Banana Republic Newsflash

[Sigma_Orionis]

And what could be more surreal than this personality cult....

[FZR1KG]

W.T.F.

[Sigma_Orionis]

So Zee, you think it's Surreal? Worthy of North Korea?

I wonder, how was the cult of Tito in Yugoslavia after he died in 1980 (I do know there was a personality around him when he was alive) was it as surreal as this one? does anybody in your family know?

[FZR1KG]

Tito wasn't liked by the Croatians. There's even rumours that he was substituted and that his mother went into a mental hospital after saying that he wasn't her son.
The Serbs didn't like him because he wasn't, well, Serbian.
Basically he wasn't liked much but held power.
I have no idea why.
So yeah, nothing like what you've seen in your country.
That is messed up.

[Sigma_Orionis]

I smell a another BCCI but just for us poor oppressed latinos......

Building the myth of under-development, BRIC by BRIC

Of course:

So the BRICS countries are meeting in Brazil right now, and their influential leaders have invited hilarious sideshows such as Nicolás Maduro to tag along. The big thing coming out of the meeting?

And:

In 2007, Hugo Chávez convinced some of his South American pals to create the Bank of the South. Impressive headlines followed, and Nobel Prize winners chimed in saying it was a swell idea. Seven years later, and the Bank of the South is still an institution in paper only, apparently due to a lack of interest on the part of the Brazilians, the same ones that are “pushing” this new bank on newspapers the world over. Why, the Banco del Sur doesn’t even have its own website!

Yup, we have regained our sovereignty, after is was trampled on by you evil gringos and friends (like the UK) and we promptly gave it to the Russkies and the Chinese so they can use it as a doormat.....

[Sigma_Orionis]

Tito wasn't liked by the Croatians. There's even rumours that he was substituted and that his mother went into a mental hospital after saying that he wasn't her son.
The Serbs didn't like him because he wasn't, well, Serbian.
Basically he wasn't liked much but held power.
I have no idea why.
So yeah, nothing like what you've seen in your country.
That is messed up.

Get a load of this

A birthday soiree for a corpse

BTW Morrolan, you might find this of interest:

Was immunity alone enough to free Carvajal?

The skinny is that a crony of Chavez (and now of Maduro) named Hugo Carvajal is considered by the US to be a Drug Trafficker and turns out that our glorious bolivarian government saw fit to name him a Consular Official to Aruba. Aruban authorities refused to accept him as consul and arrested him because the US had a warrant against the SOB, but apparently was later released, declared persona-non-Grata and expelled. However the Aruban authorities did not hand him over to the US, so now we have a conspiracy theories galore on what really happened.

[Sigma_Orionis]

And in the personality cult getting more surreal with each passing minute department:

You can now get your own government sponsored Chavez Tatoo for free

We have just surpassed North Korea in the Bizarro Olympics.....

[Sigma_Orionis]

And the Adventures of the Third Rail Continue

[Sigma_Orionis]

Gee, what a surprise: we poor oppressed morally superior latinos are not adverse to a little lobbying with US Senators

And BTW, we're back to stagflation

It's a wonderful FWIS day

[SciFiFisher]

Gee, what a surprise: we poor oppressed morally superior latinos are not adverse to a little lobbying with US Senators

And BTW, we're back to stagflation

It's a wonderful FWIS day

Why, yes it is. A wonderful FWIS day indeed,

[Sigma_Orionis]

[SciFiFisher]

:cuss:

Your anti-social traits are showing.

[Sigma_Orionis]

That's the Plan

[Sigma_Orionis]

This is so typically Latin-American

Venezuela to close Colombia border each night

[Sigma_Orionis]

I'm shocked, shocked I tell you

Hey gringos, your so called "Limousine Liberals" got nothing on this guy

Wedding Royalty

One of the highest-profile people in Venezuela’s post-Chavez elite is Victor Vargas Irausquin. He’s chairman of Maracaibo-based Banco Occidental de Descuento, Banco Universal CA, known as BOD, Venezuela’s fourth-largest nonstate bank.

Vargas, a former president of the Venezuelan Banking Association, plays polo for his own professional team, Lechuza Caracas. A decade ago, Vargas began appearing in Spanish newspapers after his daughter Margarita married Luis Alfonso de Borbon, a second cousin of Spanish King Felipe VI.

For years, Vargas has been publicly applauding Chavez and Maduro’s economic policies. In a June 5 speech in Maracaibo, the heart of Venezuela’s oil industry, Vargas praised Chavez for helping the poor get mortgages.

“We have a solid and robust financial system,” he said. “Here, I feel like a socialist, because we’ve given a chance to the neediest. Chavez restored the mortgage market.”
Successful Banker

Vargas was a successful banker before Chavez came to power. In 1993, a Vargas-owned holding company bought BOD, says Andres Perez Capriles, a BOD executive vice president. At the time, BOD was a regional bank serving Zulia state. Vargas’s bank grew into a national franchise under Chavez, as the president nationalized banks that didn’t support his administration.

BOD’s assets totaled 121.6 billion bolivars ($19.3 billion) in May, according to Perez. Vargas owns 95 percent of BOD’s stock, Perez says.

Vargas didn’t receive special treatment from Chavez, says Diego Lepage, one of the banker’s lawyers.

“Victor, far from just focusing on increasing his wealth, is a man with 35 years in banking,” Lepage says. He says BOD has grown in part by taking risks and creating jobs. “When they say Vargas has been a businessman who’s benefited under Chavez, they don’t say that Vargas has 15,000 employees in Venezuela. That’s very important.”

[FZR1KG]

Vargas, a former president of the Venezuelan Banking Association, plays polo for his own professional team, Lechuza Caracas. A decade ago, Vargas began appearing in Spanish newspapers after his daughter Margarita married Luis Alfonso de Borbon, a second cousin of Spanish King Felipe VI.

