoots with Venezuela's non-governmental media, has had to accept that it amounts to a "not very important...but inescapable" matter, according to VIce-President ( and former head of the elections oversight board) Jorge Rodríguez.
Based on eyewitness accounts, documents, interviews with sources and journalists as well as on material published in those countries closely following this case, El Nuevo Herald retraces the timeline of the Antonini fiasco and details the people who accompanied him, as well as those who've surrouned the entrepreneur these past few years.
Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson was born April 8, 1961 in La Victoria. His mother,
Beverly Wilson, is a 67-year-old American citizen. They say that Guido Alejandro
got his height from his 5'6" mom. Antonini is brown-complexioned, portly and corpulent. "He's like a (barrel)!! (I was stunned) at how fat that guy's gotten." said a neighbor to Argentina's La Nacion's correspondent, in La Victoria.
Of his character it's said that he's a likeable, unassuming man not given to intellectual pursuits.
Mis mother is listed as being a resident of Atlanta,GA; her driver's license lists
a first-floor apartment on Crandon Boulevard, Key Biscayne as her most recent address.
Guido's father, Don Guido, an engineer turned politician, was president of Victoria
Consejo Municipal ( city council) and likewise lives in Miami. Antonini apparently finished high school but didn't graduate college.
He and Jacqueline Regnault Palacios, listed in Miami-Dade County registrar's documents
as an attorney, were married on November 30, 1991 . On June 17, 2005 Regnault received a power-of-attorney to represent Franklin Durán, a Venezuelan friend and associate of Antonini's, in the sale of #902, Bel-Aire on The Ocean Condominiums in Key Biscayne.
At least three people interviewed by El Nuevo Herald state that Durán is one of Antonini's friends with the most influence over him. Durán, who turns 40 next month, is described as an intelligent businessmane, discrete, taken with luxury automobiles. He's the registered owner of a yellow 2005 Porsche Boxster and a same model year boat, at the address of Key Biscayne's most photographed residence in the past days: A white, two-story, white structure on Mashta Dr. with canal views, valued at $3,900,000.00. This address appears on documents recording joint Antonini and Durán corporation/business.
Durán is connected with two lucrative fields: arms and the petroleum industry.
According to a judgment by the Supreme Court of the state of Vargas, Venezuela,
Durán in 2002 imported into Venezuela, through his Ruibal y Durán company, 73 Israelí UZI submachineguns, intended for the Cojedes state police. Venezuelan authorities searched the shipment for supposed contraband, but the court dismissed the case in October 2004
On the petroleum front, Durán is linked with Venezuelan company Perforaciones Albornoz (Perfoalca) which has several contracts with government-owned oil company
PDVSA. Another shareholder in Perfoalca is Carlos Kauffman, a friend of Antonini.
Some residents of La Victoria told correspondents for La Nación and Venezuela's El Universal that Antonini permanently moved to Miai 15 years ago.
The first automobile registered to him in Florida is a Toyota truck purchased in 1994, his address stated as 575 Crandon Boulevard, Key Biscayne. In May of that year
he acquired a 1989 BMW, and in June he incorporated one of his most active companies: Venuz Suply(sic), Inc. That same year his wife obtained her real estate broker's license. The following year the couple bought a unit at 141 Crandon Boulevard (Key Colony), for $234,000. Antonini's life apparently was tranquil. His record only shows a charge for boating in a no-trespass zone. Aside for his mortgage, hi s only other debt was with Mayor's jewelers.
In those years, those who knew him say, Antonini was on the prowl for any business, big or small, from which he could profit as a middleman: he exported new and used tires to Venezuela, he sold spare parts for cars and trucks, and he was getting his start in exporting weapons and security materials to Venezuela.
Meanwhile, his wife sold houses and condos, especially to Venezuelans who wanted to invest in South Florida.
From all indications, business boomed with the rise to power of president Hugo Chávez and the petroleum windfall that Venezuela has enjoyed these past few years. In August 2001 the Antoninis registered as their residence # 807 The Mark on Brickell, 1155 Brickell Bay Drive. One year later they purchased, for $606,300.00 #301 Lake Villa One, in the Ocean Club condominium. Antonini is also listed as the owner of #305 Key Biscayne Ambassador condominium, a much more modest building, dating from 1975 on the island's main drag, Crandon Boulevard.
In that same year he incorporated Defensa y Tecnología in Venezuela for the "sale, distribution, exportation and importation of military and law enforcement weaponry" accordingto Caracas' El Mundo.
Throughout 2003 Antonini increased his portfolio with the creation of Global Ads Corp in Florida, and the founding, with Wladimir Abad ( a Venezuelan pilot who this week told Miami's Union Radio 1210 that he registered corporations but wasn't active in their management) of Techmilk in August of that year. ( from Buenos Aires News: Wladimir Abad, owns Abad Air, which has made frequent flights between Venezuela, Miami, and the Turks and Caicos, a Caribbean money laundering haven. Abad, like Antonini, seems to be fascinated with the ease of starting a US company and has set up at least a dozen, none of which seem to have an address or employees...Antonini Wilson is part of a group of 35 - 45 year-old "businessmen" who have gotten rich under Chavez, and all hang out together. One of them is Ricardo Fernandez Barruecos, owner of American Food Grains; Wladimir Abad is the company secretary. One of AFG's planes was detained by the US DEA May 17 of this year. There are several members of the group, all rolling in dough, and all connected to PDVSA and Chavez. Abad, a big Chavista, drove around Caracas during the run-up to the recall campaign with a big red "NO!" sticker on his brand-new Ferrari, indicating his support for Chavez *) "He seems like a totally legit businessman to me.I'm in shock", Abad said, referring to Antonini in an interview with journalist Julio César Camacho.
In August, Abad helped Antonini start a new company, Techmilk. Abad is listed as vicepresident but he insists he's unaware of its dealings. Towards the end of that year Antonini incorporated, along with his friend Durán, Fox Delta Investments Inc.
His fleet of automobiles was upgraded since 2004. In January he purchased a current-model-year Hummer H2, and in March a current-model-year blue Porsche Cayenne SUV. He greeted 2007 gifting himself a white Porsche and a Range Rover Supercharge.
For her real-estate business dealings, his wife Jacqueline formed Antsai Investments.
Jacqueline y Antonini are listed as selling a unit at 6515 Collins Avenue for $387,500.00 in 2005.
2006 was a year that saw several trips to Latin America, including speedy trips to Uruguay and Argentina in March, April and June, travelling on both private jets and commercial flights.
The trip that changed his life unfolded as follows:
Thursday August 2nd, 2007. 9:04 p.m.
A Cessna Citation, US registration N5113S departs Buenos Aires' Aeroparque for Caracas. The plane was leaded by the Argentine state-owned oil company Enarsa (Energía Argentina, S.A) from Royal Class, a company on whose board sits Pablo Yabrán, son of Alfredo Yabrán, a controversial businessman who was investigated for the death of a journalist in Argentina.
Officially, according to Enarsa, the flight was intended to transport employees charged with signing an agreement relating to infrastucture required for supplying Argentina with Liquified Natural Gas.
On the plane were:
• Exequiel Espinosa, Enarsa's president.
• Claudio Uberti, director of Argentine state agency Occovi, liason between the Argentine and Venezuelan governments on joing enerhy projects
• Victoria Bereziuk, Uberti's secretary. According to captions on the cover of this week's Noticias magazine: "Bereziuk,blonde,29, raised in a well-to-do Martinez household, before coming to Occovi worked at a funeral parlor and Gastón Portal's television production company, today stands as the key with which the judges hope tp untangle the Aeroparque scandal"
Friday August 3. 7:15 p.m.
The plane leaves Caracas with five additional passengers, all Venezuelan. The manner in which the passenger list increased is fodder for all manner of speculation, from
that affirming that it was a last-minute favor requested by the Venezuelans to that
asserting that it was planned all along. "It's absolutely routine for government
figures to ask their foreign counterparts, taking advantage of an official return flight, to transport someone" explained Alberto Fernández, chief of staff of the Argentine administration.
The nine new passengers include:
* Antonini;
* Nelly Esperanza Cardoso Sánchez, PDVSA legal advisor;
* Daniel Uzcátegui Spetch, 19-year-old son of Diego Uzcátegui Matheus, managing director of the PDVSA'a Office of the President and presidente of PDVSA in Argentina. "A discrete, affable, agreeable man,Uzcátegui has managed to remain undistured at the side of the past five presidents of PDVSA, without anyone who worked alongside him being able to recall his face", wrote Caracas daily Tal Cual's Patricia Torres;
* Wilfredo José Avila Driet, of PDVSA's Protocol Office;
* Ruth Behrens Ramírez, PDVSA employee;
Saturday, August 4. 2:38 am
The plane lands at Aeroparque. There are reports that it originally attempted
to park on a nearby ramp that was taken up by the presidential plane Tango 1. Antonini gives as his Buenos Aires address that of the company that leased the Citation. One of the pilots explained to El Clarin that he filled out the immigration forms during the flight, as all the passengers were asleep.
