Moving Deck Chairs on the Titanic
President Hugo Chavez and his Bolivarian Bozos are determinedly moving the deck chairs on the Titanic to create the illusion that the regime can reverse the collapse of the national power grid and keep the foundering revolution afloat.
Chavez issued a decree on 8 February 2010 declaring a national power emergency, less than a month after he sacked former electrical Energy Minister Angel Rodriguez amid furious presidential assurances that Venezuela’s power crisis was caused by El Nino, by the political opposition and by US-driven Imperialist global warming. But “it’s not my fault,” Chavez whined plaintively.
The “national power emergency” will last 60 days, during which new Electric energy Minister Ali Rodriguez Araque (aka Comandante Fausto during his youthful adventures in the early 1960’s as a failed Communist guerrilla backed by Havana) will have “special powers” to do whatever is necessary to end the power crisis.
Chavez immediately followed up that decree by chaining the nation’s television stations at 11 p.m. Caracas time to the first emergency session of the Electricity Joint Chiefs of Staff (“Estado Mayor Conjunto Eléctrico”) in Miraflores Palace, presumably so that all Venezuelans could see their feckless leader leading the committee in charge of moving the Titanic’s deck chairs.
Chavez assured the nation’s television viewers that his regime will commission 60 MW of generation capacity in February, another 540 MW in March and a further 665 MW in April. He also said that some of the new generation equipment is being imported from Houston, Texas. It appears, based on Chavez’s remarks, that he is counting desperately on “gringo” manufacturers and suppliers of power generation equipment to bail his butt out of the pit he dug himself into after 11 years of sustained Bolivarian corruption and incompetence.
As always, Chavez lashed out at private companies, accusing them of being the “large consumers of electricity” in Caracas, which “demonstrates the damage caused by the capitalist model.” He also announced a new power rationing plan for Caracas that will explicitly target “high residential…and commercial…industrial consumers.”
High residential consumers, which according to Chavez constitute 24% of the capital city’s residential power users, must reduce consumption immediately by 10% or else they will be required to pay a 75% surcharge. Any residential consumers that increase power consumption by 10% over the average consumption during the previous year will pay a surcharge of 100% of their power bill, and if they increase consumption by 20% the surcharge will rise to 200%. However, any residential consumers who reduce power use between 10% and 20% will be rewarded with a 25% discount, and if the power savings exceed 20% the discount will be 50%.
All commercial activities, industries and offices that consume 25 KVA will be levied a 20% surcharge on their power bills. And anyone who exceeds their power consumption quotas or is found to be using too much electricity will have power supplies cut off for periods of 24-48 hours. If initial sanctions do not work, then power supplies will be suspended “permanently.” Minister Rodriguez Araque said that his ministry will deploy “inspectors” to every residence and business establishment in Caracas to ensure the new power consumption quotas are obeyed.
Chavez also said there are over 8,000 high power consumption clients in Caracas, and that a list of these wasteful electricity consumers will be published soon. But it wasn’t immediately clear if Chavez was referring to business consumers or residential consumers.
The “special powers” that Chavez granted to “Comandante Fausto” include designing and executing the “necessary and urgent strategies” to ensure that private and public consumers of electricity pay their outstanding debts to the state-owned power utilities.
However, since the only deadbeats are government entities, it remains to be seen how Rodriguez Araque intends to collect the billions of dollars owed to Corpoelec and its affiliates by the basic industries, the state and municipal governments, and the various ministries that are controlled by the Chavez regime. By one estimate, chavista-controlled local/state governments and other revolutionary public entities owe Corpoelec over $2 billion.
Of course, it’s to be expected that opposition-controlled municipal and state governments will have power supplies cut off even if they pay their power bills on time. It’s also to be expected that middle class Venezuelans who do not live in the “barrios” will see power supplies suspended too. Presumably, this will confirm Chavez’s whiney lamentations that the power crisis is not his fault.
Essential public services including schools, hospitals, security companies, etc. will be exempted. The government also plans to reduce the work-day at all government offices to five hours, or 25 hours per week. Not that it will matter all that much, since government employees usually do not work a full eight hours and should not be expected to do more work in a five-hour day than in eight hours.
This presidential decree supposedly will accelerate the process of importing electricity generation equipment from countries like Russia, China, Belarus, Japan and Germany, among others including the much-hated Gringos.
Chavez says that his presidential decree also will allow the “immediate development” of maintenance plans to salvage Venezuela’s deteriorated electricity grid, which collapsed as a direct result of the Chavez regime’s failure to maintain the existing grid or complete even 25% of planned generation and transmission projects that were launched in 2002-2003. It’s not clear how a piece of paper will accelerate anything after 11-plus years of less progress than a constipated snail.
