Watching Venezuela Implode

I think he's been given a warning, "behave, or else". He'll keep insulting Uribe (as he still insults Bush Jr.) but he'll keep his tongue shot for now regarding Santos. After declaring less than 3 years ago that Venezuela didn't share limits with Colombia but with the FARCs, he's been declaring, after Uribe's accusations, that the FARC has no justification anymore and that they should disband and liberate all the hostages.

So we are restablishing relationships again and hopefully for both sides trade will follow soon. Colombia's border economy thrives in trade and oil smuggling from Venezuela, reactivating binational trade was a key promise during Santos campaign, Uribe just gave him the perfect leverage before leaving. If this trend continues Chavez will be mortgaging our territory soon to remain in power (The Venezuelan Gulf has always been a key area for Colombia's diplomacy, they have a claim for part of it, and as you would have guessed, yeah, there is a sh*tload of oil down those waters.)

Chavez bans "violent images" from newspapers for 1 month. That story also links to a story claiming that there were 16,000 murders in Venezuela in 2009.

Según el análisis del OVV, dirigido por el sociólogo Roberto Briceño-León, profesor de la Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV), el 91 por ciento de los homicidios ocurridos en el país caribeño en 2009 no derivó en ninguna detención.
Google Translate wrote:

According to the analysis of OVV, led by sociologist Roberto Briceño-León, Professor at the Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV), 91 percent of homicides in the Caribbean country in 2009 did not result in any arrests.

Well, let's say it with music

Feank, man, have you thought about moving out of Venezuela, or are you gonna stay ?

Mex wrote:

Feank, man, have you thought about moving out of Venezuela, or are you gonna stay ?

Working on it Mex, details later as I don't want to derail thread, and also things haven't been set in stone yet. But yes, I need a full break from Caracas.

Aetius wrote:

Chavez bans "violent images" from newspapers for 1 month. That story also links to a story claiming that there were 16,000 murders in Venezuela in 2009.

Según el análisis del OVV, dirigido por el sociólogo Roberto Briceño-León, profesor de la Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV), el 91 por ciento de los homicidios ocurridos en el país caribeño en 2009 no derivó en ninguna detención.
Google Translate wrote:

According to the analysis of OVV, led by sociologist Roberto Briceño-León, Professor at the Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV), 91 percent of homicides in the Caribbean country in 2009 did not result in any arrests.

Yeah. Wow.

Venezuela is struggling with a decade-long surge in homicides, with about 118,541 since President Hugo Chávez took office in 1999, according to the Venezuelan Violence Observatory, a group that compiles figures based on police files. (The government has stopped publicly releasing its own detailed homicide statistics, but has not disputed the group’s numbers, and news reports citing unreleased government figures suggest human rights groups may actually be undercounting murders).

There have been 43,792 homicides in Venezuela since 2007, according to the violence observatory, compared with about 28,000 deaths from drug-related violence in Mexico since that country’s assault on cartels began in late 2006.

Caracas itself is almost unrivaled among large cities in the Americas for its homicide rate, which currently stands at around 200 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to Roberto Briceño-León, the sociologist at the Central University of Venezuela who directs the violence observatory.

That compares with recent measures of 22.7 per 100,000 people in Bogotá, Colombia’s capital, and 14 per 100,000 in São Paulo, Brazil’s largest city. As Mr. Chávez’s government often points out, Venezuela’s crime problem did not emerge overnight, and the concern over murders preceded his rise to power.

But scholars here describe the climb in homicides in the past decade as unprecedented in Venezuelan history; the number of homicides last year was more than three times higher than when Mr. Chávez was elected in 1998.

Wow, almost Tannhausered, was about to post that.

That's pretty bad considering the size of Venezuela... And all the unreported homicides.

Venezuelans go to the polls on Sunday. International observers are banned, the voter registry hasn't been audited in years, and opposition candidates have been imprisoned or removed from the ballot for various reasons. Should be interesting.

Aetius wrote:

Venezuelans go to the polls on Sunday. International observers are banned, the voter registry hasn't been audited in years, and opposition candidates have been imprisoned or removed from the ballot for various reasons. Should be interesting.

