Today, vcrisis posted a video of statements made by Causa R leader Andres Velasquez, who nobody can accuse of being right wing or an oligarch, which are quite good, as it is usual for him. In them Velasquez refers to the Granda and Anderson’s case. In the Granda case, Velasquez says that this is simply an artificial crisis, saying Chavez has made even more serious charges against the US, but never has even threatened to break relations; he simply needed something to distract attention from other problems
A very similar point is made today by Javier Brassesco in his article:”The Necessary Enemy” in today’s El Universal:
The Necessary Enemy by Javier Brassesco
Carl Schmitt, a constitutional lawyer who adhered to the Nazi cause at the height of the effervescence of the National Socialist Party (1933), said something that became very useful for Hitler: “the first task for those that want to dedicate themselves to politics is to find an enemy”. Schmitt explained that the political enemy does not need to be morally bad, nor esthetically ugly, it does not need to be a competitor at the financial level, but you can even do business with him. It is sufficient that it be the other one, a stranger, the not-me, the not-us.
How could one forget all of this when one saw the march convoked “to defend our sovereignty”! Thousands of people slapping the darkness, showing themselves ready for a fight that isn’t, that will never be. Anyone can be brave and have a big mouth when what you have in front is a windmill, evoked only to give cohesiveness to the group, we are all one, all against Him, against the other one against the enemy.
But something needs to be invented , since for now to blame and distract the people the internal enemy is not good enough, that concept that was adopted in Rwanda by the Hutus and their terrible militia (the interhamwe, “the ones that kill together”) right before they grabbed their machetes and devoted themselves to the patriotic task of exterminating eight hundred thousand Tutsis in three months (April-July 1994) while the world looked the other way, after all, more blacks or fewer blacks is not something that keeps the civilized world of this planet awake.
And even if that interior enemy is good for some things (Barreto blamed Bandera Roja for the revolt of the street vendors and Acosta Carles said the invasions were work the work of the opposition) in general it is not very credible in these moments of exaggerated transcendence. Thus the enemy has to be found abroad and what better enemy than the United States (that of course is the one that moves the strings, wicked and calculating behind the curtains), what better thing that appeal to patriotism, which for Samuel Johnson was the last refuge of the scoundrel, that one that makes the imbecile feel proud because they were born in the same place as a wise man, the same one that Bush appeals to push forward his preventive wars. The nation threatened by the insolent sole of the foreigner is the unwilted recourse of the politicians, the card up your sleeve that gathers the herd, makes it obey better and does not get distracted looking a different way.
Whatever happens with Colombia is not the important thing, because in the end absolutely nothing will happen. The Granda case will be a mystery more so to those that are by now dangerously used to it. Nothing ever happens here, we go from one thing to the other, statements, counter statements, scandals, scandalized opinions and a liter of milk already costs one thousand eight hundred bolivars, an additional person is sleeping in the streets.
In the middle of the boom of patriotic trifles and called to defend the Nation (Capital letters please), I remember and sympathize more than ever with that character of Brecht, that one that said that he was not interested in belonging to any place in particular, because in the end he could die anywhere.
The Devil's Excrement 
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