But all the presidential noise, smoke, mirrors and circus entertainment is all about moving the deck chairs on a sinking revolution which cannot be refloated.
And here’s where the revolutionary arithmetic becomes perhaps deliberately – mindboggling and confusing.
The electrical emergency decree is supposed to speed up the expenditure of $14 billion through 2015 to add 14,000 MW of new generation capacity to a national grid which has a rated capacity of over 23,000 MW, although over 7,000 MW of that existing capacity is inoperative. These $14 billion, presumably, would be in addition to the more than $16 billion which Rodriguez Araque claims were spent in the electricity sector since Chavez came to power, although the results are not readily visible anywhere in Venezuela.
Presumably, this presidential decree also will accelerate the arrival of “technical advisers” from Cuba, Russia, China, Brazil, Belarus, Argentina and other strategic “friends” of the Bolivarian regime. Chavez already declared that Cuba will receive $2.5 billion in payment for the advisory services of Ramiro Valdes, a Havana hatchet man best-known for killing unarmed innocent people and Internet censorship in Cuba.
Ali Rodriguez Araque also says that the regime plans to add 4,000 MW of new generation capacity in 2010 at a cost of $ 4 billion. In addition, he says the regime will build new solar and aeolic (wind) generation plants, and install 2,000 MW of generation capacity at a cost of $1-2 billion, consisting of small generation plants with an average capacity of 5-10 MW each. Finally, the new electrical Energy Minister, who knows next to nothing about electricity, says the regime may purchase (or lease) floating power generation plants that would be anchored on the coast of states like Miranda and Vargas (i.e. Caracas). The reported cost of these floating generation plants is about $4 billion, according to published reports.
However, this presidential decree – like everything else the Chavez regime has said or done in relation to the national electricity crisis – is bullshit.
The Chavez regime cannot end the power crisis before the end of 2010 as pledged only a week ago by Rodriguez Araque. In fact, Chavez admitted two Sundays ago that the power crisis will be worse in 2011 than in 2010, although Edelca has forecast “national collapse” by end-May 2010. It is a fact that Venezuela will suffer a power crisis that will continue well after the next presidential elections at end-2012.
While the Chavez regime wildly tosses out investment numbers that do not add up, a few serious economists are trying to figure out just how much the power crisis will cost Venezuela. VenEconomy’s Robert Bottome, one of Venezuela’s most respected economists and forecasters, estimates very conservatively that the power crisis will cause a cumulative GDP contraction of at least 18% spread over 2010, 2011 and 2012, including an 8% loss in 2010, 6% in 2011 and 4% in 2012. But when Caracas Gringo remarked in a telephone chat with Mr. Bottome that Chavez is already saying 2011 will be worse than 2010, VenEconomy’s CEO conceded that he is being deliberately very conservative.
Where are the AK-103 Assault Rifles?
President Hugo Chavez purchased 100,000 Russian-made AK-103/104 assault rifles in 2006. These weapons, which are capable of blasting cement cinder blocks to sand and pebbles at distances of up to 1,000 meters, were transported to Venezuela by sea in several shipments.
The first shipment to arrive in Venezuela totaled approximately 30,000 assault weapons that were unloaded at the Port of La Guaira under the direct supervision of Venezuelan Army and National Guard officers.
However, by the time that first shipment “cleared” customs at least 3,000 AK-103/104’s had disappeared. Where are those missing assault rifles today?
Caracas Gringo’s sources in the Bolivarian military establishment claim that the Chavez regime secretly supplied thousands of Russian assault rifles to radical groups like the Tupamaros, Carapaicas, etc.
During the 11-plus years that Chavez has been in power, these radical groups reportedly have recruited and trained thousands of new members who have been positioned strategically in clandestine cells across the Greater Caracas Area, and in other cities throughout the country including Merida, Valencia, Barinas, San Carlos, Puerto La Cruz/Barcelona, Maracaibo, etc.
But the largest concentrations of clandestine militants remain in Caracas, which Chavez is determined to hold at any cost if there is ever a popular uprising against his criminal Bolivarian regime.
Last year, Public Works and Housing Minister Diosdado Cabello publicly announced plans to build dozens of new housing developments throughout Caracas where members of the Bolivarian civilian militia and their families would live.
At least one of these Bolivarian fire bases – for that is what they are – is located in Chacao, specifically in the popular market that was expropriated over a year ago.
