Globovision last gasp?

It looks like the end of Globovision as we knew it is at hand.  The top group of journalists is fired or resigning and the network new owners have decided after their meeting with the regime to stop broadcasting anything about Capriles. We even learn that Globovision twitter followers are dropping quite fast, a bare few weeks Globovision had bragged becoming the most followed TV account in Venezuela (Note: for full disclosure I never followed Globovision, too many tweets).

Oh well...  back to the newspapers, nothing left to listen or watch in all of Venezuela....

Do they have toilet paper in Pyongyang?

Away from news a quick check tells me that the bolibanana republic has launched a refurbished missile from the 70ies.... And the refurbished missile was refurbished with Venezuelan technology and Cuban know how or something.  I wonder if those techs and the generals involved had clean asses.

New depths of ridicule are amazingly reached again and again.

Mario Silva and our daily abjection

So, apparently, this week scandal in Caracas is an illegal wiretapping of a conversation between Mario Silva and some Cuban G2 operative. The good thing about being away and writing on it late is that, well, I am not really that affected and El Universal put all of its links in English as I use them for this text.

This being said, what to think about that mess?

An example of economic failure

Going around I came in front of this shelf that hit me like a rock, reminding me how bad Venezuela has become.  See, after 14 years of chavismo we have no more toilet paper, no more corn meal, no more crucial   pharmaceuticals for cancer of HIV patients, no more X,Y and Z .....  And in France I saw that Royal Canin® display......

Waldoniel History Walk

UPDATED
There is this little video of a typical walk during this trip: wind, rain, cold, like a November in May.  I will give a full explanation later. Enjoy your speculations.



And you certainly will agree that this is more interesting and fresh than the score from Mario Silva...

Update: I will not lift the mystery completely but will explain the video (I have another post coming).

During WWII the Germans built a defensive wall all along the Atlantic Coast. It was breached in Normandy with great difficulty but breached nevertheless. However, it would have been equally difficult anywhere else.

On the Atlantic coast that goes from the Gironde to Spain there is a long stretch of tall sand dunes and the Germans had to build huge defenses, blockhaus, on top of dunes. By definition there is no hard ground below a dune by the sea shore. However dunes move, beaches are eroded in places and grow in other places. What you see in the clip are two set of such defenses that fell down over the decades towards the eroding shores. But not only that, they got closer to each one!!!  Eventually they will become reef, disappear under water and maybe in a couple of decades will be covered by the sand of a new beach. Let's say the dunes behaved over time as a sort of quicksand.

Maduro is a fascist idiot, the worst kind because they are cruel by sport

Lorenzo Mendoza promoting his competition?
Harina PAN all alone in the middle....

So tonight finally I checked out a few headlines and sure enough there is just too many idiocies that I cannot go to bed until I vent a little bit with you guys.

Apparently Maduro has been making a total ass of himself. I mean, TOTAL, as in without possible redemption, total enough that we truly must wonder why in hell Chavez named him his heir. Heck!  Even Ramirez starts looking good in comparison.  However I must also say that the idiotic presentations of Maduro seem at least to come in big part from his totally inadequate staff. What we see this week is the result of what happens when dumb instructs idiot.

The Waldoniel bad weather trip

Bad weather requires comfort foods and this is on one is at one of my most hallowed joints, never missed.

The second picture cannot be nicer because I have not seen the sun in three days.  Still, you get the idea of the wilderness in Spring.

Announcement and open thread

Blogging will be very erratic for the next three weeks, thus....

Will the Venezuelan regime dare to put Polar on the scaffold? (or gallows, depending you local lingo)

I was on the road today and only tonight did I get the latest idiocies of the regime. This one must feel quite a lot of heat to consider taking over Polar, the largest private company in Venezuela, which today may represent about 4% of the GNP of Venezuela, a high number not because of any monopolistic intentions from Polar but because in a sea of bankruptcies and expropriations the Polar ship is somehow still afloat.

But first a little bit of background.

Catastrophic news for the regime: Inflation at 4.3% and RCTV revenge

The regime got two major knockdowns today.

Massive shortages of corn flour in Venezuela

Line at a La32, a Chinese everything joint

This week we have seen dramatic shortages of the Venezuelan basic staple, at least outside of Caracas and in low income social classes: corn flour.  Newspapers in Caracas are strangely silent about it but other papers like El Impulso of Barquisimeto are more vocal.  Yesterday and today driving around San Felipe I saw long lines of people. But today was top: in a single short errand I saw three, 3, long lines of people waiting for a single thing: Harina P.A.N., the most basic, well known staple of the Venezuelan kitchen, now available world wide except in Venezuela. I managed to take two pics for you, but that is not all.

El Impulso earlier this week was showing front page the ridiculous long line in a Barquisimeto location, but also, way more damming, how people were branded for their turn in line!!!  I am also putting these pictures at the end of this entry.