According to Argentine journalist Jorge Lanata, Antonini' luggage passed through the X-ray scanner. Airport Police officer María Luján Telpuk, asked:
"Whose is this?"
Antonini replied diligently: "Mine".
"What are you carrying in the valise?"
Antonini: "Books and documents/papers".
"Please open it".
Antonini sighed deeply.
"Are these the papers?" the officer asked.
Antonini: "And yes."
"How much money is it?".
Antonini:"$60,000.00".
Antonini Wilson looked around and the Argentine officials were gone. Only Daniel Uzcátegui, son of PDVSA's vicepresident, was at his side. Police and customs officers counted the $50 dollar bills that amounted to $790,550.00.
After the count, Antonini made a comment, apparently in jest, but which cost him dearly, since the determination of whether the matter was an infraction or a crime depends on how his words are understood.
Accord to sources quoted by the Argentine media, Antonini said that now that there were eight officials standing in front of him, there was enough to split the valise's contents with
$100,000.00 going to each"
From the Spanish,El caso Antonini: la bitácora de un fiasco
GERARDO REYES / EL NUEVO HERALD
More links:
*From Argie Blogger
More
Antonini must yearn for those days of peaceful anonimity on an island of ten thousand where people aren't interested in their neighbor's past.
Argentinian, Venezuelan, U.S. and Uruguayan -at a minimum- justice and media have been searching for this man to clear up a two-week old mystery.
The mystery of the intended destination of a suitcase containing $790,550 in cash that was seized from him after his arrival in an executive jet at Buenos Aires' Jorge Newbery airport in the early morning of August 4th. His silence has been so extended that speculation regarding the secret he's keeping have grown with each passing day. There's talk about a campign contribution to the presidential campaign of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner; of an arms deal and a bribery payment; others say it's only the intercepted portion of a million-dollar level cash transfer.
The only thing certain people who are familiar with Antononi and his charcter are sure of is that he's not the brains behind the sophisticated operations attributed to him."Alejandro -hardly anyone calls him Guido- is like the good ole' barrio boy, the jolly fat man, whom you'd send off to do mischief and would never refuse", said one of his acquaintances who asked not to be identified.
Up to this point, the Affair of the Suitcase has led to the firing of several high level figures in the Argentine and Venezuelan petroleum industries, and the Argentine press asserts that the matter tainted the launch of Cristina Fernández's -the wife of the President of Argentina- campaign in Luna Park last week.
President Hugo Chávez's administration, which initially attributed the scandal to
CIA dirty tricks in cahoots with Venezuela's non-governmental media, has had to accept that it amounts to a "not very important...but inescapable" matter, according to VIce-President ( and former head of the elections oversight board) Jorge Rodríguez.
Based on eyewitness accounts, documents, interviews with sources and journalists as well as on material published in those countries closely following this case, El Nuevo Herald retraces the timeline of the Antonini fiasco and details the people who accompanied him, as well as those who've surrouned the entrepreneur these past few years.
Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson was born April 8, 1961 in La Victoria. His mother,
Beverly Wilson, is a 67-year-old American citizen. They say that Guido Alejandro
got his height from his 5'6" mom. Antonini is brown-complexioned, portly and corpulent. "He's like a (barrel)!! (I was stunned) at how fat that guy's gotten." said a neighbor to Argentina's La Nacion's correspondent, in La Victoria.
Of his character it's said that he's a likeable, unassuming man not given to intellectual pursuits.
Mis mother is listed as being a resident of Atlanta,GA; her driver's license lists
a first-floor apartment on Crandon Boulevard, Key Biscayne as her most recent address.
Guido's father, Don Guido, an engineer turned politician, was president of Victoria
Consejo Municipal ( city council) and likewise lives in Miami. Antonini apparently finished high school but didn't graduate college.
He and Jacqueline Regnault Palacios, listed in Miami-Dade County registrar's documents
as an attorney, were married on November 30, 1991 . On June 17, 2005 Regnault received a power-of-attorney to represent Franklin Durán, a Venezuelan friend and associate of Antonini's, in the sale of #902, Bel-Aire on The Ocean Condominiums in Key Biscayne.
At least three people interviewed by El Nuevo Herald state that Durán is one of Antonini's friends with the most influence over him. Durán, who turns 40 next month, is described as an intelligent businessmane, discrete, taken with luxury automobiles. He's the registered owner of a yellow 2005 Porsche Boxster and a same model year boat, at the address of Key Biscayne's most photographed residence in the past days: A white, two-story, white structure on Mashta Dr. with canal views, valued at $3,900,000.00. This address appears on documents recording joint Antonini and Durán corporation/business.
Durán is connected with two lucrative fields: arms and the petroleum industry.
According to a judgment by the Supreme Court of the state of Vargas, Venezuela,
Durán in 2002 imported into Venezuela, through his Ruibal y Durán company, 73 Israelí UZI submachineguns, intended for the Cojedes state police. Venezuelan authorities searched the shipment for supposed contraband, but the court dismissed the case in October 2004
On the petroleum front, Durán is linked with Venezuelan company Perforaciones Albornoz (Perfoalca) which has several contracts with government-owned oil company
PDVSA. Another shareholder in Perfoalca is Carlos Kauffman, a friend of Antonini.
Some residents of La Victoria told correspondents for La Nación and Venezuela's El Universal that Antonini permanently moved to Miai 15 years ago.
The first automobile registered to him in Florida is a Toyota truck purchased in 1994, his address stated as 575 Crandon Boulevard, Key Biscayne. In May of that year
he acquired a 1989 BMW, and in June he incorporated one of his most active companies: Venuz Suply(sic), Inc. That same year his wife obtained her real estate broker's license. The following year the couple bought a unit at 141 Crandon Boulevard (Key Colony), for $234,000. Antonini's life apparently was tranquil. His record only shows a charge for boating in a no-trespass zone. Aside for his mortgage, hi s only other debt was with Mayor's jewelers.
In those years, those who knew him say, Antonini was on the prowl for any business, big or small, from which he could profit as a middleman: he exported new and used tires to Venezuela, he sold spare parts for cars and trucks, and he was getting his start in exporting weapons and security materials to Venezuela.
Meanwhile, his wife sold houses and condos, especially to Venezuelans who wanted to invest in South Florida.
From all indications, business boomed with the rise to power of president Hugo Chávez and the petroleum windfall that Venezuela has enjoyed these past few years. In August 2001 the Antoninis registered as their residence # 807 The Mark on Brickell, 1155 Brickell Bay Drive. One year later they purchased, for $606,300.00 #301 Lake Villa One, in the Ocean Club condominium. Antonini is also listed as the owner of #305 Key Biscayne Ambassador condominium, a much more modest building, dating from 1975 on the island's main drag, Crandon Boulevard.
In that same year he incorporated Defensa y Tecnología in Venezuela for the "sale, distribution, exportation and importation of military and law enforcement weaponry" accordingto Caracas' El Mundo.
Throughout 2003 Antonini increased his portfolio with the creation of Global Ads Corp in Florida, and the founding, with Wladimir Abad ( a Venezuelan pilot who this week told Miami's Union Radio 1210 that he registered corporations but wasn't active in their management) of Techmilk in August of that year. ( from Buenos Aires News: Wladimir Abad, owns Abad Air, which has made frequent flights between Venezuela, Miami, and the Turks and Caicos, a Caribbean money laundering haven. Abad, like Antonini, seems to be fascinated with the ease of starting a US company and has set up at least a dozen, none of which seem to have an address or employees...Antonini Wilson is part of a group of 35 - 45 year-old "businessmen" who have gotten rich under Chavez, and all hang out together. One of them is Ricardo Fernandez Barruecos, owner of American Food Grains; Wladimir Abad is the company secretary. One of AFG's planes was detained by the US DEA May 17 of this year. There are several members of the group, all rolling in dough, and all connected to PDVSA and Chavez. Abad, a big Chavista, drove around Caracas during the run-up to the recall campaign with a big red "NO!" sticker on his brand-new Ferrari, indicating his support for Chavez *) "He seems like a totally legit businessman to me.I'm in shock", Abad said, referring to Antonini in an interview with journalist Julio César Camacho.
In August, Abad helped Antonini start a new company, Techmilk. Abad is listed as vicepresident but he insists he's unaware of its dealings. Towards the end of that year Antonini incorporated, along with his friend Durán, Fox Delta Investments Inc.
His fleet of automobiles was upgraded since 2004. In January he purchased a current-model-year Hummer H2, and in March a current-model-year blue Porsche Cayenne SUV. He greeted 2007 gifting himself a white Porsche and a Range Rover Supercharge.
For her real-estate business dealings, his wife Jacqueline formed Antsai Investments.
Jacqueline y Antonini are listed as selling a unit at 6515 Collins Avenue for $387,500.00 in 2005.
2006 was a year that saw several trips to Latin America, including speedy trips to Uruguay and Argentina in March, April and June, travelling on both private jets and commercial flights.