A second Bolivarian fire base reportedly would be located near the Santa Fe urbanization next to the highway that leads to Prados del Este/La Trinidad/ El Hatillo.
There are also Tupamaros deployed in various parts of the Petare mega-slum at the eastern edge of Caracas.
Meanwhile, Colombian news media, citing Colombian military intelligence sources, reported recently that Venezuelan urban militant groups aligned ideologically and tactically with the Chavez regime have direct ties to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), which operate in Venezuela with the Chavez regime’s official support. FARC members with experience in urban guerrilla conflict reportedly have been training Tupamaros, Carapaicas and other criminal militant groups since at least 2002.
Given very recent threats by Chavez that he will “erase” his opponents at the slightest provocation, and columns by Marciano (aka Jose Vicente Rangel) saying that the time is nigh for a 21st Century Bolivarian repetition of the mass slaughter perpetrated in Venezuela’s 19th Century civil conflicts by the sociopath Boves, it’s not much of a stretch to imagine “rivers of blood” in the streets of Venezuelan cities.
Cuban blood for Venezuelan blood
President Hugo Chavez warned in the past week that there is no middle ground anymore in Venezuela. Everyone must choose sides, and there is no going back for anyone who chooses the wrong side. There are only two sides: with or against Chavez.
Chavez has drawn a line in the sand and he is not bluffing. Chavez is determined to remain in power permanently, and he does not care who or what he must kill or destroy to achieve his all-consuming ambition to be master of Venezuela for the rest of his natural life.
This is very bad news for Venezuela, but it is, potentially, even worse news for thousands of Cubans currently in Venezuela on various official “missions.”
There are, roughly, two categories of Cubans officially working in Venezuela. One category consists of physicians, sports trainers, engineers and others engaged in activities which are not related to any intelligence, security or military functions. The second category includes Cubans assigned to military, intelligence and other security-related functions.
This second category of Cuban “advisors” is increasingly visible inside Fort Tiuna in Caracas, at the Defense Ministry and within the recently created Bolivarian National Intelligence Service (SINB), whose titular director is General Hugo Carvajal.
It’s impossible to say with any precision how many Cubans are in Venezuela on security-related missions, and how many are engaged in missions which are unrelated to security. But overall, based on official admissions over the past 18 months, it’s probably accurate to say that there could be at least 40,000 Cubans in Venezuela on official missions of one sort or another.
President Chavez frequently boasts that he has full control over Venezuela’s armed forces. The Bolivarian FAN are totally committed to the revolution, he likes to brag. And just to make sure this is so, Carvajal’s SINB and Cuban intelligence officials are constantly testing the waters within the military establishment, fishing for anything that smells like dissent.
But active-duty military officers and professional personnel who oppose the Chavez regime’s wholesale Cubanization of the Venezuelan Republic founded by Simon Bolivar are not fools. They keep their mouths shut, discharge their duties professionally, outwardly demonstrate in all ways their loyalty to the government, and avoid being entrapped in the countless snares the regime has seeded within the armed forces. And they also quietly observe the systematic treason being committed by President Chavez, whose entire adult life has been committed to treachery and betrayal of the Venezuelan people and Venezuelan democracy.
There already are hundreds of Cuban military personnel who have been “assimilated” unofficially into Venezuela’s armed forces. Everyone in the FANB knows who they are, and everyone also knows precisely where they are located. This is something that President Chavez, and senior regime thugs like Diosdado Cabello, Jose Vicente Rangel and others should always keep in mind.
Why? Because if Chavez attempts to carry out his escalating threats to erase anyone who stands in his way, many Cuban nationals in Venezuela on military, intelligence and other security missions will be clipped. “We know who they are and where they are, and if Chavez uses these Cubans to repress Venezuelans we are going to take down the Cubans,” a Venezuelan military source tells Caracas Gringo. In effect, if Chavez spills innocent Venezuelan blood, Cuban military personnel in Venezuela will pay with their lives.
The Castro regime is sufficiently concerned about the very real and growing threat to Cubans in Venezuela on official missions that it dispatched Ramiro Valdes to assess the situation on the ground, in person.
Public invitation to ‘Tas Ponchao’
UPDATE: Tas Ponchao is online.
A reader suggested an open source blog about Hugo Chavez where anyone interested in submitting photos, videos, documents, analyses about Hugo Chavez and the Bolivarian revolution can do so.
The aim is to obtain and disseminate information about the ongoing and increasing abuses, crimes and other excesses committed by the Chavez regime.
