I faced fascism

I have been the victim of a robbery. I am physically fine but morally deeply wounded. Not from the material loss, although my wedding band was stolen as my partner faces deadly cancer, which by itself is enough to send me to a dark place.

What truly did me in was the way it happened.

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.

Taking the gloves off: Capriles tells explicitly that Maduro stole the election

I did not know how to title this entry but scanning for background before typing it I thought that an adaption of Spain' El Pais would do. Because this is exactly what Capriles has done tonight: he has officially claimed that the election has been stolen from him. I am putting the portion of the video at the end of the post.

Chavismo has lost any democratic character, if it ever had one

One nice thing about Chavez was that we could measure the democratic content of chavismo by looking at him. Since on very rare instances Chavez had a democratic word, we could assume that perhaps inside chavismo there were people more democratic in nature than he was, that they were just repressed, closeted democrats, and that someday they would prevail.

We have been proven wrong: there is no democratic bone inside chavismo, and for all that I know, whatever democrats co existed inside may have been purged by 2007 at the latest.

Senseless repression but the beginning of some common sense, maybe, in Venezuela

The day has been marked by two things: an increase in repression moving into outright fascism, and at the end of the day the beginning of some good sense with the CNE accepting to backpedal its earlier stony stance.

Fascism keeps forward

I am sorry, but I cannot come with a better header when I read Luisa Estela words today.  But before I go into it I need to calm down readers: my surprise is that she waited until today to say that there is no "ballot counting" in the Venezuelan legal system.

Duty calls, a migraine will not stop me from reporting on the fascist coup going on in Venezuela

Barquisimeto today

I suffer from occasional crippling migraines and today I got one. On and off I tried to read my tablet, or watch at very low volume TV but soon enough I had to stop and slumber again. Yet, all hands on deck and even if incomplete I need write up some stuff.

On the live-news I can tell you that today there was a significant rally in front of San Felipe CNE. I had to go to work for half an hour at least so I saw the end of it when I came back home, seeing walking next to my car San Felipe's ex mayor and our representative who in normal times are political adversaries. Times have changed.

Our "47%"

I may be away and busy but news come crashing about what an awful country we have become (never mind that my Latino American colleagues at the meeting I am attending feel bad and pitiful towards me and Venezuela...).

Two events marked most than any because they tell us more about how chavismo manages to retain control than anything else we heard recently. And I am not talking vote buying or corruption or repression: I am talking using Venezuelan "culture" to show that chavismo is the way to go .

The stakes of April

Today I got two stories from real life. [UPDATED]

Our daily fascist dose: fascismus turismus

Apparently Laureano, the Friday satire column of Tal Cual, was going to do a stand up in the Venetur hotel of Puerto Ordaz. Some local chavistas got wind of it, made a ruckus and had the show canceled.

An absolutely undemocratic campaign in Venezuela

I wrote in previous posts that this campaign would surpass easily all the treachery of Chavez campaigns. After all he had charisma and he only needed to pat his victory with some electoral cheating.

We did not have to wait long.

Already this week end the regime decided to close the La Grita airport so Capriles could not land his plane. He landed elsewhere and lost precious hours of campaigning to reach his final goal where people waited patiently and gave him the ovation he deserved.

Three countries

The wake is suspended, Chavez rests for the time being in a military museum, an old barrack to ensure past presidential safety at Miraflores, now unable to ensure safety in an area that has been overcome by slums. For a military that was never able to understand what the civilian world and democracy meant, it is a fitting resting place for Chavez, unable to find permanent ways to diminish poverty, and even less to insure the safety of the people in the slums where crime rates are maybe the highest in the world. Eventually someday the wake will be restarted  when his remains are either taken to his wished for resting place, Sabaneta where he was born, or to the Pantheon where political expediency may want him for his final home.

Now it is time, when abject electoral campaign allows, to ponder what these two weeks of "grief" and its two months prelude when we were deliberately lied about Chavez real status, meant.

Matrimonio para todos en Francia

Mientras estaba de viaje algo ocurrió en Francia que me gustaría compartir con los lectores de este blog aunque sé que algunos pueden sentirse ofendidos.

Marriage for all in France

While I was away something happened in France that I would like to share with readers of this blog even though I know some may be offended.

The MUD replies to Cabello: the F word is said

After the jump my translation of the strongly worded communique of the Unidad/MUD group.  This is a "no return" communique, if you ask me.

Guanaguanare

Guanaguanare

Guanaguanare es un extraño villancico, lleno de la tristeza de la separacion si escuchan la exquisita sobriedad de Jesús Ávila, o el consuelo algo mentiroso de la versión navideña de Nancy Ramos. Y sin embargo es delicadamente evocador de la calma de las mañanas en Sucre, si han tenido la suerte de disfrutarlas, una calma como no la he sentido nunca en otro mar.