Might as well name kids, "back seat of '66 Chevy" lol

[Sigma_Orionis]

And this is how badly things suck when you step out of the capital.

Everyday life in the “Patria Querida”

PLEASE NOTICE: The scarcity problems here in Caracas are nowhere near as bad as what is depicted here, the report comes from the city of Puerto La Cruz on the state of Anzoátegui (that's about 400 KM from here), which is not a small town in the middle of nowhere though, it's an important port and home to a major oil refinery.

I read the original report (surprise! it's in Spanish!) just to find out if the supermarket in question was government owned, why? because here in Caracas you only see long lines of people waiting to to buy scarce items in those places. Nope, turns out it was a supermarket from owned by a private chain with no particular links to the government.

I've heard that whatever happens here (regarding scarcity and power black outs) it's much worse outside the capital, I guess that there is some truth to that.

I've also heard that most of the base support Chavistas have, is based OUTSIDE Caracas. If this is true, they're not really getting anything out of favoring the idiots in power.

[SciFiFisher]

And this is how badly things suck when you step out of the capital.

Everyday life in the “Patria Querida”

PLEASE NOTICE: The scarcity problems here in Caracas are nowhere near as bad as what is depicted here, the report comes from the city of Puerto La Cruz on the state of Anzoátegui (that's about 400 KM from here), which is not a small town in the middle of nowhere though, it's an important port and home to a major oil refinery.

I read the original report (surprise! it's in Spanish!) just to find out if the supermarket in question was government owned, why? because here in Caracas you only see long lines of people waiting to to buy scarce items in those places. Nope, turns out it was a supermarket from owned by a private chain with no particular links to the government.

I've heard that whatever happens here (regarding scarcity and power black outs) it's much worse outside the capital, I guess that there is some truth to that.

I've also heard that most of the base support Chavistas have, is based OUTSIDE Caracas. If this is true, they're not really getting anything out of favoring the idiots in power.

I bet there is a Spanish saying for "better the devil we know. Because he is our devil"

[FZR1KG]

I bet there is a Spanish saying for "better the devil we know. Because he is our devil"

Better the devil chained up, stuck in a prison awaiting execution than the one walking the street, is what I say.

[Sigma_Orionis]

I bet there is a Spanish saying for "better the devil we know. Because he is our devil"

The closest we got to that is "Mejor malo conocido, que bueno por conocer", "it's better to have a known evil than an unknown good"

IF any of this is close to reality, they might finally lose patience with the devil they know, and it's going to be ugly.

[Better the devil chained up, stuck in a prison awaiting execution than the one walking the street, is what I say.

The opposition has shown that it won't do much better than the Chavistas, They still won't understand this. Bottom Line: we're fucked.

[Sigma_Orionis]

It's official, we're just like Cuba:

Cuba: Where toilet paper can be rarer than partridge

Rationing Card and everything.

Venezuela to create fingerprinting system to limit food smuggling

[Sigma_Orionis]

I once said that what fascinated me of the US is how it could go from the sublime to the ridiculous in such short notice.

Pretty much unlike us, who go from ridiculous to pathetic........

Apparently Chavez's daughter has been named alternate ambassador to the UN

I have heard that the little darling, who has a penchant for traveling to the evil imperialist US to live it up around Miami and go visit Disneyworld doesn't want to move from the presidential residence despite the fact that daddy is dead and she had to, so Nicky Ripe and company have to make do somewhere else.

So now we have conspiracy theories on why someone who has no diplomatic experience was given this post and these run the gamut from that "she has a direct line to Cuba" to "she was given the post to grant her diplomatic immunity because she was linked to some shady business" to "That's the way Nicky gets to finally enter the presidential residence.

[SciFiFisher]

I once said that what fascinated me of the US is how it could go from the sublime to the ridiculous in such short notice.

Pretty much unlike us, who go from ridiculous to pathetic........

Apparently Chavez's daughter has been named alternate ambassador to the UN

I have heard that the little darling, who has a penchant for traveling to the evil imperialist US to live it up around Miami and go visit Disneyworld doesn't want to move from the presidential residence despite the fact that daddy is dead and she had to, so Nicky Ripe and company have to make do somewhere else.

So now we have conspiracy theories on why someone who has no diplomatic experience was given this post and these run the gamut from that "she has a direct line to Cuba" to "she was given the post to grant her diplomatic immunity because she was linked to some shady business" to "That's the way Nicky gets to finally enter the presidential residence.

Look at it this way. In the old days Nicky would have just had her shot. Y'all have gotten civilized.

[Sigma_Orionis]

Look at it this way. In the old days Nicky would have just had her shot. Y'all have gotten civilized.

Really? it's probably more like he's too afraid of touching the "Eternal Commander"'s favorite daughter and too incompetent to make her death look like an accident. So please explain to me why this a good thing exactly

[Sigma_Orionis]

Oh man, you can't make stuff like this up

I figured it was a hoax, but no it isn't, this is direct from the Evil Imperialist FBI website.

Former Workers at Los Alamos National Laboratory Plead Guilty to Atomic Energy Act Violations

ALBUQUERQUE, NM—The Justice Department today announced that a scientist and his wife who both previously worked as contractors at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in New Mexico have pleaded guilty to charges under the Atomic Energy Act and other charges relating to their communication of classified nuclear weapons data to a person they believed to be a Venezuelan government official.

From a year ago, this sure passed under the table too..

This Rightwing US Newspaper has an article on it

The money quote:

"Venezuela possesses almost no nuclear infrastructure, little nuclear expertise, and is a member of the Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty," according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a nonprofit that works against nuclear proliferation.

The quote was taken from the NTI entry on Venezuela.

This country belongs in Bizarro World