The core concept is that everyone in Venezuela is, and always should be, a real-time reporter and analyst of developments happening all over the country.
Send us the real-time news, documents, photos and videos of the regime’s destruction, abuses and crimes which the mainstream Venezuelan and foreign news media will not publish.
We are just starting to set up the site at http://tasponchao.wordpress.com.
Hopefully we can get Tas Ponchao up and running very quickly, but that depends on you readers.
Send us whatever information you would like to share to caracas.gringo@gmail.com.
UPDATE: Responding to reader inquiries.
1) We are just starting to set up the site, and expect to have the basic template and theme ready over the coming weekend. We have already received some material (photos, video) and will post it as soon as the template is good to go.
2) The site will be aministrated by Caracas Gringo. We will not post irrelevant, meaningless or gratuitously offensive content. We want to publish factual information. Over the weekend we will create an email account (or accounts) expressly for Tas Ponchao.
3) We are seeking submissions from individuals in the streets, on the front lines of the popular democratic opposition to the criminal Chavez regime. We invite submissions from individuals inside the government with access to documents and other evidence of the Chavez regime’s crimes. This includes government and court documents relating to Chavez and everyone else in senior regime positions like Diosdado Cabello, Jose Vicente Rangel, Elias Jaua, Ali Rodriguez Araque, Maria Cristina Iglesias, Rafael Ramirez, etc. It includes civilian and military figures in the regime. If the material is legitimate we will publish it and invite anyone in the regime to sue us in court, if they have the cojones to do so.
4) We expect to have a twitter feature so we can receive and post material as quickly as is possible.
5) The materials we are seeking include videos, photos, documents of the Chavez regime’s abuses and destructive measures. We know that many things are happening in the interior of Venezuela (outside the Caracas area) which are not being reported by the mainstream Venezuelan or foreign news media.
6) Tas Ponchao will be bilingual, using material in Spanish and English.
7) Our sources inside the regime tell us the protests of the past month have enraged Chavez to the point of hysteria. The regime is very worried that the sudden rebirth of PEOPLE POWER in the streets of Venezuela’s cities in the interior could spread massively to Caracas.
8. Tas Ponchao is a rallying cry for popular unity. It is a popular slogan of condemnation of Hugo Chavez and his gangsters which the regime does not know how to defuse. Chavez is very concerned, and so is Havana, hence its decision to send Ramiro Valdes to Caracas.
9) Tas Ponchao should start to appear everywhere in Venezuela, on T-shirts, hats, posters and walls everywhere.
10) Tas Ponchao has nothing whatsoever to do with any established “oppo” groups, parties or individuals. We firmly believe that today in Venezuela there are no so-called “oppo” groups worthy of popular support. This initiative is 100% People Power. Its success, or failure, will be determined by the people in the streets fighting democratically to rescue the Venezuelan nation from the clutches of Chavez and his neo-imperialist gangsters from Cuba, FARC, Iran, Russia, China and all the other bottom-feeders and rogues who are stealing Venezuela’s natural resources, and aiding Chavez’s efforts to enslave the Venezuelan people and kill the extraordinary Republic of Venezuela established by Simon Bolivar and the founding fathers of our beloved Republic.
In the immortal words of Bob Marley:
Get up, Stand up, Stand up for your Rights! Get up, Stand up, Never give up the Fight!
Terrified, Hugo Chavez threatens mass slaughter
President Hugo Chavez, terrified, has threatened on national television to unleash a bloody pogrom against his political opponents and anyone who opposes him, meaning over half of the civilian population.
These are his precise words:
“I warn, make no mistake, that the response that I would command would be radical at the hour that these sectors manage to or continue machine gunning guards, sending youths to throw rocks at garrisons, calling for rebellion openly…keep going as you are, and you will see… I come almost from the grave, almost from death (after the coup of 2002) due to weakness and I saw dead persons here in front due to the weakness of a goverbment that I was leading, that will not happen again… If they continue along this path they will force me to make radical decisions.”
For at least the fifth time since the start of 2010, Chavez also called on his political opponents to organize another presidential recall referendum.
Yesterday, President Chavez said the political opposition “…still have the idea of killing me.”
Then he said, “If they start an offensive of hard violence that should obligate us to hard action…something I do not recommend… our response would sweep them away.” If the “oligarchy’s plans to assassinate me are successful, there will be a frightful reaction against the East of Caracas. “If you get desperate, it will be a thousand times worse for you,” Chavez said.