Guanaguanare

Guanaguanare

Guanaguanare is an odd Christmas song, full of the pathos of longing if you listen to the exquisite sobriety of Jesus Avila, or fake merry Christmas spirit, but consoling, if you consider the Nancy Ramos version. And yet it is exquisitely atmospheric if you have had the luck to wake up more than once in Sucre where the morning calm is the calm I have never felt elsewhere.

I have to admit that this week end, as I am dusting off my Christmas music, it is hitting a raw nerve.  Thus work strange associations who make a single song suddenly embody all that is wrong with your surroundings.  Of course, it is a sad coincidence that this magic tune includes the name of the city Guanare where this week the most ugly aspects of misery came up as flotsam. But that flotsam was brought upon us by a regime that has really done nothing to protect children rights, gay rights, property rights, basic rights....  We certainly cannot blame the regime of the machismo, homophobia, disregard for the weak that are the sad heritage of our history.  But we can blame it from having paid lip service at best while it made it all the worse in its pursuit of power, and money, and materialism, which now reign supreme.

And to finish it all up last night the fascist thugs set aflame the "house that defeats the shadow" while today in yet another obscene cadena the tyrant of our spirit played with a little boy in military drag.

But Jesús Ávila leaves us a consolation:

Tenue es la luz y alegre la alborada

A preview of October 7, 2012 (or how fascism does not lose elections)

This was the entrance tonight of the Aula Magna, the major auditorium of the Central University of Venezuela, UCV, a World Heritage site of the UNESCO since 2000 (and for how long now?):

I am so tired....

How many more times do we have to say, have to write that the chavista regime is a fascist one, that it is anti religious, antisemitic, anti basic human rights?  How long much do we have to tolerate those who do not tolerate us?

Last week the images of the "Divina Pastora" were shot at in diffrrent areas of Barquisimeto, followed by other symbols of the Catholic church. We start this week with a group of "organized homeless" trying to take over a Caracas synagogue.  This was not an empty building in search of usage: churches also are empty on week days.

These people know exactly what they are doing even if they might not know what a synagogue really is.  But they have heard the anti Jewish talk of the regime, the anti Catholic verborea of Chavez, the unacceptable recomedation of the "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" on the Venezuelan national state radio no less.

What does it take to make people understand, in particular the still existing Chavez apologists,  that when you let religious symbols being profanated as if nothing, then you are likely the next one in turn for profanation?

And do not come with the excuse that it might be people from the opposition that might have shot the Divina Pastora: if they did so it was because they knew it could be blamed on chavismo per Chavez disgraceful discourse.

And yours truly, the writer of this note, is a complete agnostic, for the record.  Yet he knows very well that agnostics also end up in concentration camps, as needed, behind the Jews, next to the Christians, left of the Muslims, ahead of the Atheist, a few steps away from the Buddhists.

Carta a los chavistas: su presidente y el apoyo a los asesinos Assad y Gaddafi

Con toda certeza pierdo tiempo escribiéndoles: los que yo quisiera que leyesen esta carta ya no ven más lejos que La Hojilla y Alo Presidente. Pero me parece necesario que en alguna parte esté escrito de una manera clara y precisa lo que significan las últimas posturas de su presidente. No quiero que tengan la excusa algún día de decir "No lo sabía" ya que no será solamente aquí que se dirán estas cosas. Mientras mas se dicen, menos escusas tendrán.

Su presidente no es el mío, nunca voté por él ni por sus compinches, ni siquiera en el referéndum de abril de 1999 donde fui una de las escasas voces de Venezuela que se atrevieron a contarse en el 10% del NO. No era que no se necesitaban cambios en Venezuela pero este servidor hace muchos años que entendió que las constituciones solo son tan buenas como la gente que las aplica. La historia ya me dio la razón, aun más ya que ustedes son los que más quieren cambiar una constitución que todavía podría limitar las fechorías que les quedan por hacer.

Hugo Chávez ya ha dejado de ser para mí el presidente de mi país. Se convirtió en el hampón que se adueño de Venezuela con el beneplácito de demasiadas alcahuetas. Pero éste no es el asunto que me preocupa hoy: ya me resigné al hecho que tendrán que ocurrir muchos más desastres antes de que ustedes por fin empiecen a pensar. El asunto que me hace escribirles hoy es que las consecuencias de las últimas acciones de Hugo Chávez me van a afectar aunque yo trate de esconderme, incluso si yo fuese a abandonar la patria. Pronto ser venezolano va a ser un pecado, obligándonos hasta en el exilio a pedir disculpas.

Si bien hasta ahora nos pudieren haber perdonado elegir a un payaso que arruinó al país, ahora no se nos puede perdonar que sigamos avalando al que se está convirtiendo a todas luces en un matón internacional. Para su consuelo también agrego en esta parte a la mayoría de la oposición y de la MUD que no se atreve a protestar con la energía deseada el apoyo que micomadantepresidente ofrece a Al Assad y a Gaddafi. Somos un país que está perdiendo el honor por pecados que podrían llegar a mancillar nuestra gesta heroica de la independencia. Pueblos heroicos no son arrastrados, nunca.