The trip that changed his life unfolded as follows:
Thursday August 2nd, 2007. 9:04 p.m.
A Cessna Citation, US registration N5113S departs Buenos Aires' Aeroparque for Caracas. The plane was leaded by the Argentine state-owned oil company Enarsa (Energía Argentina, S.A) from Royal Class, a company on whose board sits Pablo Yabrán, son of Alfredo Yabrán, a controversial businessman who was investigated for the death of a journalist in Argentina.
Officially, according to Enarsa, the flight was intended to transport employees charged with signing an agreement relating to infrastucture required for supplying Argentina with Liquified Natural Gas.
On the plane were:
• Exequiel Espinosa, Enarsa's president.
• Claudio Uberti, director of Argentine state agency Occovi, liason between the Argentine and Venezuelan governments on joing enerhy projects
• Victoria Bereziuk, Uberti's secretary. According to captions on the cover of this week's Noticias magazine: "Bereziuk,blonde,29, raised in a well-to-do Martinez household, before coming to Occovi worked at a funeral parlor and Gastón Portal's television production company, today stands as the key with which the judges hope tp untangle the Aeroparque scandal"
Friday August 3. 7:15 p.m.
The plane leaves Caracas with five additional passengers, all Venezuelan. The manner in which the passenger list increased is fodder for all manner of speculation, from
that affirming that it was a last-minute favor requested by the Venezuelans to that
asserting that it was planned all along. "It's absolutely routine for government
figures to ask their foreign counterparts, taking advantage of an official return flight, to transport someone" explained Alberto Fernández, chief of staff of the Argentine administration.
The nine new passengers include:
* Antonini;
* Nelly Esperanza Cardoso Sánchez, PDVSA legal advisor;
* Daniel Uzcátegui Spetch, 19-year-old son of Diego Uzcátegui Matheus, managing director of the PDVSA'a Office of the President and presidente of PDVSA in Argentina. "A discrete, affable, agreeable man,Uzcátegui has managed to remain undistured at the side of the past five presidents of PDVSA, without anyone who worked alongside him being able to recall his face", wrote Caracas daily Tal Cual's Patricia Torres;
* Wilfredo José Avila Driet, of PDVSA's Protocol Office;
* Ruth Behrens Ramírez, PDVSA employee;
Saturday, August 4. 2:38 am
The plane lands at Aeroparque. There are reports that it originally attempted
to park on a nearby ramp that was taken up by the presidential plane Tango 1. Antonini gives as his Buenos Aires address that of the company that leased the Citation. One of the pilots explained to El Clarin that he filled out the immigration forms during the flight, as all the passengers were asleep.
According to Argentine journalist Jorge Lanata, Antonini' luggage passed through the X-ray scanner. Airport Police officer María Luján Telpuk, asked:
"Whose is this?"
Antonini replied diligently: "Mine".
"What are you carrying in the valise?"
Antonini: "Books and documents/papers".
"Please open it".
Antonini sighed deeply.
"Are these the papers?" the officer asked.
Antonini: "And yes."
"How much money is it?".
Antonini:"$60,000.00".
Antonini Wilson looked around and the Argentine officials were gone. Only Daniel Uzcátegui, son of PDVSA's vicepresident, was at his side. Police and customs officers counted the $50 dollar bills that amounted to $790,550.00.
After the count, Antonini made a comment, apparently in jest, but which cost him dearly, since the determination of whether the matter was an infraction or a crime depends on how his words are understood.
Accord to sources quoted by the Argentine media, Antonini said that now that there were eight officials standing in front of him, there was enough to split the valise's contents with
$100,000.00 going to each"
From the Spanish,El caso Antonini: la bitácora de un fiasco
GERARDO REYES / EL NUEVO HERALD
More links:
*From Argie Blogger
More
Saturday, August 18, 2007
Betrayed By Spies
Venezuela's President For Life Aug 16th 2007
From The Economist print edition
From The Economist print edition
Lee Sustar & Gonzalo Gomez
Lastly, a piece I'd missed, but which is very telling The Ethics Of A Chavista
But that little aside, that a seditious conspiracy to kill a democratically elected head of state was "betrayed by spies", tells us all we really need to know about this crowd. They're sorry that Hugo's coup, his golpe failed, that it was betrayed. Kudos for citizens loyal to the Constitutional regime? Nope, they're spies who betrayed HUGO! So, the toothgnashing from their side about the events that followed the military's refusal to act against demonstrating citizens on April 11, 2002 is, as we've always know, fraudulent. They support coups, just not any action that results in their patrons removal. Eso si los puede A Sustar.
From The Economist print edition
...It should come as no surprise that Hugo Chávez, who claims to be a latter-day Bolívar, is proposing to let himself be re-elected indefinitely to his country's presidency.Latin America's Middle Class Aug 16th 2007
The plan to abolish presidential term limits is part of a bundle of constitutional changes unveiled by Mr Chávez on August 15th. These would remove the last remaining checks and balances to presidential power in Venezuela. They would strip the Central Bank of all autonomy, allowing the government to spend the country's foreign reserves. The government would be given power to expropriate private property by decree, and to promote co-operatives and state enterprise.
State governors and mayors will still be subject to term limits—otherwise they might become caudillos, Mr Chávez said recently, without irony. They will be sidelined by new communal councils, dependent on the presidency. Another proposal is to reduce the maximum working day to six hours. “Now we are headed straight towards socialism,” Mr Chávez said. But first the plans must be approved by referendum.
In office since 1999, Mr Chávez was himself the architect of the constitution he now wants to modify. Since winning re-election last December he has nationalised the telecoms and electricity industries and discontinued the terrestrial broadcasting licence of the main opposition television station.
The president remains popular, thanks to a bond with many poorer Venezuelans reinforced by quantities of oil money for social programmes. But there is much polling evidence that a large majority oppose socialism and value democracy.
His opponents say that Mr Chávez is destroying Venezuela's economy and its democracy, and needs ever more money to buy popularity. Some of his senior supporters, who have their own presidential ambitions, may also be discomfited by the burgeoning personality cult around the president.
Bolivia quickly discarded Bolívar's 19th-century constitution and sank into instability. Once the oil money runs out, that may be the fate of a socialist paradise working six hours a day.
From The Economist print edition
MUCH of the news coming out of Latin America in recent years has been of radical populists proclaiming “revolution” or, as Venezuela's Hugo Chávez would have it, “21st century socialism”. In their widely propagated caricature, a tiny white elite in Latin America oppresses an indigenous majority whose poverty has been exacerbated by the free-market reforms imposed by the IMF and the United States.
So it might be hard to believe that in many countries in the region, and especially in Brazil and Mexico, Latin America's two giants, things are in fact going better today than they have done since the mid-1970s. The region is in its fourth successive year of economic growth averaging a steady 5%. In most places inflation is in low single digits. And for the first time in memory, growth has gone hand-in-hand with a current-account surplus, holding out hope that it will not be scotched by a habitual Latin American balance-of-payments crunch.
What is more, financial stability and faster growth are starting to transform social
conditions with astonishing speed. The number of people living in poverty is
falling, not only because of growth but also thanks to the social policies of
reforming democratic governments. The incomes of the poor are rising faster than
those of the rich in Brazil (where income inequality is at its least extreme for
a generation) and in Mexico.
In both these countries a new lower-middle class is emerging from poverty. Low inflation, achieved through more disciplined public finances and trade liberalisation, has brought falling interest rates. Credit has at last returned. So these new consumers are buying cars and DVD players or taking out mortgages. No wonder Latin Americans are in an optimistic mood: earlier this year a poll by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found a greater increase in personal satisfaction in Brazil and Mexico over the past five years than in any of the other 45 countries it surveyed.
So if things are going so well, why have radical populists and leftists done well in
recent elections? Look closer: they have in fact failed to carry all before
them. Out of a dozen presidential elections in the region in the 13 months to
last December, the radicals won only four. Moderate governments, of centre-left
or centre-right, are in charge in most countries.
That said, politics sometimes lags economics. Even as things started to improve, many Latin Americans were in surly mood because they had suffered through five years of stagnation or worse between 1998 and 2003. Besides, the progress is not uniform.In some of the smaller and poorer countries, the populists' caricature has a grain of truth to it. That is why Mr Chávez has friends in places like Bolivia and Ecuador.
But the important point is that the course upon which most Latin American countries are set—of democracy and open-market economies—is finally bearing fruit. The new middle class in countries like Brazil and Mexico derives its income from the private sector, not from public employment. There lies the big difference with Mr Chávez's Venezuela, where falling poverty depends almost entirely on a vast increase in public spending, and is thus hostage to the oil price.
To bolster the new middle class, it is crucial to keep inflation low. So is improving the shoddy education imparted in the region's schools and universities. And businesses in the region are still held back by lack of transport infrastructure and an excess of red tape.