Since the past weekend, different regime thugs including Diosdado Cabello and Jose Vicente Rangel (JVR) have made similar threats of mass slaughter against the middle class of Caracas.
Writing under the pseudonym “Marciano” in the pro-regime tabloid “Vea,” JVR says “estamos llegando al llegadero,” which translated to English means roughly, “we’re coming to a reckoning.”
The situation in Venezuela has become a “question of life and death,” he adds.
Marciano writes, “…the other face of the coin is death. This is what would happen in Venezuela if that opposition rotted by hatred should reach power. It already demonstrated this in the short-lived stage of Chavez’s ouster when the fascist pack launched itself against the chavistas do finish them off. If Chavez were to be toppled, blood would flood the streets of Venezuela’s cities. It is no small thing this chronicler is saying, but lamentably this is what would happen. Let no chavista be fooled and let no one think of peaceful transitions. Life or death.”
Diosdado Cabello, referring to recent popular protests against Chavez at the Venezuelan baseball championship games at Central University’s stadium in Caracas, asked menacingly, “¿What will happen if those who accompany the revolution go to the stadium and start a war? This is what they are provoking.”
A few words in the president’s rant today caught our attention: “…continue machine gunning guards…”
No guards have been machine gunned in the street battles which have erupted countrywide, since RCTV Internacional was shut down on 23 January, between unarmed student protesters and heavily armed National Guard and Metropolitan/National Police thugs.
So, what was Chavez referring to? Or was Chavez exaggerating and lying, as he is wont to do?
Caracas Gringo’s sources within the armed forces report that there was an aborted uprising less than two weeks ago. Reports that at least three generals are under arrest are true. In fact, the number of detained army officers is reported to be much larger than the regime has let on. The sources also say at least that one officer – an army lieutenant colonel – was killed.
Moreover, the abrupt resignation of Vice President/Defense Minister Ramon Carrizalez is believed to be linked to the alleged aborted revolt within the army. It’s not clear what, if any, role Carrizalez might have played in the alleged revolt. But the “correo popular” inside the army reports that Carrizalez believes Cabello is gunning for his head and was trying to set up Carrizalez.
Cabello, Rangel. These are the president’s most dangerous enemies. Rangel, who like the cockroach survives everything, is the link between the old Fourth Republic financial sector bottom-feeders and the Bolivarian Fifth Republic’s rats. Cabello reportedly has more influence in the army than Chavez. Both men recently may have lost hundreds of millions of dollars in wealth when Chavez intervened the Bolibourgeois banks this blog has written about since 3 August 2009 (remember Ricardo Fernandez Barrueco?).
It is odd that Cabello and Rangel – after Chavez – should be uttering the darkest threats of bloodshed, mass slaughter and war against the regime’s political opponents, and against anyone who doesn’t support Chavez, considering that the chief plotters against Chavez are, precisely, Cabello and Rangel.
Shoulder to Shoulder with RCTV
Caracas Gringo is privileged to personally know for over 30 years some of the men and women who manage the 1BC Group, which owns RCTV. They represent the best of Venezuela – integrity, honor, honesty, imagination, creativity, entrepreneurship, respect for the rule of law and democracy, commitment to fostering sustained growth and a strong democracy in which everyone can get ahead.
RCTV has never curried the favor of any government. RCTV has never sought any special benefits, privileges or concessions from the Venezuelan state. Unlike its biggest longtime competitor Venevision, which is owned by billionaire Cuban-Venezuelan brothers Gustavo and Ricardo Cisneros, RCTV has always stayed far from Miraflores, and has never cultivated “special relationships” with any Venezuelan president.
Cisneros helped to get Chavez elected in 1998, conspired against Chavez in 2001-2002, and finally made a face-to-face deal with Chavez that was brokered by former US President Jimmy Carter. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall at that meeting, where – it’s rumored – Chavez reportedly gave Cisneros two options: decapitation or submission to the Chavez regime. And Cisneros immediately kowtowed.
But the RCTV people have never kowtowed to any government. RCTV has rightfully enjoyed the largest audience ratings for over 50 years because Venezuelans of all socioeconomic levels have always recognized the excellence of RCTV’s national programming, and the objectivity and accuracy of its journalists and political commentators.
RCTV’s strong principles as a privately owned broadcast group, and its fierce independence, have always pained Venezuelan presidents including Carlos Andres Perez, Rafael Caldera, Luis Herrera Campins, Jaime Lusinchi, and above all, President Hugo Chavez, a paranoid and despotic personality who recoils when confronted by persons of true integrity, courage and patriotism.
