“La cobardía de la agresión"

Con estas palabras le replico Alvaro Uribe a Daniel Ortega durante la Cumbre del Grupo de Rio cuando este le insultaba entre discursos oficiales. Y con estas palabras se podria resumir la tempestada que solto Chavez y sus compinches en el mas reciente intento de provocar una guerra ideologica, y no tan ideologica, con Uribe. Pero lo bueno para el mundo civilizado es que Chavez se ha encontrado en Uribe un Maestro de Guerra a la SunTzu. “La excelencia suprema del general no consiste en pelear y ganar todas las batallas, consiste en romper la resistencia del enemigo sin batalla.”

Uribe no solo desarticulo el mado de las FARC con el ataque nocturno en la selva Ecuatoriana pero gano una arma imprecindible: la verdad y una luz. Quien hubiera dicho que en una caja fuerte de Reyes, hubiesan encontrado no solo un retrato furibundo de transacciones a cuentas secretas en las Caymanes, pero tambien un potfolio de propuestas politicas y un album de fotos! Creo que el dicho que utilizo Uribe en su discurso sobre el tema en la Cumbre fue: Dios manda ayuda a los buenos de formas inesperadas (o algo por el estilo)

eltiempo.com / tiempoimpreso / edicionimpresa / opinion

23 de Marzo de 2008
Alfredo Rangel

Venezuela y Ecuador deben combatir la 'acción de los grupos irregulares'.

El balance de la reciente crisis diplomática con nuestros vecinos es totalmente positivo para Colombia. Lo más importante es que Chávez y Correa han sido neutralizados, por ahora.

Ya no podrán seguir brindándole impunemente apoyo activo o pasivo a la guerrilla, como antes lo hacían. La comunidad internacional los verá en adelante como sospechosos por apoyar al terrorismo. En consecuencia, la guerrilla perdió, también por ahora, sus santuarios protegidos en suelo venezolano y ecuatoriano. Pero no hay que bajar la guardia.

Según el diario El Comercio de Quito, en su edición del pasado 16 de marzo, el campamento de 'Raúl Reyes' en territorio ecuatoriano tenía dos hectáreas de área con construcciones que incluían campos de entrenamiento, dormitorios para tropa, cocina, comedores, área de capacitación y hasta corrales para animales. Era un campamento permanente.

Las Farc estaban asentadas en territorio ecuatoriano, habían invadido ese país sin que el gobierno de Correa hiciera nada para impedirlo. Pero durante la crisis, Correa nunca condenó la violación de su territorio por parte de las Farc, lo que confirma la sospecha de que la guerrilla siempre estuvo allí con su consentimiento. Porque si no fue así debería destituir a los comandantes militares que lo permitieron.

La crisis demostró la alianza de Chávez y Correa con las Farc, corroborada por decenas de documentos encontrados en los computadores de 'Raúl Reyes'. Mientras Uribe ofreció disculpas y reconoció que la incursión colombiana en suelo ecuatoriano violó disposiciones internacionales, Correa nunca dio explicaciones sobre la presencia permanente de un campamento guerrillero en su territorio y mucho menos presentó disculpas a Colombia por ese hecho. Un acongojado Chávez calificó la muerte de 'Raúl Reyes como un crimen, algo que ni las mismas Farc han dicho, y por esa baja rompió relaciones con Colombia y casi nos declara la guerra.

Mientras Uribe quiso aprovechar la crisis para buscar soluciones a la seguridad fronteriza conteniendo a las Farc, Correa solo buscó una condena para Colombia, no para la guerrilla, aun cuando esta violaba de manera permanente la soberanía de Ecuador. Chávez, consciente de la viga en su propio ojo, miró para otro lado. Para Uribe, el problema en la frontera son las Farc; para Correa y Chávez, el problema en la frontera es Uribe.

