March 2014

Diosdado Cabello is the current President of Venezuela's Congress. He has had many important roles in the chavista revolution, and is considered to be one of the three most powerful men in Venezuela. Cabello hails from the military, and participated in the coup led by Hugo Chavez in 1992. Cabello has recently been mentioned in a Florida lawsuit against Derwick Associates, a company that allegedly paid him a $50 million bribe. Wikileaks provides examples of how American authorities perceive Cabello, and so it is relevant to showcase these opinions, to get a measure of the man.

Descifrado.com reports that Thor Halvorssen (my former boss at The Human Rights Foundation) has sued Derwick Associates (Alejandro Betancourt, Pedro Trebbau, Francisco D'Agostino and 25 others) in the 11th Circuit of Miami-Dade, Florida. Allegedly, high figures from chavismo could be involved in corruption. Derwick Associates has another pending lawsuit, in New York, filed by former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Western Hemisphere Affairs, Otto Reich.

For the last few weeks I have been trying to get Twitter to enforce their own guidelines, with respect to a "parody" account, probably run by hacker RaFa Nuñez, called @alekboydoficial. This is an example of the sort of "parody" put out by said account:

infodioLeaks continues to provide some truly amazing leaks about corruption in Venezuela. One of the first questions ever asked to Derwick Associates, when it became known that it had been gifted 12 contracts in non-bidding processes, was to produce copy of said contracts. After all, Derwick was believed to be a Venezuelan private company, run by Venezuelans, that had been contracted by Venezuelan State's institutions, and that had been paid with Venezuelan public funds.

Alejandro Betancourt is a chavista wunderkind. A 'pioneer and global entrepreneur' he seems to be preparing his move to Spain, considering the tough times in his native Venezuela. Given his worldwide 'stature' as a 'businessman, philanthropist, innovator, and financial wizard,' Mr. Betancourt’s PR team recently unveiled a new website: AlejandroBetancourt.Es (notice Spain’s TLD) to serve as his presentation card to the world.

It is not an exaggeration to say that in many Venezuelan homes, regardless of politics, there's a weapon. The website gunpolicy.org cites some stats: "The estimated total number of guns (both licit and illicit) held by civilians in Venezuela is 1,600,000 to 4,100,000... In a comparison of the number of privately owned guns in 178 countries, Venezuela ranked at No. 27... Unlawfully held guns cannot be counted, but in Venezuela there are estimated to be 1,100,000 to 2,700,000".

The latest in the series #youcantmakethisshitup comes from Hollywood director Oliver Stone. Early in his latest propaganda film, aptly entitled "Mi Amigo Hugo", Stone says (3.13) "I did not know then that Hugo's end was near, that he'd be infected with a brutal and aggressive cancer in 2011..."

You know Eva. She was the "darling" of Hugo, the "sweetheart" of the "revolution". She must be sobbing today. Upon finishing her studies, in a rather expensive college, she went on to study law, and became, according to chavismo's conventional wisdom, a "renowned author", an "investigative journalist", a "TV presenter", an "editor of Correo del Orinoco", an "expert on Venezuela", and even a "Venezuelan". Imagine just how desperate for useful idiots those revolutionaries are, that Eva, an American citizen, published her first "book" in Havana.