Chavez knows that as long as RCTV lives, he will never be able to completely control Venezuela’s public airwaves, silence dissent, and cover up the systemic corruption, mendacity, ignorance and despotism of his regime. So, Chavez has decreed that RCTV must submit or be murdered by the regime.
Venezuela’s cable television providers took RCTV’s signal, and the signal of four other cable TV channels including TV Chile, out of their programming as of midnight on 23 January 2010. Conatel ordered the cable providers to block RCTV and the four other channels on the spurious grounds that they violated norms requiring all “Venezuelan” TV and radio stations to broadcast the interminable daily diatribes of President Chavez.
RCTV maintains that it has not violated any laws or rules, but that the Chavez regime certainly is violating the constitution and laws of Venezuela in an effort to silence freedom of expression.
Conatel actually did not have any legal authority to force the cable providers to suspend RCTV and other broadcasters. But the Chavez-controlled National Assembly obligingly “updated” the unconstitutional/illegal Resorte Law to entrap RCTV. And then Diosdado Cabello, the head of Conatel and also public works and housing minister, threatened to close all the cable provider companies if they did not black out RCTV’s signal.
Cabello says that he did not threaten anyone, but besides being a top thug in the Chavez regime’s gangster hierarchy, Cabello is also a liar.
However, there is more behind Chavez’s efforts to kill RCTV than imposing total censorship.
As the protests in Caracas and other cities since 23 January have shown, many Venezuelans love freedom and despise tyrants. The immense public support for RCTV is not just about supporting the premier independent broadcasting group, but about fighting for what’s right in Venezuela: democracy, freedom of expression, private property rights, and the rule of law.
RCTV executive Marcel Granier hit the nail squarely when he said that it’s time for the Venezuelan people to say “enough” to the Chavez regime, which apparently thinks it owns everything in Venezuela including its citizens, as if people were cattle.
But make no mistake. Chavez wants his suspension of RCTV’s cable signal to trigger larger national protests. He wants to stoke a political conflict and create increasingly tense conditions that could benefit his Bolivarian regime by creating an excuse to postpone National Assembly elections now scheduled for September 2010 because he knows the revolutionary PSUV’s losses will be very substantial, leaving no option except to rig the outcome inside the Chavez-controlled CNE electoral authority.
Alternatively, Chavez hopes to use his confrontation with RCTV to open cracks in the political opposition, which has a tragicomic history of disorganization, infighting, disunity, and placing individual ambitions above the common good. Chavez figures that the “oppo” is a herd of sad sacks that can be easily manipulated, undermined, intimidated and bribed.
Blameless Bolivarian Revolution
New Electric Energy Minister Ali Rodriguez Araque, aka “Comandante Fausto” and longtime henchman of the Castro brothers, has unveiled the Bolivarian regime’s “plans” for managing the national power crisis: Blame the political opposition.
Rodriguez Araque, who has been the electric energy minister since 15 January 2010, announced after the first ten days in his new post that the regime of President Hugo Chavez is moving decisively to contain the national power crisis. Fausto says:
“This is a problem that we can resolve.” [CG's translation: The regime is clueless.]
“The government will invest $14 billion from 2010 to end-2015 to add 14,000 MW of power generation capacity to the national grid, including $4 billion 2010 to add about 4,000 MW of generation capacity to the grid.” [CG's translation: The revolution has big plans as always, but no cash or human capacity to execute anything of substance; heck, even the much-ballyhooed 'Arepera Socialista' already foundered on the shoals of Bolivarian ineptitude.]
“The process continues of recovering and evaluating generation plants with the objective of making significant contributions to the national electrical system.” [CG's translation: The regime doesn't even know where to start fixing the problem it created.]
“The government is studying the design of a new conformation of the entire national electrical system in order to resolve existing problems and provide a response to the problems that have been presenting themselves.” [CG's translation: The regime plans to move the deck chairs to new positions on its sinking Bolivarian revolution.]
“The electricity savings campaign must continue…waste must be done away with…all sectors adverse to the government should join these (savings) efforts.” [CG's translation: The regime will turn out the lights nationally, no matter what.]
“If the opposition’s counter-campaign against electricity savings is successful, iy would be a national disaster.” [CG's translation: Since the regime's power plans are doomed to fail, it's never too early to set up the opposition for a political lynching.]
“If that is what the opposition wants, it should say so clearly to the people.” [CG's translation: The power crisis is everyone's fault but the Chavez regime's.]
“Details of a rationing plan for Caracas are being fine-tuned for the plan’s application.” [CG's translation: The regime is looking for a way to ration power in the greater Caracas area without further enraging the poor millions living in the barrios; good luck.]