Por todos estos hechos, Colombia debe permanecer atenta para que Venezuela y Ecuador cumplan el compromiso de "combatir las amenazas a la seguridad provenientes de la acción de los grupos irregulares", compromiso contenido en la reciente resolución de la OEA. De igual manera, debe hacer énfasis en la necesidad de que su Secretario General implemente "un mecanismo de observación del cumplimiento" de esa resolución. Para Colombia será fácil, pues le basta con no entrar a territorios vecinos. Para Ecuador y Venezuela será más difícil, pues les significará incumplirle a la guerrilla los compromisos que han sido revelados en los computadores de 'Reyes'.

Cualquier futuro apoyo de nuestros vecinos a la guerrilla debe ser denunciado amplia y abiertamente ante la comunidad internacional. Esto ya dejó de ser un asunto bilateral, nivel en que se han perdido todas las anteriores denuncias colombianas. Por ello, todos los embajadores colombianos deben realizar en el exterior amplias campañas de información sobre la situación del país y los avances logrados en la recuperación de nuestra seguridad interna, para tener un terreno abonado y lograr apoyos internacionales en la eventualidad de vernos obligados a elevar alguna demanda ante organismos internacionales frente a una no descartable reincidencia de nuestros vecinos en el apoyo a la guerrilla.

Porque Chávez y Correa están neutralizados. Pero solo por ahora.

“He is finally in the sights of the imperial power: May God catch him confessing”

From: Noticias24
04:17 PM | 13 MAR 2008
Antonio Sánchez García.

(translated:  G. Cisneros)

This is his column:

It has taken nine years for Chavez to realize one of his most cherished goals: to become a top priority for the State Department and the Pentagon. One of his greatest frustrations – being ignored and/or belittled by George W. Bush – is about to be rectified.

For the first time the North American Nation via its key institutions – the Southern Command, the Justice Department, the State Department, and the White House – turns its gaze on the “Chavez phenomenon” and decides to confront what they consider to be an issue of regional survival. The heavy North American machinery, which is reluctant to bang about in minor matters concerning a coup-plotting lieutenant colonel, in spite of how folksy and picturesque he may seam, is turning towards the Caribbean.

The lieutenant colonel’s satisfaction is now unmitigated: he is finally in the sights of the imperial power. The Harry S. Truman, one of its most fearsome aircraft carriers loaded with eighty-five combat jets, is cruising off the coastal waters underscoring the paucity of the recently acquired soviet-era air force potential at the disposal of the Bolivarian revolution. The North American justice system, meanwhile, lays bare her participation in money laundering, drug trafficking, and the support of narcoguerrillas and terrorism. Goliath shows its claws.

Hugo Chavez may not be fully aware of the terrain he’s entered, provoking not only the United States, but also his regional neighbors and the European Union. Even Cuba, concerned about improving her relations with the U.S. and initiating her transition back into the community of democratic nations and, of course, the OAS, is put off. Returning to the worn-out strategy mastered by Castro of galvanizing support via a confrontation-without-return with the U.S., and converting this into a matter of survival for his regime after the fiasco of the December 2 referendum, demonstrates a willful ignorance of the true correlation of powers arrayed on our country and, at the same time, reveals a vulnerability for misguided adventures which could cost him his head. This is not, as was the case of Cuba, a revolution standing up to the Empire, but rather a incompetent government caught between a rock and a hard place.

As for the domestic situation: the government of Hugo Chavez has more in common with the death rattle of Isabelita Perón’s which, without sorrow or glory was snuffed out in an abyss of rampant corruption and a terrifying absence of governability, than that of Fidel Castro on Playa Girón. And while Castro could count on the backing of the Soviet Union, Chavez only has Iran and Byelorussia. Even Cuba, in the hands of Raul Castro, marks her distance.

A case of lamentable political myopia could be pushing Chavez to the abyss. He has no one to blame but himself. God blinds those who want to be lost. Not even his chosen heir, Diosdado Cabello, will follow him down this road. Chavez has the mark of disaster singed upon his forehead. May God catch him confessing.

