ECrisis Advises: Man Up!!!
 
March 26, 2010   Here from Caracas is a tale of what happens in all ALBA nations now: you go to jail- directly to jail. You have no rights if your Cuban-ALBA leader does not like you or the cut of your jib. And most assuredly you will be dead or in jail – the same thing- if you so much as hint at the facts.

Ecuadoreans are taught to run and hide from facing their problems. Passive-aggressive dishonesty never ever saved one thing. It saves no children from failed education, it saves no lives from shoddy healthcare or failed state services [water, sanitation, security] and it sure does not save the right to worship God as one may chose. ALBA-Cuban constitutions have taken all these rights away. Of course Ecuadoreans voted for this nightmare stupidly without even once reading it. The U.S. government pretends that although it co-funded these manifestos of corruption, Cuban statism and legalized crime that this does not matter because we enable our dear ones and never urge them to grow up and be responsible.

All US AID works should could with a warning label: proceed with peril and know that you are being fed whole troughs of cow pittoie, hazardous to your well being by these sub-denizens of enabling all ALBA criminality as they have covertly been doing for years now. Of course the US AID and Soros gang adores the dishonest and mentally impaired Correa who controls all levers of power in Ecuador. That is the essential of a dictator and he is a dictator over a criminal cartel…because you let him with your silence, your acceptance of his bribes and threats and your lunacy to pretend that manipulating life will save you. Correa is not the direct progeny of US AID but he is their step child, enabled criminally while Correa is his own creature of communist Castro [which Correa abhorrently and falsely calls Christianity], financially brought your way by Chavez and FARC monies because you find this clever and convenient. But it is Ecuadoreans who should study this poignant cry from Caracas about the horrors of ALBA-ism. There are no rights left and no one to protect you because you chose to not defend yourself and you decided it is far better to be stupid and in jail than to be free. Soon there will be no one left to defend you because you chose not to be honest and defend yourself. You chose to be like Correa: childish, dishonest and manipulative. It is your choice to turn this around and step up or as they say: Man Up.

Thoughtcrime

One time Zulia State governor and center-right candidate for the presidency Oswaldo Álvarez Paz will be spending his first night behind bars tonight for what can only be described as thoughtcrime.

Backed by professionally conducted investigations and publicly available data on clandestine flights from Venezuela to the Caribbean, Álvarez Paz's contention that Venezuela has become a center of clandestine operations that facilitate drug trafficking is unambiguously true.
Alas, it's a truth that afflicts the comfortable. And so expressing it has become a jailable offense.

I think it's important for all decent Venezuelans to take some positive step to register their disgust at this abuse in a public medium. Because in the internet era, everything is on the record. And in the fulness of time, we will look back on the events of these days and we will ask which side each person stood on.

Those who stand by and, by their silence, tacitly approve abuses such as this one will have an awful lot to explain. When this generation (hopefully) or future generations (more likely) ask "where were you when Venezuelans were being thrown in jail for expressing dissent in public?", you'd better hope you have a good answer.

My hope (and, if I'm honest, also my expectation) is that within my own lifetime, people who cannot show they opposed this madness will find themselves well beyond the pale of mainstream democratic life. Fail to speak up for basic human decency now, and you will one day find yourself in the situation of those who quietly conspired to maintain apartheid in South Africa, or Pincohet in Chile.

The imprisonment of Oswaldo Alvarez Paz will be remembered as perhaps the clearest signal of the establishment of a full-blown dictatorship in Venezuela under Chávez. Tonight I'm staggered, unable to find the words to register my disgust at this.

The thing that stands out most, I think, is the insane double standard. Watch any Aló, Presidente and you find many, many instances of actual defamatory speech: the kinds of untrue statements injurious to reputation that will result in a hefty fine from a proper court. The government issues defamatory statements each and every day, and a random browse of any Venezuelan newspaper shows as much. The torrent of unfounded allegations - blithely unhinged from any evidence - is overwhelming...yet it's the true statements that land people in jail.

The government's claims to impartiality in the application of the law are, today more than ever, absolutely laughable. Venezuelans are going to jail for speaking the truth. Tonight. Right now.

Silence is complicity.

Mourn for our civil liberties, people.

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We at ECrisis note that this tragic tale is repeated daily in Ecuador, the larger cases getting more attention. Nothing has or will stop Correa’s march into Cuban failure. Ecuadoreans can do so by ending their well trained, highly valued national mental illnesses of psychoses and stubborn refusals to grow up. Ecuadorean truth tellers have been ordered to jail by Correa. No charges by Correa for truth telling have ever ever ever been voided or vacated. They hang like  a cancer, poisoning this land because no Ecuadorean sees the benefit of terminating this cancer that afflicts Ecuador. The freedom-ending cancer grows and grows because it is not cut out. Complicity is its name. Enabling is its shame. Mourn briefly for the loss of your liberties but get focused on the short steps to restore your freedoms.

Your silence is Complicity.

-Pedro Camargo for ECrisis