The commodity bonanza won't last forever, so now is the time to fix these things. Do so and Latin America's democracies could turn an important corner, in which inequality, poverty and populism give way to prosperous middle-class democracies where the majority has an interest in stability
Lee Sustar & Gonzalo GomezLastly, a piece I'd missed, but which is very telling The Ethics Of A Chavista
Lee Sustar's love letter to Chavez is tiresome, and the footnotes (Sustar,Gregory Wilpert,Chris Carlson,Daniel Hellinger,Steve Ellner,Julia Buxton,Richard Gott,Bernard Mommer,Eva Golinger,Juan Forero,Mark Weisbrot) read like a who's who of the shills the Venezuelan Embassy suggested as sources for propaganda spin regarding the sanction against RCTV."...Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chávez burst onto the scene on February 4, 1992, in a failed coup against Pérez. His plan called for seizing key government and military installations and radio transmitters, through which his group would call for a national uprising. The plan echoed the 1945 coup and AD-military junta that overthrew the military dictatorship of Isaías Medina Angarita. But unlike the AD party of that time, Chávez’s conspirators had almost no contact with social movements, organized labor, or the Left.24 The apparent hope was a repeat of the Caracazo uprising, this time with the military on the side of the people.
Betrayed by spies, the coup failed"
But that little aside, that a seditious conspiracy to kill a democratically elected head of state was "betrayed by spies", tells us all we really need to know about this crowd. They're sorry that Hugo's coup, his golpe failed, that it was betrayed. Kudos for citizens loyal to the Constitutional regime? Nope, they're spies who betrayed HUGO! So, the toothgnashing from their side about the events that followed the military's refusal to act against demonstrating citizens on April 11, 2002 is, as we've always know, fraudulent. They support coups, just not any action that results in their patrons removal. Eso si los puede A Sustar.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
The Emperor's Court Jesters
As a stunned Venezuela reels from the utterly shocking, unimaginable announcement that Hugo Chavez would like to be Presidente-For-Life, a moment to highlight Christopher
Hitchen's recent words on two of Hugo's useful idiot handmaidens
On Jimbo:
"Almost always, when former President Jimmy Carter opens his big, smug mouth, he has already made the psychological mistake that is going to reduce his words to absurdity. When he told the press last week that the Bush administration had aroused antipathy around the world, he might have been uttering no more than a banality. But no, he had to try to invest it with a special signature flourish. So, he said instead:
"Worst in history," as the great statesman from Georgia has to know, has been the title for which he has himself been actively contending since 1976. I once had quite an argument with the late Sen. Eugene McCarthy, who maintained adamantly that it had been right for him to vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980 for no other reason. "Mr. Carter," he said, "quite simply abdicated the whole responsibility of the presidency while in office. He left the nation at the mercy of its enemies at home and abroad. He was the worst president we ever had."
...(C)oncentrate for a moment on what he says about George Bush Sr. What did he say at the time? Many people in retrospect think Bush did a good job in assembling a large multinational coalition, under U.N. auspices, for the emancipation of Kuwait from Iraqi occupation.
But Jimmy Carter used his prestige, at that uneasy moment, to make an open appeal to all governments not to join that coalition. He went public to oppose the settled policy of Congress and the declared resolutions of the United Nations and to denounce his own country as the warmonger. And, after all, why not? It was he who had created the conditions for the Gulf crisis in the first place—initially by fawning on the shah of Iran and then, when that option collapsed, by encouraging Saddam Hussein to invade Iran and by "tilting" American policy to his side. If I had done such a thing, I would take very good care to be modest when discussions of Middle Eastern crises came up.
But here's the thing about self-righteous, born-again demagogues: Nothing they ever do, or did, can be attributed to anything but the very highest motives.
Here is a man who...tells us (the mistake of Israel) is to have moved away from God and the prophets and toward secularism. If you ever feel like a good laugh, just tell yourself that things would improve if only the Israeli government would be more Orthodox.
Jimmy Carter will then turn his vacantly pious glare on you, as if to say that you just don't understand what it is to have a personal savior.
In the Carter years, the United States was an international laughingstock. This was not just because of the prevalence of his ghastly kin: the beer-sodden brother Billy, doing deals with Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi, and the grisly matriarch, Miz Lillian. It was not just because of the president's dire lectures on morality and salvation and his weird encounters with lethal rabbits and UFOs. It was not just because of the risible White House "Bible study" sessions run by Bert Lance and his other open-palmed Elmer Gantry pals from Georgia.
It was because, whether in Afghanistan, Iran, or Iraq—still the source of so many of our woes—the Carter administration could not tell a friend from an enemy. His combination of naivete and cynicism—from open-mouthed shock at Leonid Brezhnev's occupation of Afghanistan to underhanded support for Saddam in his unsleeping campaign of megalomania (which we'd see again, paisanos)—had terrible consequences that are with us still. It's hardly an exaggeration to say that every administration since has had to deal with the chaotic legacy of Carter's mind-boggling cowardice and incompetence.
The quotation with which I began comes from an interview that he gave last week to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He also went on the British Broadcasting Corporation to make spiteful and cheap remarks on the retirement of Prime Minister Tony Blair, calling him "loyal, blind, apparently subservient."
Yes, that's right, Mr. Carter. Just the way to make friends and assert "America's basic values." Show us your peanut envy. Heap insults on a guest in Washington: a thrice-elected prime minister who was the first and strongest ally of the United States on the most awful day in its recent history. A man who was prepared to risk his own career to be counted as a friend. A man who was warning against the Taliban, against Slobodan Milosevic, and against Saddam Hussein when George Bush was only the governor of Texas. Leaders like that deserve a little respect even when they are wrong—but don't expect any generosity or courtesy from the purse-mouthed preacher man from Plains, who just purely knows he was right all along, and who, when that fails, can always point to the numberless godly victories that he won over the forces of evil."
~
On Parliament's damning report about Saddam apologist George Galloway
Galloway
By Christopher Hitchens Posted Monday, July 23, 2007,
"The mills of justice grind with maddening slowness, but they do at least grind. In October 2005, my friend Denis MacShane, the radical Labor member of Parliament for Rotherham, rose on the floor of the House of Commons to demand a joint inquiry by the British parliament and the U.S. Congress into the financial relationship between George Galloway and the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. This followed the report that month, by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, that presented persuasive evidence showing that Galloway's front organization, a "charity" known as the Mariam Appeal that campaigned against the sanctions on Iraq, had in fact received direct Iraqi subventions from the proceeds of the U.N.-sponsored "Oil for Food" program. Bank records established that Galloway's former wife had been paid at least $150,000 in this way. A completely separate U.N. inquiry chaired by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker* identified another "Oil for Food" payment to the same lady, this time in the sum of $120,000.
MacShane's intervention was important, not least because the House of Commons requires its members to declare all sources of outside income. An inquiry was set up, by the Committee on Standards and Privileges, to investigate. It has now produced its report, along with a recommendation that Mr. Galloway apologize to the House and be suspended from Parliament for 18 days. And the findings of the report are even more damning, if that is possible, than the conclusions reached by the Senate and Volcker investigations. In particular, they make reference to the transcript of a meeting between Galloway and Saddam Hussein on Aug. 8, 2002.
On that date, Galloway complained to his political master—the man he had saluted in public for his "courage" and "indefatigability"—that certain problems with oil prices were affecting "our income" and "our dues."
This raises two quite serious questions. The first is the extent to which the Iraqi Baath Party was able to purchase direct influence among Western politicians: George Galloway has been a hysterically extremist political thug for a long time, but others more supposedly "respectable," including some important Russian and French politicians and diplomats, may have been sweetened and suborned in the same way.
The second has to do with a purely moral issue. The "Oil for Food" program was the means by which the most vulnerable people in Iraq—the children, the sick, and the aged—were supposed to be protected from the effect of sanctions aimed at the regime. To have profited from its abuse or its diversion is therefore somewhat worse than to have accepted a straight-out bribe or inducement from Saddam Hussein. It is to have stolen directly from the neediest and the weakest, in order to finance a propaganda campaign that in turn blamed the West for the avoidable sufferings of Iraqis between 1991 and 2003.
The "anti-war" movement is not blameless in all this. When Galloway came to testify before the Senate and delivered a spittle-fueled harangue instead of answering the direct questions posed to him, he became a populist hero on the Left, was rewarded with a moist profile in the New York Times that praised his general feistiness, and was invited back to the United States to mount a speaking tour in which he repeated his general praise for the heroic "resistance" in Iraq, adding a few well-chosen words in support of the Assad regime in Syria. Praise was showered upon him in the Daily Kos, by columnists in The Nation, and elsewhere. ( note: including the blogs manufactured by foreign propagandists for Chavez)
Now we have the sober words of Sir Philip Mawer, the parliamentary commissioner for standards among elected members, who adds to the existing reports and evidence by saying that however much Galloway may have "prevaricated and fudged," the evidence against him is "now undeniable."