The Zero Sum Game

Chavez has returned, once again, to the theme that "wealth is a sin."  Using his habitual method of linking up all television channels by decree, Chavez last night appeared before an auditorium full of medical students dressed in white lab coats.  As the camera panned the audience, groups of students, seeing themselves on the monitors, would stand up and wave with glee.  

 

In the midst of this festive atmosphere, reinforced by the announcement that yearly grants to to students in "communal" medical programs would go up by 500 bolivars (U$ 230), Chavez could not resist taking a dig at those doctors who choose to leave the country to find work.  He said these doctors had "sold their souls to the Devil," no doubt in allusion to the capitalist benefactors of these medical personnel.  

Chavez went on to say that "wealth is a sin" and that the Vatican "supports my position."  He said that the message of Christ was vindicated in socialism because it was the system that eliminated poverty whereas capitalism was the system that created poverty.  He mentioned the whip of Isaiah which came down upon those with too much wealth as a viable moral road.

Apparently, these admonitions are meant to rally the poor to his side.  Chavez knows that there is still a huge pool of voters who are likely to vote for his cause based on their condition of poverty.  However, there is a significant number of these poor that are beginning to blame Chavez for the palpable erosion of their purchasing power due to inflation, the horrendous levels of criminal violence fed by police permissiveness, and a the obvious gap between promised goals and results.

Chavez must continue to use his trusted method of blaming the rich, the middle classes, the former political classes of the "Fourth Republic," and, of course, the imperialists to the north, for all of what ails Venezuela.  His problem is that he is going on his tenth year of Revolution and not all is roses and wine for this OPEC nation wallowing in the midst of the highest oil prices in history.

More serious still for Chavez - and for his style of socialism - is that he insists on playing a zero sum game.  For his ilk of revolutionary bathed in the fiery rhetoric of the sixties, there are only two historical players:  the bloodthirsty capitalists and the noble poor. Capitalists simply have lots of things but don't work for them, preferring instead that the underfed, overworked, illiterate masses tend to their latifundias and clean their palaces.   That is to say, it appears that they missed the Industrial Revolution and simply superimpose the Feudal State upon the last five hundred years.

In this cosmology, each extra loaf of bread eaten by the oligarchy is a loaf taken from the hands of a poor child.  And, in a country that relies more on oil revenues for survival than on the investment in productive industries, this may make sense.  But it denies the obvious:  that capitalism has revolutionized the the world by distributing wealth to those enterprises that make the best use of available resources regardless of geographical location or class.  

No Peace in Store for Venezuela's Opposition

According to Alberto Müller Rojas, recently elected vice president for the Unified Venezuelan Socialist Party, the climate of dialogue and peace which crowned the conclusion of the Group of Rio Summit last week cannot be transferred into Venezuela because "the right conditions don't exist." A general in the army and a close ally of Mr. Chavez, Mr. Rojas Muller was responding to comments made earlier at a press conference by opposition leader Rosales, governor of the state of Zulia. Governor Rosales, lamenting the terrible waste of the "golden years" of high petroleum prices, called on Chavez to learn from the Summit and take the initiative in calling for reconciliation and dialogue within Venezuela.  He applauded the resolutions accorded among the presidents of Latin America and suggested that the same atmosphere could be reproduced in Venezuela to tackle the myriad problems which face the nation. 

Rosales maintained that poverty, violence, food and medicine shortages were all on the rise.  This, despite the fact the Venezuela has recently benefited from oil prices at triple the rate projected for the federal budget.  The Governor suggested that, as a first step, Chavez should end his persecution of opposition politicians, business interests and the media, in order to find a "concerted" solution to Venezuela's problems.

General Muller Rojas was of the opinion that the correct "conditions" did not exist.  As an example, he cited the fact that Rosales had called Chavez "treasonous" for having moved 10 batallions of troops to the border for reasons other than national security.