Not to mention, electoral regions have been modified so that 20.000 votes in some of the rural areas elect 1 representative to the National assembly, while in most cities and opposition dominated areas it takes 400.000 votes. So, if you thought Bush Jr. winning by electors choice and losing the popular vote was an outrage, get ready for some serious "I don't give a f*ck about your vote"

The Political campaign started two months ago, Chavez held public acts (which are invariably broadcasted by the public state-owned tv and all of the lesser networks the government controls) daily, each act, 2-3 hours long and sometimes several acts in the same day, in all of them, promoting his candidates, calling people to vote for them, because in the event they didn't win, the "Oligarchies" would return to the National Assembly and "go after him".
Last night the campaign ended, from here on no one can publicly call to vote for any of the parties involved. Well..... what would Chavez do you ask? yup, he threw an act today and talked and threatened and promised and gave explanations for four hours today, blaming the oligarchies for this and that, saying that "Socialism didn't fail at the URSS, the essays did (?)", and calling the Cardinal of Caracas "crazy" for comparing the 21st Century's Socialism (the so-called ideology Chavez invokes as his inspiration) to Comunism, among other pearls. All the while wearing the same sport team attire with the national flag. A month ago Fidel Castro was asked in a tv interview by a venezuelan, pro-chavez journalist "what do you think the 21st Century's Socialism is?" His anwser: "well, it's real communism, like that of Marx, nothing else".

I know I'm rambling and most of this seem unconnected, trust me, it is like this and making it sound logical and "collected" is harder than you would expect. This country is crazy.

Sunday we'll have the elections, the opposition is confident in winning the popular vote but there's no guarantee the results will be respected by the government. All the while last couple of weeks Chavez and company have played the card of accusing the opposition of preparing to reject the official results. The official results are handled by the electoral organism, which is formed by 5 directors, 4 of them pro-government.

I'll take a nice seat after voting and have a cold one while waiting for the fireworks

Well, it's almost 11 pm down here and "the most democratic country in the world" still doesn't know who the winners of the election are. And we vote with ATM-like machines, one would guess adding votes by computers would be, I dunno, faster?

Feeank wrote:

Well, it's almost 11 pm down here and "the most democratic country in the world" still doesn't know who the winners of the election are. And we vote with ATM-like machines, one would guess adding votes by computers would be, I dunno, faster?

Depends how much massaging the results need first.

Sonicator wrote:
Feeank wrote:

Well, it's almost 11 pm down here and "the most democratic country in the world" still doesn't know who the winners of the election are. And we vote with ATM-like machines, one would guess adding votes by computers would be, I dunno, faster?

Depends how much massaging the results need first.

Past 12:30 am, still no official word of the results, that's why all those poor nations turn to us for lessons in Democracy and transparency, we surely can claim to have the "Most effiicient and modern electoral system".

- It's also been announced the results won't be given in national broadcast. Enquiring minds wonder why
- Unnofficialy the opposition won 58-42, but the govt gets more representatives (80 pro Chavez, 55 Opposition, 26 still unclear who won). This is all hearsay yet.
- The Pro Govt party won't comment on the results after they're announced. Something to hide?
- Chavez asked for the people to flock to the people's balony at the government palace, so far no one has showed up, the balcony is empty and the windows closed.

Hitchcock would have had a field day directing Venezuelan elections.

Edit: the opposition demands inmediate disclosure of the results "we're waiting for the official results in order to uphold the law, tell the country what everybody already knows"

Bookmarked.

Feeank, can you give us a quick synopsis of the opposition? Is there anyone who looks like they might be good leadership, versus people who simply want to take over the reins of power? What's their platform?

Final results: 52% Opposition 48% ProChavez

That looks awesome, but here comes the catch, given the modifications done to electoral circuits and areas, Chavez gets 91 representatives and the Opposition 63 (there are 11 still undefined)

[size=48]Finger>Butt[/size]

Edit: These modifications were done in a way that in the circuits that Chavez has always won or had an easy majority would elect more representatives. This effectively means that in Chavez dominated areas each vote counted 2-3 times more than in those dominated by the opposition. Goodbye principle of proportionality. My vote was less than half determining/effective than the vote from someone in a rural small town.

There are also suspicions of fraud in many states, Carabobo, Miranda, places where the opposition won on the regional elections two years ago had really suspicious results, a close wipe on Carabobo and a tie on Miranda.

As well, that 52-48 result is suspect, all that delay to report the results, the rumoured arrangements that happens backstage during the delay, as usual it is suspected that the margin was bigger but Chavez had the army negotiate for him a lesser defeat in exchange for him "recognizing" the results as valid. He won't comment on the popular vote result, only on the number of representatives earned. He's already started feeding his twitter saying things like "the opposition say they won, well, keep "winning" like that".

Aetius wrote:

Feeank, can you give us a quick synopsis of the opposition? Is there anyone who looks like they might be good leadership, versus people who simply want to take over the reins of power? What's their platform?

Don't they all?

Hmm, there are plenty of options, young upcomers, old schoolers, all of them share to more or less the same attitude of "we're in for inclusion and dialogue" they all contrast themselves to Chavez with me or against me policy. I won't mention those who left and asked for exile since they're a lot.