I do not think that an 18-day suspension from the House of Commons is anything like enough punishment for what Galloway has done, first on behalf of a sadistic and genocidal megalomaniac and second to steal food and medicine from the mouths of desperate Iraqis. We ran into each other a few times on his debate-tour, and on the last occasion on which we exchanged views, when he told me that he would never debate with me again (which he has since consistently refused to do), I told him that we were not done with each other. I would, I told him, be waiting to write a review of his prison diaries.
The Senate subcommittee referred his "false and misleading" statements under oath (a crime under 18 USC Section 1001) to the Department of Justice in November 2005. Prosecutors in Manhattan (location of the banks through which some of the shady transfers were made) have also been handed the relevant papers. And the evidence adduced by the House of Commons must necessarily be considered by Scotland Yard, because it goes far beyond the damage done to the honor of Parliament. In the meantime, it will be interesting to discover whether Galloway's former wife, or the associates of his campaign who also received "Oil for Food" money, ever declared the income or paid any tax on it. And if I was the editor of the Daily Telegraph in London, whose printed documents about Galloway appear to have been vindicated by the parliamentary inquiry, I would want to revisit the judgment for libel that Galloway astonishingly managed to win, even under a notoriously oppressive law, in an English court. His troubles are only now beginning.
Just look at the gang that strove to prevent the United Nations from enforcing its library of resolutions on Saddam Hussein. Where are they now? Gerhard Schroeder, ex-chancellor of Germany, has gone straight to work for a Russian oil-and-gas consortium. Vladimir Putin, master of such consortia and their manipulation, is undisguised in his thirst to re-establish a one-party state(and he ain't the only one). Jacques Chirac, who only avoided prosecution for corruption by getting himself immunized by re-election (and who had Saddam's sons as his personal guests while in office, and built Saddam Hussein a nuclear reactor while knowing what he wanted it for), is now undergoing some unpleasant interviews with the Paris police. So is his cynical understudy Dominique de Villepin, once the glamour-boy of the "European" school of diplomacy without force. What a crew!
Galloway is the most sordid of this group because he managed to be a pimp for, as well as a prostitute of, one of the foulest dictatorships of modern times. But the taint of collusion and corruption extends much further than his pathetic figure, and one day, slowly but surely, we shall find out the whole disgusting thing. "
~
Cold comfort as Hugo tries his Napoleon on for size, but, indeed, ultimadamente, we also shall know the whole sordid truth about Hugo, his pimps, and his prostitutes.
Hitchen's recent words on two of Hugo's useful idiot handmaidens
On Jimbo:
"Almost always, when former President Jimmy Carter opens his big, smug mouth, he has already made the psychological mistake that is going to reduce his words to absurdity. When he told the press last week that the Bush administration had aroused antipathy around the world, he might have been uttering no more than a banality. But no, he had to try to invest it with a special signature flourish. So, he said instead:"I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this
administration has been the worst in history. The overt reversal of America's
basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including [those of]
George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the
most disturbing to me."
"Worst in history," as the great statesman from Georgia has to know, has been the title for which he has himself been actively contending since 1976. I once had quite an argument with the late Sen. Eugene McCarthy, who maintained adamantly that it had been right for him to vote for Ronald Reagan in 1980 for no other reason. "Mr. Carter," he said, "quite simply abdicated the whole responsibility of the presidency while in office. He left the nation at the mercy of its enemies at home and abroad. He was the worst president we ever had."
...(C)oncentrate for a moment on what he says about George Bush Sr. What did he say at the time? Many people in retrospect think Bush did a good job in assembling a large multinational coalition, under U.N. auspices, for the emancipation of Kuwait from Iraqi occupation.
But Jimmy Carter used his prestige, at that uneasy moment, to make an open appeal to all governments not to join that coalition. He went public to oppose the settled policy of Congress and the declared resolutions of the United Nations and to denounce his own country as the warmonger. And, after all, why not? It was he who had created the conditions for the Gulf crisis in the first place—initially by fawning on the shah of Iran and then, when that option collapsed, by encouraging Saddam Hussein to invade Iran and by "tilting" American policy to his side. If I had done such a thing, I would take very good care to be modest when discussions of Middle Eastern crises came up.
But here's the thing about self-righteous, born-again demagogues: Nothing they ever do, or did, can be attributed to anything but the very highest motives.
Here is a man who...tells us (the mistake of Israel) is to have moved away from God and the prophets and toward secularism. If you ever feel like a good laugh, just tell yourself that things would improve if only the Israeli government would be more Orthodox.
Jimmy Carter will then turn his vacantly pious glare on you, as if to say that you just don't understand what it is to have a personal savior.
In the Carter years, the United States was an international laughingstock. This was not just because of the prevalence of his ghastly kin: the beer-sodden brother Billy, doing deals with Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi, and the grisly matriarch, Miz Lillian. It was not just because of the president's dire lectures on morality and salvation and his weird encounters with lethal rabbits and UFOs. It was not just because of the risible White House "Bible study" sessions run by Bert Lance and his other open-palmed Elmer Gantry pals from Georgia.
It was because, whether in Afghanistan, Iran, or Iraq—still the source of so many of our woes—the Carter administration could not tell a friend from an enemy. His combination of naivete and cynicism—from open-mouthed shock at Leonid Brezhnev's occupation of Afghanistan to underhanded support for Saddam in his unsleeping campaign of megalomania (which we'd see again, paisanos)—had terrible consequences that are with us still. It's hardly an exaggeration to say that every administration since has had to deal with the chaotic legacy of Carter's mind-boggling cowardice and incompetence.
The quotation with which I began comes from an interview that he gave last week to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He also went on the British Broadcasting Corporation to make spiteful and cheap remarks on the retirement of Prime Minister Tony Blair, calling him "loyal, blind, apparently subservient."
Yes, that's right, Mr. Carter. Just the way to make friends and assert "America's basic values." Show us your peanut envy. Heap insults on a guest in Washington: a thrice-elected prime minister who was the first and strongest ally of the United States on the most awful day in its recent history. A man who was prepared to risk his own career to be counted as a friend. A man who was warning against the Taliban, against Slobodan Milosevic, and against Saddam Hussein when George Bush was only the governor of Texas. Leaders like that deserve a little respect even when they are wrong—but don't expect any generosity or courtesy from the purse-mouthed preacher man from Plains, who just purely knows he was right all along, and who, when that fails, can always point to the numberless godly victories that he won over the forces of evil."
~
On Parliament's damning report about Saddam apologist George Galloway
GallowayBy Christopher Hitchens Posted Monday, July 23, 2007,
"The mills of justice grind with maddening slowness, but they do at least grind. In October 2005, my friend Denis MacShane, the radical Labor member of Parliament for Rotherham, rose on the floor of the House of Commons to demand a joint inquiry by the British parliament and the U.S. Congress into the financial relationship between George Galloway and the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq. This followed the report that month, by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, that presented persuasive evidence showing that Galloway's front organization, a "charity" known as the Mariam Appeal that campaigned against the sanctions on Iraq, had in fact received direct Iraqi subventions from the proceeds of the U.N.-sponsored "Oil for Food" program. Bank records established that Galloway's former wife had been paid at least $150,000 in this way. A completely separate U.N. inquiry chaired by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker* identified another "Oil for Food" payment to the same lady, this time in the sum of $120,000.
MacShane's intervention was important, not least because the House of Commons requires its members to declare all sources of outside income. An inquiry was set up, by the Committee on Standards and Privileges, to investigate. It has now produced its report, along with a recommendation that Mr. Galloway apologize to the House and be suspended from Parliament for 18 days. And the findings of the report are even more damning, if that is possible, than the conclusions reached by the Senate and Volcker investigations. In particular, they make reference to the transcript of a meeting between Galloway and Saddam Hussein on Aug. 8, 2002.
On that date, Galloway complained to his political master—the man he had saluted in public for his "courage" and "indefatigability"—that certain problems with oil prices were affecting "our income" and "our dues."
This raises two quite serious questions. The first is the extent to which the Iraqi Baath Party was able to purchase direct influence among Western politicians: George Galloway has been a hysterically extremist political thug for a long time, but others more supposedly "respectable," including some important Russian and French politicians and diplomats, may have been sweetened and suborned in the same way.
The second has to do with a purely moral issue. The "Oil for Food" program was the means by which the most vulnerable people in Iraq—the children, the sick, and the aged—were supposed to be protected from the effect of sanctions aimed at the regime. To have profited from its abuse or its diversion is therefore somewhat worse than to have accepted a straight-out bribe or inducement from Saddam Hussein. It is to have stolen directly from the neediest and the weakest, in order to finance a propaganda campaign that in turn blamed the West for the avoidable sufferings of Iraqis between 1991 and 2003.
The "anti-war" movement is not blameless in all this. When Galloway came to testify before the Senate and delivered a spittle-fueled harangue instead of answering the direct questions posed to him, he became a populist hero on the Left, was rewarded with a moist profile in the New York Times that praised his general feistiness, and was invited back to the United States to mount a speaking tour in which he repeated his general praise for the heroic "resistance" in Iraq, adding a few well-chosen words in support of the Assad regime in Syria. Praise was showered upon him in the Daily Kos, by columnists in The Nation, and elsewhere. ( note: including the blogs manufactured by foreign propagandists for Chavez)
Now we have the sober words of Sir Philip Mawer, the parliamentary commissioner for standards among elected members, who adds to the existing reports and evidence by saying that however much Galloway may have "prevaricated and fudged," the evidence against him is "now undeniable."