 

SWIFTLY ROTTING - Hugo Chávez, ‘a demi God at the Edge of the Abyss’

10:16 PM | 04 MAR 2008 |

Antonio Sánchez García
Especial para noticias24.com
(Translated G. Cisneros)

Hugo Chavez made a mistake: he thought that after the prognosticated loss of his movement in the regional elections next November, the Venezuelan opposition would come after him. And that an opposition victory in Miranda, Caracas or Carabobo, not only would depose those important states and cities of leaders he had hand picked by virtue of his presidential majesty, passing them over to the opposition alliance, but that this would signal, moreover, the start of a hostile attack against his person.

There was no shortage of persons ready to ratify this scenario, believing that the Venezuelan crisis moves along the comfortable and cushioned tracks of an electoral confrontation. We have repeatedly heard political leaders, columnists, and editors from the left wing of the democratic opposition speak of 2012 as the watershed year for removing Chavez via the presidential elections without, however, noticing that the rhythm and velocity of the crisis would blow all of these expectations to the four winds. 

Confronting the upcoming electoral battle outside the context of the grave crisis of governability that agitates the country and fractures the foundations of the regime implies not only blindness, but irresponsibility and crass ignorance.

All the indicators point to what is already happening. Hugo Chavez is the victim of an incurable decease, his personality disorders have no cure. They pull him inevitably toward the abyss and his most profound impulses are self-destructive. He is verbally incontinent, violent and unreflective by nature. He lacks the most elemental mechanisms for self control and, left to his own devises, he is his own worst enemy - particularly in those moments when, being a sociopath narcissist, all of his dreams and hopes collide with the reality that his aspirations for glory and majesty are radically frustrated, such as they as is now the case.
He is approaching his end. 

Beset by his own formidable errors and the absolute incompetence of his support team, he is engulfed by an economic, social, poetical and judicial crisis without precedence. And he is encircled internationally by the most serious accusations made against any president in the history of Latin America, with the exception of Augusto Pinochet. The international justice system will pursue him like it did the Chilean dictator or the criminals of the Balkan wars. His error: believing sincerely that the scandalous impunity which he has enjoyed in a politically and morally dismembered nation, humiliated and harassed by his cruelty, could be extended to the entire world, converting it into a battleground for his Napoleonic ambitions. 

Such has been the submissiveness of the Latinamerican Left, and such the gangster like temperament of Peronists, Marxists, Lulaists, Frontists and Castroists, of all types and conditions, extending their hands and enriching or financing themselves at the side of the gigantic, criminal, and monstrous irresponsibility of this lieutenant colonel, who in the end came to believe seriously in his supernatural power and to feel beyond reproach like some demi god. Pinochet, Videla and Fujimori thought the same, just like their predecessors, Hitler and Mussolini. They have paid a steep price.

None of the accusations which he may now face before the International Criminal Court are news to the Venezuelan opposition. All of his ties with the FARC, with drug traffickers, with arms dealers, with the subversive and insurgent movements of Latin America, with the Argentine political mafias or the “piqueteros,” “cocaleros” or indigenists have been reported by our news media. 

Neither Rafael Correa, nor Evo Morales, nor Daniel Ortega, and possibly not even Lula or Kirtchner, nor Tabare Vasquez or Cristina Fernandez have clean hands with respect to the corrupting money placed in possession of their campaign managers via the checkbook of this lieutenant colonel. There is abundant police evidence in relation to the briefcases that ended up in the hands of Ollanta Humala, Evo Morales or Ms. Fernandez. All of this is being revealed in Florida precisely at this moment. 

Shortly, all of Chavez’s financial relationships with the remaining presidents of the, so-called, democratic left will come to light.  And in that light will be displayed, for all to see, the devious dealings with the narcotics trade, the corrupt enrichment of his collaborators, the looting of our nation’s funds. His regime rots before our very eyes. His power unravels at a fantastic rate. Will he last long enough to live to see his historic defeat in liberty? This is a question that many Venezuelans have begun to ask themselves.

PUDRIÉNDOSE EN CARNE VIVA