Ousting ocracy...

---

Things are heating up in Venezuela: now it isn't a case of 'We want a recount!', it has turned into "You stole the election!". [English] [Spanish]. The Electoral Commission has now dis-guarded even a pretence of being unbiased (and they still insist any vote audit - whenever they finally decide to say it might be - won't affect the election outcome!) and last night the fast-losing-any-credibility government decided to interrupt the broadcast: just as Capriles challenged the government his speech was interrupted by mandatory government broadcasting on all TV and radio networks! As Daniel says, "a cadena is the forced commandeering by the state of ALL TV AND RADIO STATIONS for a simultaneous broadcast". Why would this happen...well some may say that certain people need a Chavista to maintain power...and the Cubans in Venezuela that supervise many government offices and agencies, plus law enforcement, intelligence and military may have something to do with it. Just saying; HCR better watch his back...

Ousting ocracy...

---

Things are heating up in Venezuela: now it isn't a case of 'We want a recount!', it has turned into "You stole the election!". [English] [Spanish]. The Electoral Commission has now dis-guarded even a pretence of being unbiased (and they still insist any vote audit - whenever they finally decide to say it might be - won't affect the election outcome!) and last night the fast-losing-any-credibility government decided to interrupt the broadcast: just as Capriles challenged the government his speech was interrupted by mandatory government broadcasting on all TV and radio networks! As Daniel says, "a cadena is the forced commandeering by the state of ALL TV AND RADIO STATIONS for a simultaneous broadcast". Why would this happen...well some may say that certain people need a Chavista to maintain power...and the Cubans in Venezuela that supervise many government offices and agencies, plus law enforcement, intelligence and military may have something to do with it. Just saying; HCR better watch his back...

Oxygenating onkos...

---

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the 1992 Venezuelan coup attempts and also Military Aviation Day: Krusty failed to attend and is now on his way to Cuba - for the 11th time in 17 months - to get specialist oxygen treatment: hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT...sorry, but that makes me giggle a bit - not in a nasty way but in a totally childish way - only because of what I think was wrong with Chavez, third paragraph, here). Anyway, he hasn't been attending a lot of things lately, Caracas Chronicles have been keeping tabs. It's not hard to see a pattern in his lack of appearances (image left: click to enlarge, from El Universal, it shows minutes that Chavez has appeared/been heard etc in public). Now, admittedly the presidential election was over at the beginning of last month so there would be fewer campaign events (orange bar on graph; although there are regional elections on 16 December: state governors etc) but since then there's been some government events (blue), but no interviews, no telephone contact, no Twitter, and no press conferences...

Oxygenating onkos...

---

Yesterday was the 20th anniversary of the 1992 Venezuelan coup attempts and also Military Aviation Day: Krusty failed to attend and is now on his way to Cuba - for the 11th time in 17 months - to get specialist oxygen treatment: hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT...sorry, but that makes me giggle a bit - not in a nasty way but in a totally childish way - only because of what I think was wrong with Chavez, third paragraph, here). Anyway, he hasn't been attending a lot of things lately, Caracas Chronicles have been keeping tabs. It's not hard to see a pattern in his lack of appearances (image left: click to enlarge, from El Universal, it shows minutes that Chavez has appeared/been heard etc in public). Now, admittedly the presidential election was over at the beginning of last month so there would be fewer campaign events (orange bar on graph; although there are regional elections on 16 December: state governors etc) but since then there's been some government events (blue), but no interviews, no telephone contact, no Twitter, and no press conferences...