Maduro is looking for food.... A primer on food crisis in Venezuela

I am not making this up: Maduro, the pseudo-president of Venezuela has justified his trip to Uruguay with this excuse among others:

“Parte clave de la gira que yo arranco mañana (...) es para garantizar fortalecer nuevamente la reserva alimentaria de productos básicos de nuestro país a tres meses"
A key part of the tour I am starting tomorrow (...) is to guarantee to strengthen [sic] again the food reserve of basic products of our country for three months. (I am sorry, I cannot translate it any better, the guy cannot speak properly).

So many things wrong already there, not to mention that he also accused the private agricultural sector of hoarding and sabotaging the transition to socialism. Thus I suppose that I need to write a primer on food shortages in Venezuela as the one I did a few days ago for media.

The opposition challenges 2,320,490 votes of April 14 (15.4% votes cast, margin of victory 1.49% votes cast)

A few days ago Capriles challenged the whole election.

Today, there were quite a few voting centers which results of April 14 where directly challenged. In short, what the opposition demands is that the vote is repeated in those centers which are enough to not only reverse the result of last April but could give Capriles a better margin of victory than what Maduro claims (amen of the voters loss the regime has experienced in two weeks).

The brave new opposition leadership

On Sunday night it was mandatory for all who could watch it, the interview of Maria Corina Machado on Globovision, with Nitu Perez. Globovision knows when it has a hit, as it has already the 4 segments posted.

But what Maria Corina made me think of, beyond her obvious physical pain, her courage, and confirming the admiration I have for her since the 2012 primaries, is that she is just one more. Sure, right now after surgery and a swollen face she is number 1.  But she is not the lone hero (1)

Who minds the Realm?

The decomposition of the regime goes apace. These last couple of days we peeled off yet another myth: that Maduro had an inkling on diplomacy. After all, he had been Chavez foreign secretary for more than half a decade before been anointed. Surely he must have learned something. But after having clashed, unnecessarily  with Spain, he clashed with even less reason and potentially more damage with Peru, ending today with a special cadena trying to clash with Obama and linking him to the Devil. (1)

For foreign non-illustrated media and chavista supporters: chavismo media lock up

Since there is right now a cadena that silences a Capriles press conference that I was planning to live tweet, I decided that I might as well write the current situation of the media in Venezuela. Two reasons motivate me to do so.

The first one is that there are still idiotic (sorry, no other word applies) chavismo supporters overseas that repeat the old cliche that private media oppress the people and hide the news in Venezuela. Saddest part is that many journalists who should know better, who would never accept such a thing as a cadena at home, not only fail to report on the power abuse that cadenas are, but actually repeat the idiotic cliches over private control of media in Venezuela.

The other reason is that since so many people are working to denounce the current Venezuelan dictatorship, I thought I offer them a primer they can link too whenever convenient. So here it goes in clear, simple definitions.

The Maduro "election" is officially challenged (impugnada), and so is the electoral system

As promised we just read that the Henrique Capriles has officially challenged/impugnado the election of April 14. he did that by sending the Comando Simon Bolivar, his electoral organization, to the high court of Venezuela, TSJ, electoral hall, with a 180 pages document. The evidence will be introduced later, as the High court proceeds with the hearings.

But that is not all. The challenge is not only on the mere result: the opposition has challenged ALL the electoral process, from weeks before the election to the following days. what is on trial is not only the result of April 14, it is all the Venezuelan Electoral system. At long last.

What can we expect?

BBC "imprecision": who is at fault, the lousy journalists or the Capriles/CSB media people?

When I read the account of the BBC for the latest "punch up" in Venezuela's assembly I have to wonder about whether the journalist(s) in charge are clueless or biased pro Maduro; or the press folks at the Comando Simon Bolivar (CSB) are failing dismally in their task of informing accurately the foreign press. Which is the right one? Or should I shudder at the thought that both ideas are right?

Life in the era of Youtube: old 1999 video shows the early brutality of Maduro

Oh dear....  People are unearthing stuff in Youtube and this one is a little gem, showing a younger Maduro beating up a Representative in 1999.  Plus ça change et plus c'est la même chose.

On the road today...

... but Sylvio and Fausta managed to get me in Barquismeto for a quickie but goodie podcast.

See you tomorrow, when I am back in San Felipe and can discuss more of what is going on.
PS: Maria Corina Machado, the perverse evil aggressor of the totally unscathed chavista representative is having tomorrow morning surgery for 4, FOUR, nose fractures she got yesterday.

XXI century fascism in full blown action in Venezuela

Representatives Machado and Borges after a working day

Little did I know that the post I finished Sunday, to let up for a few days, would be proven prophetic 48 hours later, as reader Luis F already commented. The musings about chavismo becoming what could not dare say its name, XXI century fascism, came home today home to root with a vengeance  At the Nazional Assembly, Diosdado Cabello and Pedro Carroña Carreño set up an ambush on opposition deputies to beat them up, while locking the doors so no one could escape so guards could try to stop them from taking videos of the scene. Female chavista representatives had the courtesy of being the ones beating up opposition female representatives like Maria Corina Machado.

I am not going to go into the beating up details, there are articles already up, and already in English. I am just putting the basic video below where you can see clearly that Venezuelan flagged jackets wearing chavista representatives are brutally attacking opposition Representatives  It says it all, this was not a "spur of the moment angst expression".