It’s clear where ARA is trying to shift the public opinion matrix: (a) the power crisis is fixable, (b) the government will fix it with massive new investments, (c) but meanwhile everyone must save energy, and (d) if the government fails to end the power crisis it’s the fault of the political opposition, which is seeking national disaster for Venezuela.
However, reading between the lines of ARA’s Bolivarian BS, the real message is: (a) the power crisis cannot be contained, (b) the regime hopes to spend billions more if it can find the cash, but don’t bank on anything being commissioned on schedule, (c) compulsory power rationing nationally will continue indefinitely, and likely will be expanded very soon, (d) the 6 million-plus residents of Caracas must learn to live increasingly in the dark, and (e) when it hits the fan, the regime will blame the political opposition.
Venezuelans have nothing to gain by “cooperating” with the regime’s power conservation plans. These will fail anyway, and extended power outages will disrupt Venezuela months ahead of September’s legislative elections. The regime will expand the rationing program soon, likely to daily rolling outages lasting over four hours.
As things stand now, the four-hour rolling outages every second day translate, de facto, into outages of 6-8 hours because (a) Corpoelec’s subsidiaries are incapable of doing anything by a strict schedule, and (b) it takes some time for manufacturers to power down and then power up again. Factories don’t spring to 100% production at the flick of a wall switch.
Even worse, the rolling power outages have not prevented continued daily outages due to equipment malfunctions – a problem which has plagued the interior of Venezuela since 2005 at least, with an average of 300 major outages per year (100 MW-plus per outage) for the last five years in a row.
But the blameless Bolivarian revolution has a plan ready to explain its failure to fix the power crisis before the lights go out: Blame the opposition!
Bolivarian Gallows Humor
The power crisis Venezuelans will suffer for the next two or three years (under a best-case scenario) is an unparalleled tragedy in the country’s history. Strategic sectors like petroleum, gas, steel and aluminum that were built over several decades by successive democratic governments are collapsing, literally being killed, by the awesome incompetence and economic ignorance of President Hugo “It isn’t my fault” Chavez. However, one cannot help but laugh in a grim way as the chain reactions of the power crisis ripple through the economy and populace.
Why laughter? Because it’s gratifying to watch the Chavez regime choke on its own incompetence and stupidity. Watching the increasingly desperate contortions of President “It’s not my fault” Chavez reminds one of a death tableau in which a world-renowned actor was found dead last year in a Bangkok hotel with one end of a rope tied around his neck and the other end around his testicles.
Here’s one example of a chain reaction: the new power conservation measures forced on the populace and productive sectors by the Chavez regime already are causing a spike in local demand for diesel and fuel oil. Local demand is rising because more consumers are resorting to small thermal power generation units to cover their individual electricity needs. These power generation plants burn diesel or fuel oil. Diesel currently sells for close to $3 a gallon in the United States but practically nothing in Venezuela.
It’s too early to predict how quickly, and how much, local demand for diesel and fuel oil could increase. But the national power crisis will last at least three years by the Chavez regime’s admission, so it’s plausible that there could (will) be a significant jump in local diesel and fuel oil consumption for two reasons:
First, the regime’s plans to add over 4,000 MW of new thermal power generation capacity between February 2010 and July 2012 will require substantial and growing volumes of fuel oil to generate power because Pdvsa’s gas development programs currently are running about a decade behind schedule. If the regime completes these thermal power plants on schedule (which is doubtful given its abysmal 11-year track record), they will burn diesel/fuel oil because Pdvsa doesn’t have the gas production capacity.
Second, business owners are being told to find ways to simultaneously reduce their power consumption and generate their own power supplies. In practice, this means that imports of small mobile power generators should start to rise very quickly over the coming months. However, these small generators burn diesel, mainly.
This implies that Pdvsa, which already fails consistently to fulfill its contractual export commitments by itself and so must buy oil internationally to fill its increasing supply gaps in Venezuela and abroad, has several options, all bad from a financial and/or political perspective.
(Of course, anything bad for the Chavez regime is probably good for Venezuela, eventually, if it hastens the demise of the Mad Hatter in Miraflores Cave and the tribes of parasitic gangsters embedded in the Bolivarian regime like ticks and leeches under a buzzard’s tail feathers. But we digress…)
Option #1: Increase diesel and fuel oil supplies to the local market, and consequently reduce exports, Pdvsa’s oil revenues and the regime’s fiscal take;
Option #2: Import diesel and fuel oil purchased at international prices, and sell it at local subsidized prices, placing Pdvsa financially more deeply in the red. Local fuel subsidies already cost Pdvsa about $10 billion a year, and that was before the power crisis finally boiled over.