I do not think that an 18-day suspension from the House of Commons is anything like enough punishment for what Galloway has done, first on behalf of a sadistic and genocidal megalomaniac and second to steal food and medicine from the mouths of desperate Iraqis. We ran into each other a few times on his debate-tour, and on the last occasion on which we exchanged views, when he told me that he would never debate with me again (which he has since consistently refused to do), I told him that we were not done with each other. I would, I told him, be waiting to write a review of his prison diaries.
The Senate subcommittee referred his "false and misleading" statements under oath (a crime under 18 USC Section 1001) to the Department of Justice in November 2005. Prosecutors in Manhattan (location of the banks through which some of the shady transfers were made) have also been handed the relevant papers. And the evidence adduced by the House of Commons must necessarily be considered by Scotland Yard, because it goes far beyond the damage done to the honor of Parliament. In the meantime, it will be interesting to discover whether Galloway's former wife, or the associates of his campaign who also received "Oil for Food" money, ever declared the income or paid any tax on it. And if I was the editor of the Daily Telegraph in London, whose printed documents about Galloway appear to have been vindicated by the parliamentary inquiry, I would want to revisit the judgment for libel that Galloway astonishingly managed to win, even under a notoriously oppressive law, in an English court. His troubles are only now beginning.
Just look at the gang that strove to prevent the United Nations from enforcing its library of resolutions on Saddam Hussein. Where are they now? Gerhard Schroeder, ex-chancellor of Germany, has gone straight to work for a Russian oil-and-gas consortium. Vladimir Putin, master of such consortia and their manipulation, is undisguised in his thirst to re-establish a one-party state(and he ain't the only one). Jacques Chirac, who only avoided prosecution for corruption by getting himself immunized by re-election (and who had Saddam's sons as his personal guests while in office, and built Saddam Hussein a nuclear reactor while knowing what he wanted it for), is now undergoing some unpleasant interviews with the Paris police. So is his cynical understudy Dominique de Villepin, once the glamour-boy of the "European" school of diplomacy without force. What a crew!
Galloway is the most sordid of this group because he managed to be a pimp for, as well as a prostitute of, one of the foulest dictatorships of modern times. But the taint of collusion and corruption extends much further than his pathetic figure, and one day, slowly but surely, we shall find out the whole disgusting thing. "
~
Cold comfort as Hugo tries his Napoleon on for size, but, indeed, ultimadamente, we also shall know the whole sordid truth about Hugo, his pimps, and his prostitutes.
Monday, August 13, 2007
Flashback, Venezuela, Early 1980s
Something more pleasant.
If you saw this clip aired during a recent Leno appearance by its star, you might remember seeing a dubbed Spanish version in Venezuela, back in the day when Hugo was only starting his seditious plotting to liberate greenbacks for the personal use of his toadies...
If you saw this clip aired during a recent Leno appearance by its star, you might remember seeing a dubbed Spanish version in Venezuela, back in the day when Hugo was only starting his seditious plotting to liberate greenbacks for the personal use of his toadies...
Sunday, August 12, 2007
The rise of the “Boligarchs”
Guido's HideawayHey, Guido, a $400,000 rise in market value of the ranchito,$800,000 in cash ( to pay that $11,600 prop tax bill?)- you MUST be one of those copper-hued downtrodden that Bart Jones was telling us that Chavez struggles for...
Under Hugo Chávez, the right political connections are a passport to wealth, whisky and a HummerAug 9th 2007 CARACAS
From The Economist print edition
“PETROLEUM socialism” is how Hugo Chávez, Venezuela's president, recently dubbed the blend of military populism and neo-Marxist statism to which he is subjecting his country. Its prime objective, he insists, is to improve the lot of the country's poor majority. Mr Chávez proclaims that “being rich is bad”. He frequently lashes out at what he calls “the oligarchy”. Strange, then, that the streets of Caracas are clogged with big new 4x4s (Hummers are especially favoured), it is hard to get a table at the best restaurants, and art dealers and whisky importers have never had it so good.
A new oligarchy seems to be rising in Venezuela on the back of the “Bolivarian Revolution”, named for the country's independence hero. “Some of Chávez's speeches are for the gallery,” says Alberto Muller Rojas, a retired army general who was until recently the president's chief of staff. “And I'll give you an example: the attack on the bourgeoisie.” As evidence, General Muller singles out the banks: “the most extreme expression of the bourgeoisie” but “the most favoured sector” of the economy since Mr Chávez came to power in 1999.Their prosperity owes much to an oil windfall: the price of Venezuela's main export has increased almost eightfold * since 1999 and the economy has been growing at 10% a year. But government policies, too, have favoured the bankers and other intermediaries: inflation is close to 20% and the official value of the currency is twice its black-market exchange rate. So the savvy investor looks for access to cheap dollars, import opportunities and government contracts, all of which are largely conditional on political obedience. By contrast, manufacturers and farmers face price controls and risk sporadic official harassment. The result has been the rise of what is known, in obeisance to Bolívar, as the “Boli-bourgeoisie”.
Thanks to economic growth and social programmes, the government claims that only 30% of Venezuelan families now live in poverty, down from 55% at the peak in 2003. But according to a new report by the central bank, income inequality has widened slightly under Mr Chávez: the Gini coefficient—a statistical measure of inequality—has gone from 0.44 in 2000 to 0.48 in 2005.
Typical of the new “Boligarchy” is Wilmer Ruperti, a shipping broker who was once a merchant seaman. His ascent was helped by a two-month strike against Mr Chávez by workers at Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the state oil company. Mr Ruperti chartered ships to help the government break the strike. Another is Arné Chacón, whose brother Jesse is the communications minister. Arné now owns half of Baninvest, a bank. He acquired it with loans for which his main apparent collateral was his official connections.
Mr Chávez claims to be pursuing economic nationalism and “endogenous development”. But farmers and manufacturers struggle against cheap imports. Though local dairy products are often missing from the supermarket shelves, Gouda and Emmenthal cheeses nestle beside Irish butter. The frozen chickens at Mercal, a government chain of subsidised grocery shops, are Brazilian. The importers who supply Mercal have grown rich. But Venezuela's ranchers are becoming extinct, threatened by expropriations, land invasions and price controls, as well as by extortion and kidnappings by criminal gangs.
Officials stress that two-thirds of the poor have benefited directly from government social policies. As well as Mercal, these include the “missions”, which offer education and health care. Up to 2m people get a small cash stipend. But despite hefty increases in the minimum wage and price controls on basic goods, inflation is eating away at the gains.
For those with connections, however, the rewards are great. The World Bank recently ranked Venezuela as the second-worst country in the Americas for the control of corruption, above only Haiti. Others confirm this perception. “We usually ask for 10%,” a foreign diplomat reports one government official admitting. “But some get greedy and want 15-20%.”
Since his re-election in December, Mr Chávez has frequently suggested capping the salaries of the highest-paid public officials. He also called on those with “excess” wealth to donate part of it to worthy causes. The response has been meagre. If he really tries to make socialism more than a slogan, some of the fiercest resistance may come from the new bourgeoisie his own policies have created.
* Why does the fact that Hugo has almost tenfold as much money to spend as the 1990s governments matter? Because
you can keep a lot of people happy when you spend a windfall as it comes in.
Hey, Sean Penn: This Is What Hugo Chavez, Eve Golinger, and Bart Jones Call Journalism
Between Eve Golinger, underachieving, underchallenged savant busker on the cold streets of Manhattan and her shining moment when -in a brutish echo of the "Dancing In The Dark" video- Chavez played Springsteen to her Courtney Cox and plucked her from obscurity to spew the Chavista party line on his vanity TV program, stands Mr. Bart Jones., whose bios tell us:"BART JONES spent eight years in Venezuela, mainly as a foreign correspondent for the Associated Press {note from other bio: Jones lived in Venezuela for eight years beginning in the early 1990s when he was a lay missioner for the Maryknoll Society. For a year and a half he lived in a barrio with people whose homes were shacks and mud huts. "It gave me a view of Venezuela most foreign correspondents don't get," he said. It also gave him a perspective on the political scene that is glaringly missing from most accounts in the mainstream press { that of a true-believer Chavista propagandist } Jones left the country in 2000 to take a job at Newsday, but has returned often and, on one of those visits, married Elba, whom he had met while living in Venezuela. They now have "a little Venezuelan-American" named Frank...Jones said the big question is "Whether these ruling elites will begin to recognize poor people. Poor people have risen up and taken power in Venezuela} and is the author of the forthcoming book "Hugo! The Hugo Chavez Story, From Mud Hut to Perpetual Revolution." .
