Today is Leopoldo Lopez second birthday in jail

And I have nothing best to offer but a repost of what I wrote a year ago.

Unbearably actual.

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Today, after soon three month in jail and no trial in sight, Leopoldo Lopez, political prisoner of the regime has his birthday. With the added bonus that his wife has been banned for visit for a while because the regime did not like an interview she gave to ABC in Spain.

So, has Leopoldo Lopez self sacrifice been worth something?

No more dollars for FEDECAMARAS? They never asked for any!

We do not know who writes Maduros's scripts but the last one was a dozy. In his constant search for a scapegoat for his constant piling up of mistakes Nicolas Maduro has decided last week that FEDECAMARAS was guilty of the "economic war" and his retaliation was to cut out their supply of dollars. There are two concurrent ways to look at this.

First, Maduro is an idiot.

What if you inaugurated a new bus line and nobody came?

In a success starved regime anything becomes a great triumph. Thus inaugurating 6 miles of a simple blocked lane for accordion buses is shamelessly termed the most modern transportation system in Latin America. Just as all is crumbling but who's gonna check?

But today you can get killed in Facebook

Hoy pude grabar este video en la inauguración del transmaracay , después de esperar mas de 6 horas esto fue lo q paso cuando llego Maduro
Posted by Julio J. Tovar Ponte on samedi 18 avril 2015

That is right. The presidential bus was only three, passed by in a couple of minutes, and that was that. Chavez years of throngs glory are far, far away. (note: this was passed to me by soemone who actually knows the guy who filmed. Just in case).

Panama OAS summit for dummies

OK, real quick.

The OAS summit, for Venezuela's Maduro regime it was supposed to be the trashing of Obama and the US.

For the US and Cuba it was going to be the start of something and a positive PR for both battered leaders.

The results?

The money is mine and I'll do what I want to do with it (and, by the way, there is none left)

When I wrote this morning post I did not realize that tonight I would be writing the same one but from a different angle. That is, materially not the same at all, but philosophically, so to speak, they are like two drops.

He is taking away your credit card

My point this morning was that the presence of CNE's head Tibisay at a political event Wednesday to "validate" 10 million signatures obtained though coercion meant that the opposition could dream on winning future legislative elections, the regime could not care less. There are alternative ways to legislate or annul newly elected representatives through, say, popular will expression through "certified" signatures of the "El Pueblo". After all, if Obama and the OAS have nothing to object of the signatures this week end, why should they object to future signatures?

Strong with that success, the regime forged ahead and announced today that travel money would be reduced to almost nothing, and that in addition it would be reserved only to those that are already in agreement with the regime.  It may not look quite like it on the surface but that is the way it is heading. Again, as is the case this morning, the point is not whether there are elections. Today is not whether there is money in the coffers: whatever is there is for the regime. Period.

Fake signatures in lieu of votes, popular clamor in lieu of democracy

So Maduro will present 10 or 13 or 3 million signatures in Panama today. To Obama, to the public or to the dumpster. Does it matter?

Sending the message that votes are unnecessary 

The shame has continued unabated. Even my personal one. I have almost forced my S.O., a sickly public worker, to go an sign the Maduro farce in a way to be seen by his co-workers, to make sure he does not raise any suspicion at work, to make sure he does not compromise his job, to make sure he does not risk his health insurance. We are not proud but we live in a dictatorship. I can afford not to sign, he cannot because my means do not allow me to support him financially 100%, the more so that the bolivarian revolution is homophobic and contrary to many other LatAm countries has no provision for same sex couples so I cannot put him on my insurance, my retirement, my inheritance, etc. In many other countries there are such possibilities now, but bolivarian Venezuela is probably the most backward country now in South America. Then again homophobia is but one of the many tools of subjection available to fascism.

But my personal shame made me digress.

Thundering Twittering Terror

So the OAS summit is about to start.  A lot of clouds are announced, then again nothing may happen. And then again the unexpected may take place. Should we care? I do not need to enter much into that as there is a perfectly good, perfectly complete, perfectly short piece that covers all that you need to know on the Panama gathering, In case you think it is relevant for the future.

Instead let's talk about Maduro's understanding of the situation. Inasmuch as we can even dare making an educated guess about the primary feeling that has taken possession of his psyche. Because I assume that Maduro at least had at some point the smarts of a courtier. That does not mean that he is intelligent, he is not. But at least he had the necessary wiles and instincts to rise inside the Cuban imperial court and the Chavez proconsul court to reach the title of viceroy of Venezuela, no small feat.

Fun Poll result

I took the opportunity of Easter week, traditionally the lowest readership week with the one between Christmas and New Year, to run a poll.

It is not truth or dare in Caracas, it is scream and dare

One has to wonder, and somehow admire, the chutzpah of Maduro promising to go all the way through his signature collection to bring them to Panama and humiliate Obama. That nearly magnificent obsession clogs everything else in the state news, even though the whole world already knows that most of those signatures in Venezuelan have been drawn under pressure, something that does not seem to register in chavismo. We are actually getting war reports: "we reached 6.2 millions signatures today", highlighting the exquisite love of chavismo for decimal points as if that detail made the numbers more trustworthy...

Beach, red, storms...........

The latest today is that Maduro found it to be a great idea to send squads of PSUV militants to the beaches of Venezuela, crowded for the Holy Week holidays, to ask scantily clad people to sign up...  I wonder whether there is any sense of ridicule left anywhere inside chavismo. Don't they realize that declaring the need to go to pester people at the beach is itself an admission that the signature drive has not been the success they hoped for?

For good measure Maduro also decided that March 9 (Obama's executive order date) should be declared from now on "anti imperialistic day" or something like that. I hope it is a paid holiday just in between Carnival and Easter week!  You know, those 5 weeks of lent can be long...