Option #3: Impose tighter power consumption restrictions to reduce consumption of diesel and fuel oil. But this option means that Venezuela’s overall economic output would decline, with all of the accompanying chain reaction effects like higher inflation and unemployment, longer periods in darkness for many Venezuelans (days or even weeks at a time?), more crime and chaos, an unhappier populace.
Diosdado Cabello Demands Justice
Diosdado Cabello, president of national telecommunications commission Conatel and minister of public works and housing, wants justice.
Cabello called a press conference to say that he has formally asked Attorney General Luisa Ortega Diaz to open a “criminal investigation” of remarks made on 14 January 2010 by Fedecamaras president Noel Álvarez during an interview broadcast by RCTV Internacional’s “La Entrevista” program.
Álvarez reportedly said that a “military solution” could be a way of dealing with the “government’s pretensions of hegemonic control over the means of solution.”
If Álvarez indeed said that, he’s a useful fool – er, tool – for the Chavez regime’s conspiracy disinformation campaign.
A military solution?
Chavez ruined Venezuela with the willing assistance of corrupt and incompetent retired and active duty military officers, many of whom are former “golpistas” who betrayed their nation and lost all honor/integrity in 1992. Cabello is one of these Bolivarian homeboys – one of the very worst in the bunch.
Asking today’s broken, politicized, corrupt military leadership to provide a “solution” to Chavez would be like moving the deck chairs on the Titanic, or placing a ravenous pack of foxes in charge of the henhouse.
Cabello said at the presser that the investigation should include all of the players involved in promoting the alleged “golpista” sentiments voiced by Álvarez, including the program’s host and RCTV Internacional, which is broadcast by cable.
It’s to be expected that AG Ortega Diaz will respond obediently to Cabello, the second most powerful figure in the regime after President Chavez.
However, the person that ought to be the target of a serious criminal investigation is Diosdado Cabello. A few of the alleged irregularities and potentially criminal activities by Cabello that richly deserve to be investigated include:
*Cabello’s direct participation in planning and executing a strategy to commit mass murder in Caracas on 11 April, 2002.
*Cabello’s business associations with recently-disgraced Bolibourgeois impresarios like Ricardo Fernandez Barrueco, who did many dirty “negocios” which benefited Cabello financially until late 2009, but who but now is detained at military intelligence (DGIM) headquarters, in the clutches of DGIM chief Hugo Carvajal. Fernandez Barrueco was leading the push to build a Bolibourgeois financial empire in which Cabello was the secret top dog. Also, Fernandez Barrueco and Carvajal are implicated in the abduction almost a year ago of banker German Garcia Velutini.
*Cabello’s role in the award of turnkey contracts worth over $4 billion on paper to Spanish contractors Duro Felguera, Iberdrola and Elecnor. Duro Felquera reportedly will build the 1,620 termocentro thermal power plant in the Tuy Valleys, and Iberdrola-Elecnor will build a 1,000 MW thermal power generation plant in Cumana. Analysts who crunched the numbers say they add up to a huge overpayment, which means someone is pocketing a few hundreds of millions of dollars.
Cabello is a top kingpin in the crime groups entrenched at the highest levels of the Chavez regime. He has been loosely associated in crime, politics and business since 2001 with former Interior & Justice Minister Ramon Rodriguez Chacin.
Cabello is fiercely loyal to President Chavez. His motto is “I’ll do whatever the president says/decides.” This unflinching loyalty, until now, has bought Cabello impunity to do whatever he wishes as long as Chavez’s will is done. But Machiavelli certainly would advise Chavez to keep Cabello closer than his closest friends and blood relatives.
Israel: Chavez shipped arms to Hezbollah
Israeli army intelligence officials tell Israel Today that President Hugo Chavez was involved in a shipment of missiles and other heavy weapons seized by Israeli commandos off the coast of Cyprus in November 2009. Israeli intelligence concluded the weapons were shipped from a Venezuelan port aboard an Antigua-flagged ship that stopped at an Iranian port before traveling through the Suez Canal en route to Hezbollah in Lebanon. More evidence that Chavez and the gangsters/narco-terrorists entrenched in his regime are actively violating international law and supporting terrorist groups. Chavez can be expected to respond with lies and insults. However, will there be any response from the OAS, the UN Security Council, Unasur, and/or the Obama administration?