(If you care to see what RCTV was forced to broadcast that April 11, 2002, as Chavez attempted to order the military out against civilian protesters, compare Jones' fraudulent description in his hatchet-job referenced further on with the following account:)
link here
Before writing Chavez hagiographies, Jones toiled as an (alleged) journalist for
Newsday and other outlets. And who served to bring Princess Eve, then working a nepotism
job at her mother's law firm, to the spotlight?
* by BART JONES, staff writer, Newsday.com April 4, 2004
Brooklyn immigration lawyer Eva Golinger usually spends her time navigating government bureaucracy to get visas for musicians from Latin America, such as the Grammy Award-winning Los Fabulosos Cadillacs. But since a 2002 coup in her mother's homeland, Venezuela, Golinger has become alarmed at what she says is U.S. government funding for groups there that aim to overthrow the elected president, Hugo Chávez. She has spent months digging out 2,000 pages of documents on U.S. financing of groups opposed to Chávez. In mid-February, Golinger's findings helped prompt Chávez to charge that the Bush administration is "using its people's money to support not only opposition activities but acts of conspiracy." That charge has helped revive tensions between Chávez and the White House...Chávez's accusation that the Bush administration is promoting conspiracy against him came shortly after Golinger sent him documents she obtained through the Freedom of Information Act... Golinger, 31, says she got involved because of her family's activist history. Her mother, Elizabeth Calderon, is of Venezuelan heritage and once led a chapter of the National Organization for Women. "I was marching in the streets at the age of 5 with my mother," Golinger said. In 1993, Golinger moved to Venezuela to get in touch with her roots. She taught English, wrote for an English newspaper and sang with a Latin rock fusion group whose composer and guitarist, Gustavo Moncada, she married. After moving back to New York, Golinger earned a law degree at City University of New York and opened her practice. But one eye was on events in Venezuela. The coup, which the White House initially endorsed, galvanized her attention and her resolve to counter what she calls unfair attacks by the United States and the media against Chávez. She founded a group called the Venezuela Solidarity Committee and, with the help of a freelance investigative journalist, Jeremy Bigwood, submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to find out what the National Endowment for Democracy was doing in Venezuela. Copyright © Newsday, Inc. link here"* by Bart Jones April 13, 2004 Editor: Emira Woods, Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org
Funds Aid Chávez Opposition The little-known National Endowment for Democracy is financing a vast array of groups opposed to Venezuela President Hugo Chávez, according to officials in Venezuela and a Venezuelan-American attorney...“It certainly shows an incredible pattern of financing basically every single sector in Venezuelan society,” said Eva Golinger, the Brooklyn, NY-based attorney (and) head of the pro-Chávez Venezuela Solidarity Committee in New York who helped obtain the documents through Freedom of Information Act requests. “That’s the most amazing part about it.” After Golinger had some of the NED documents delivered to Chávez, the Venezuelan president on Feb. 8 angrily denounced the funding of Sumate on his nationally broadcast television and radio program, “Hello, Mr. President.” Then, as more information from Golinger arrived, Chávez stepped up his attacks. here* by BART JONES and Letta Tayler Staff Writers; November 24, 2004
U.S. kept quiet on Chávez plot The U.S. government knew of an imminent plot to oust Venezuela's leftist president, Hugo Chávez, in the weeks prior to a 2002 military coup that briefly unseated him...Yet the United States...never warned the Chávez government, Venezuelan officials said...." The documents were obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests submitted by Eva Golinger, a Long Island attorney and pro-Chávez activist who also is investigating U.S. funding of groups opposed to the Venezuelan leader. Golinger said she was outraged by the documents. "If they knew that a democratic government was going to be overthrown, why wouldn't they send signals to it or at least explain what was going to happen?" here* by BART JONES and Letta Tayler staff writers May 1, 2005
When Chavez received dictatorial powers to rule by decree and one of his first steps was to silence a critical, private media outlet, where do "journalist" Jones' (who helped legitimize Golinger's role as "activist",never mentioning her employment and ties to Izarra) sympathies lie? In his opinion piece: Hugo Chavez versus RCTV Venezuela's oldest private TV network played a major role in a failed 2002 coup. By Bart Jones May 30, 2007A NEWSDAY SPECIAL REPORT Despite the fresh bloodstains, the streets of Caracas were eerily quiet the night after Venezuela's leftist President Hugo Chavez was briefly toppled in a military-backed coup in April 2002. But the gleaming presidential palace was abuzz with activity as nearly 400 prominent citizens signed a decree that would fleetingly transform the fragile democracy into a dictatorship (including) Maria Corina Machado, an activist from one of Venezuela's leading families. The Carmona Decree, named after coup leader and president-for-a-day Pedro Carmona, dismantled all three branches of Venezuela's government. A Newsday examination reveals that the U.S. support of Venezuelans opposed to Chavez has deepened the rift between the two nations, raised doubts about two respected U.S. agencies and led to a result that is questionable at best.
"They're giving aid to groups that are trying to topple Venezuela's democracy," said Eva Golinger, a Long Island attorney and Chavez sympathizer who, along with investigative journalist Jeremy Bigwood, obtained the documents through Freedom of Information Act requests. "They're funding one side and that one side's goal is to get rid of Chavez. ... It's definitely about regime change." Government documents obtained by "researchers" Golinger, who is of Venezuelan heritage...In releasing documents through the Freedom of Information Act to Golinger and Bigwood, officials whited out the names of most grant recipients, a highly unusual move when public funds are involved. Critics question their rationale that the Venezuelan government will prosecute grantees if they are identified. "If you're going to push transparency all over the world," Bigwood said, "You have to be transparent yourself." "I have nothing to hide," Súmate's vice president Machado, a 37-year-old mother of three, declared during an interview in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital. "I do not fear justice. I fear injustice." Educated and dressed like a fashion plate, Machado in many ways typifies the opposition to Chavez. Like most of those who held sway in the racially divided country until the copper-toned Chavez took office in 1999, she is fair-skinned and comes from an elite family. { As opposed to Golinger, the child of dirt-poor American physicians and attorneys, who is a ringer for Celia Cruz}Which one's Evil,Pale Maria Corina and which one's "Heroic" Copper-Colored Eva?
She holds a degree in industrial engineering and speaks a fluent English that she perfected in frequent trips to the United States, where she has vigorously lobbied for international pressure on Venezuela to drop conspiracy charges against her and Súmate president Alejandro Plaz... she refuses to accept Chavez's defeat of the Súmate-led recall referendum, whose results were upheld by the Organization of American States and the Carter Center...Copyright © 2007, Newsday Inc. here
VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez's refusal to renew the license of Radio Caracas Television might seem to justify fears that Chavez is crushing free speech and eliminating any voices critical of him. Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Committee to Protect Journalists and members of the European Parliament, the U.S. Senate and even Chile's Congress have denounced the closure of RCTV, Venezuela's oldest private television network. Chavez's detractors got more ammunition Tuesday when the president included another opposition network, Globovision, among the "enemies of the homeland." But the case of RCTV — like most things involving Chavez — has been caught up in a web of misinformation. While one side of the story is getting headlines around the world, the other is barely heard. The demise of RCTV is indeed a sad event in some ways...But after Chavez was elected president in 1998, RCTV shifted to another endeavor: ousting a democratically elected leader from office. Controlled by members of the country's fabulously wealthy oligarchy including RCTV chief Marcel Granier, it saw Chavez and his "Bolivarian Revolution" on behalf of Venezuela's majority poor as a threat.So, as Golinger spearheads a witchhunt against journalist still working in Venezuela, and
RCTV's most infamous effort to topple Chavez came during the April 11, 2002, coup attempt against him. For two days before the putsch, RCTV preempted regular programming and ran wall-to-wall coverage of a general strike aimed at ousting Chavez. A stream of commentators spewed nonstop vitriolic attacks against him — while permitting no response from the government. Then RCTV ran nonstop ads encouraging people to attend a march on April 11 aimed at toppling Chavez and broadcast blanket coverage of the event. When the march ended in violence, RCTV and Globovision ran manipulated video blaming Chavez supporters for scores of deaths and injuries. After military rebels overthrew Chavez and he disappeared from public view for two days, RCTV's biased coverage edged fully into sedition. Thousands of Chavez supporters took to the streets to demand his return, but none of that appeared on RCTV or other television stations. RCTV News Director Andres Izarra later testified at National Assembly hearings on the coup attempt that he received an order from superiors at the station: "Zero pro-Chavez, nothing related to Chavez or his supporters…. The idea was to create a climate of transition and to start to promote the dawn of a new country."...Chavez's government allowed it to continue operating for five years, and then declined to renew its 20-year license to use the public airwaves. It can still broadcast on cable or via satellite dish. Granier and others should not be seen as free-speech martyrs. Radio, TV and newspapers remain uncensored, unfettered and unthreatened by the government. Most Venezuelan media are still controlled by the old oligarchy and are staunchly anti-Chavez. If Granier had not decided to try to oust the country's president, Venezuelans might still be able to look forward to more broadcasts of "Radio Rochela."here
Chavista bagmen are busted with million-dollar cash bundles ( for the good of the copper-colored poor, no doubt) we should learn from Bart Jones what a good Chavista propagandist posing as a journalist looks like. He did his best to legitimize Golinger, in her rise from paralegal to wealthy apologist, before discarding any pretense of being an impartial observer.