Leopoldo Lopez, former mayor of Chacao, the richest county(?) in the country, he's been banned from running to any charge by the "general contralorship" or National Auditor, who has turned into an Chavez enforcer to prevent popular leaders to gather more support by removing them of the competition. It is worth noting that Lopez has not been convicted of any crime, the audit banned him on the ground of "suspicions". Personnally, I find him a bit too radical on his attitudes towards appointing candidates, unwilling to blend with the opposition union of parties and reach a middle ground.

Antonio Ledezma The odd survivor of our prior-chavez political past, he susbstituted Lopez(see above) as runner-up for Caracas Mayor when the later was banned from running, and won easily against Chavez' candidate. On retaliation Chavez striped his office of any responsability, infrastructure and real power, effectively denying/overrulling the popular vote by appointing an overseer to the Libertador county (the biggest in the city and the most populated) to take over what duties Ledezma had. Still, this doesn't erase the fact that Ledezma won in Chavez' wolf den (downtown Caracas)


Henry Falcón
I mentioned this guy before, he left Chavez' party earlier this year and stood up against him in defense of privately owned warehouses that Chavez wanted expropiated in downtown Barquisimeto. He's been labelled a traitor, an oligarchist puppet, etc etc, but he has won two mayor elections in a row and governor election despite not being Chavez' first choice for the post. Though still not a part of the traditional opposition, he is one of the few figures that could run against Chavez and relate to the rural, empoverished venezuelan at the same level that Chavez does.

Edited more:

There's also Commander Sheppard

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/hugochavez/view/

For the curious among you, long documentary.

Thanks for the udpates, Feeank. Given the control I assumed Chavez had over the media and the voting system, I wrote this election off. I'm amazed at the outcome. Major props to the Venezuelan people for not giving up, and for making their voices heard. Fingers crossed that Chavez doesn't just transfer more authority to the Executive branch to push through his agenda.

In the wake of the election, Reuters reports that Chavez is accelerating land seizures and nationalizations. He's also issuing weapons to the previously-unarmed civilian militia.

More news today about Venezeulan censorship of the internet. The National Assembly voted to give Chavez the power to rule by decree for 18 months last week - it looks like he's moving quickly to solidify his hold on power.

The Internet bill approved on Monday prohibits online content attacking "good customs," disrespecting public officials or inciting violence against the president.

Many of Venezuela's lively news forums operate without a moderator or editor filtering out extremist or vulgar content. But the bill has concerned some free speech activists, who have drawn comparisons with how China and Cuba police the Web.

Under the new regulations, all Internet traffic is supposed to pass through a single, government-controlled access point, stoking opposition fears about surveillance and censorship.

Lawmakers who promoted the bill had argued that it would make the Internet faster. But it was not clear how the government planned to undo the communications architecture already in place, or even whether it was technically possible.

Aetius wrote:

Hugo Sucks!

Hugo is Awesome!

NY times article

All lies against Great Leader! Hugo is Great! Hugo is Magnificent!

Suddenly, Noam Chomsky doesn't like Chavez all that much.

In case you guys haven't been following, this has turned out to be a pivotal month in Venezuela's future.

Chomsky made the mistake of thinking that someone that was opposed to the frequently manifestly evil policies of the US government must, therefore, be a good guy.

Chavez is right in many of his criticisms. But his proposed solutions are much worse than the original problems.

Malor wrote:

Chomsky made the mistake of thinking that someone that was opposed to the frequently manifestly evil policies of the US government must, therefore, be a good guy.

Yeah, that always weirded me out. I've usually found Chomsky to have legitimacy, but his "backing" of Chavez was weird to me. It was almost like backing Hitler (in a very lite sense; the whole consolidation of power thing).

garion333 wrote:

It was almost like backing Hitler (in a very lite sense; the whole consolidation of power thing).

Dude, there's no such thing as "a very lite" way of comparing anything to Hitler.

bnpederson wrote:
garion333 wrote:

It was almost like backing Hitler (in a very lite sense; the whole consolidation of power thing).

Dude, there's no such thing as "a very lite" way of comparing anything to Hitler.

There is if you get rid of the whole killing Jews and other groups. Okay, lite is a horrible word choice, but I hope I'm getting my meaning across. It's a consolidation of power thing.

What he's pointing to is the authoritarianism, not so much the world wars and desperate attempts to exterminate whole populations. Centralizing power like that makes that kind of abuse much easier to carry out.

Democracies can do it too ... I'd argue that Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is eerily reminiscent of earlier race-based hatred. It doesn't require an authoritarian regime to commit crimes against humanity, but it helps.

The reason Chavez and Bush hated each other so much was because they were both authoritarians; Bush was right-wing, Chavez left. Their mutual hatred was intense.

I expect Sean Penn, Danny Glover and Oliver Stone to boicott Paramount from now on.

From Hollywood Reporter

You can't make this stuff up.