Wednesday, August 8, 2007
Journalists Chavez Doesn't Like So Much: Hugo Lies
Sean Penn doesn't tell us he was in Venezuela because Hugo is also a Bukowski and Cassavetes junkie - Penn was there as a >koff< Journalist. Him, Hugo likee. Same for Babs Walters. So, why won't he sit down with this man?
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Who Is Eve Golinger And Why Is She Leading a Witchhunt Against Journalists?
The Woman Who Came In From The Cold
From Tal Cual Digital, 2005
"Andrés Izarra contacted her in New York in early 2003 and hired her as a legal affairs advisor for the Venezuelan Embassy's Venezuela Information Office in Washington D.C.
Eva Golinger Calderón says it was curiosity that drew her to a demonstration in front of the Venezuelan consulate in Manhattan, sometime between the end of 2002 and early 2003. The days of the oil industry strike, flashpoint of the clash between the Hugo Chávez administration and its opposition, . “I met people who supported the regime"she says. Left unstated: she opined on a news channel, spoke of human rights and the Bolivarian constitution. "The clip aired in Venezuela, she notes.
A scant two years later this attorney, 32 years old last February 19, born in an Air Force base in Virginia, of Venezuelan descent on her mother's side, with no known ties with the Bolivarian revolution, is "Venezuela's Sweetheart", anointed so by Comandante Hugo Chávez Frías himself. Rubbing shoulders with the upper echelons of Chavismo, she's just debuted her book "The Chavez Code", in which she reprints declassified data from the Departments of State and of Defense that purportedly "bear witness to how they undertook intervention, subversion and smear propaganda schemes" to isolate the Venezuelan regime.
So, what happened between early 2003, which she describes as disheartening, and 2005, which sees her associated with the highest circles in Chavismo? Golinger recounts matter-of-factly: interested in the "process" she decided to attend for the 1st World Meeting in Solidarity with the bolivarian Revolution(note: April 11-13 2003) which was followed by a similar gathering in New York in March of 2003(time travel? flux capacitor?). Ambassador Bernardo Álvarez and (erstwhile RCTV journalist and then propaganda minister) Andrés Izarra "having seen statements I'd made, approached me and we chatted. They were my first contacts"
Izarra asked her serve as legal counsel for what came to be called the Venezuela Information Office in Washington, the VIO, a propaganda outfit created to counter opinions unfavorable to the Chávez regime. Eve/Eva Golinger became its paid advisor."It's the only thing for which I've received payment", she quickly states.
For her research, which has gained her such fame in the Chavista media, Golinger worked with American journalist Jeremy Bigwood, experienced in use of the Freedom Of Information Act. "He's familiar with the different departments and employees, so I hired him to assist with procedural matters, given that I don't have the time for them. The first requests were made between October and November of 2003.
She denies that any party financed the investigation. "It was heartfelt, never thinking it would prove so valuable. It was the lead up to the Recall Referendum and I knew I had to make people aware of what I'd found: that's why I published it on a Web page I created and later sent it to the Embassy"
In April of 2004, she travelled to Caracas with the express intent of speaking directly with Chávez and explain what her research encompassed. She attempted to blend in with the journalists covering the April 12 Aló Presidente, but lacked the required accreditation. “I explained my intentions and waited for a few hours, until I received a call from Casa Militar, informing me that the President requested my presence on his program. On April 13th she was taken to an airport's Presidential terminal "occupying a seat reserved for Dr. Golinger-it was then that knew I'd be travelling with him (Chávez)". It was her first encounter with the Presidente. "We spoke for about 20 minutes, I informed him about the National Endowment for Democracy, how it worked and what groups it funded, I showed him the documents; he knew that this was going on, but he didn't expect so much" She confesses she was surprised when Chávez told her, on live air, to make her accusations. "I wasn't expecting it". Nor was she expecting a sudden change of address. Golinger was staying with friends in El Valle, where she picked up and taken to the Hilton, her current residence.
The Heroine From The North
Eva & Jonathan Golinger are the only children of the marriage of Ronald Golinger, psychiatrist and surgeon, and Elizabeth Calderón, attorney. Their son is an advisor to political campaigns, a resident of San Francisco. Eva's home in on Long Island, an hour from Manhattan. Her Venezuelan roots reach back to Francisco Calderón, assassinated during the Juan Vicente Gómez dictatorship (note: 1908-1935!), which prompted the family's move to the USA. Golinger had a peripatetic childhood and adolescence, living in seven states. She attended arts-oriented Washington Duke Ellington High School. She excelled, she recalls, as an outstanding student, always in gifted classes. "It'll sound arrogant, but the trouble was that everything bored me, being so unchallenging". She attended Sarah Lawrence College, on the outskirts of New York, majoring in Liberal Arts (a combination of politics, law, humanities and literature-sic) graduating in 1994. In those days she earned a living working in immigration law firms, campaigning for Greenpeace, and in the odd moment during her youth she sang and played guitar for change on the streets of New York, earning coins that meant a lot of money to her. "Even as a child, I enjoyed singing ", she states, smiling.
Curiosity about her roots brought her to Venezuela in 1993 in search of her mother, Elizabeth Calderón's extended family, but "families with Calderón for a surname number in the thousands". Initially staying at a family residence for two months, she later moved to a hostel where she "helped out as she could", while at the same time teaching extension courses at the University of Los Andes. She travelled regularly to the US to work for six-month stretches to fund her expenses. The period of roots-searching lasted five years, during which she formed a band called "Color Hormiga", which performed its own works. "A fusion of Latin rock, jazz, blues, and Venezuelan music", Golinger states. They performed around Mérida for close to three years.
She returned to the US in 1998, but no unaccompanied: she convinced her bandmates, procured visas for them, and they all moved to New York. “We all lived in my apartment, it was hard for them to adjust to their new surroundings, and they weren't earning enough to live well, she says. The group disbanded, save for the couple comprised of Golinger and Gustavo Moncada. She earned her law school degree, majoring in International Law, and opened her own firm, specializing in visas and immigration matters for artists. "I've been working in immigration for nearly two decades, my mother is an attorney as well, and I learned this business from her."
Things must have not gone badly for her, as she counts Paulina Rubio, Diego Torres, Manu Chao, Aterciopelados, Fabulosos Cadilacs, Gustavo Cerati, La Ley y Los Amigos Invisibles among her more noted clients.
Without abandoning show business, Golinger, now Venezuela-based, toils in the political arena, and states that she's never been offered a position in the government, and if offered, she would accept it. "I work best alone", she affirms. There's no reason to doubt it".
Monday, August 6, 2007
Sean Penn, Film Ack-TOR! OR, A Tale Of Two Seans
Sean Penn in Caracas? For background, see:
(As long as it's there...)
Sean O'Hearn? "U.S. environmental activist...a representative of the environmental group Sea Shepherd"? He was "deported from Ecuador for allegedly violating national sovereignty by taking part in a police seizure of two tons of shark fins apparently illegally fished...O'Hearn was detained before dawn in the capital of Quito. President Rafael Correa said "I am having (him) expelled from the country because I am not going to allow any foreigner to come here to tell us what to do." here ( Correa has recently permitted the sale of Shark fins -a prized delicacy in the Asian market- but only those of sharks caught "accidentally" winkwink nudgenudge)
(As long as it's there...)
Sean O'Hearn? "U.S. environmental activist...a representative of the environmental group Sea Shepherd"? He was "deported from Ecuador for allegedly violating national sovereignty by taking part in a police seizure of two tons of shark fins apparently illegally fished...O'Hearn was detained before dawn in the capital of Quito. President Rafael Correa said "I am having (him) expelled from the country because I am not going to allow any foreigner to come here to tell us what to do." here ( Correa has recently permitted the sale of Shark fins -a prized delicacy in the Asian market- but only those of sharks caught "accidentally" winkwink nudgenudge)
read of OtherSean's work here
ChupaChavez Sean Penn is welcome aboard Chavez' Air Farce One( oh, the carbon offsets that'll cost Penn), while Environmento Sean is booted by Chavez-Lite? Oh, those caudillos, such mercurial,tempestuous coquetos...
Now, as we know, Hugo Chavez has never had a real job in his life: he collected a military paycheck while plotting against the democratic, constitutional regime he'd sworn to protect, then after jail he sponged off supporters before hitting the jackpot. So, an occasional series: what would Hugo With A Job look like?
Aseo Urbano Hugo!
AP PENN VIDEO HERE
AOL Video
Thursday, August 2, 2007
BELLOW: The Thug At Work
YELLOW: The Simpsonizer Is Too Kind...
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