Banana Republic Newsflash

[Sigma_Orionis]

Hey, FOX news won a law suit that basically said that the 1st amendment allows them to deliberately lie and deceive the public with their broadcasts and they can't be held accountable.
Once that precedent was established, they advertised how they are fair and balanced in their reporting.
Since they can legally lie, claiming they are fair and balanced is of course legal, even if it is a lie.

So next time you watch FOX or any other American News service, remember, the precedent has been set that they can legally lie, deceive, misrepresent data etc because they are protected by the 1st amendment. Why am I lumping in the other news services with FOX?
Because most of those fuckers didn't want to report that court case as it's in their best interests not to.

True story. I'm not making it up, exaggerating or embellishing. Straight up facts.

There's freedom of speech taken to the absurd level.

Yes, I know about the Jane Akre suit.

The thing is that this goes beyond Faux News, it's stuff right down at the level of the National Enquirer.

[SciFiFisher]

The National Enquirer is a paragon of journalism. You must mean the Star or The Globe.

[Sigma_Orionis]

You're right the Enquirer is a paragon of Journalism, but the Globe and the Star are too involved with evil imperial imperialist US celebrities stories. I think that aporrea.org would be an example of what the Weekly World News would look like if it tried to do "serious" Journalism.

[Sigma_Orionis]

Well, what do you know they managed to catch and sentence the killers of the beauty queen. I am just partly surprised, while it was a high profile murder and an embarrassment to the government. I was skeptical they would get THAT far.

[Sigma_Orionis]

Nicky strutting his stuff at the Bronx¿

[Sigma_Orionis]

Another Blackout nowhere as big as the ones we had before, didn't make headlines but affected half the country nonetheless (Didn't hit my Datacenter or at home, so I guess I can't complain)

Why bother then?

Because for one the government didn't blame it on sabotage (yet)

The government has in the past often blamed saboteurs for the cuts, but Electricity Minister Jesse Chacon was quick to attribute the latest blackout to problems at generating plants in the western Andean region of Venezuela.

I guess the usual excuse wore out

[SciFiFisher]

Another Blackout nowhere as big as the ones we had before, didn't make headlines but affected half the country nonetheless (Didn't hit my Datacenter or at home, so I guess I can't complain)

Why bother then?

Because for one the government didn't blame it on sabotage (yet)

The government has in the past often blamed saboteurs for the cuts, but Electricity Minister Jesse Chacon was quick to attribute the latest blackout to problems at generating plants in the western Andean region of Venezuela.

I guess the usual excuse wore out

Every now and then if you tell the truth it keeps people off balance. And your lies are more believable.

[Sigma_Orionis]

Well Well Well, evil gringos. Here you go again.

Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro defends Clorox seizure.

Cleaning products maker Clorox closed its production facilities in Venezuela last week, saying government-imposed price freezes were crippling it.

The Venezuelan authorities have accused Clorox of illegally abandoning the country and have seized its facilities.
'Economic war'

"The legal documents in various government and judicial institutions demonstrate the abandonment of their legal and constitutional responsibilities," Mr Maduro said.

Once more unto the breach dear friends.

He said the closure of the plant was part of an "economic war" being waged against the socialist government by the opposition

You know, things must be pretty bad when I start quoting Shakespeare....

But after the company warned that the seizure could pose risks for workers, Venezuelan Vice-President Jorge Arreaza said the government would not rush its re-opening.

"We are going to make a plan to reactivate the factory, we cannot make hasty decisions," he said.

[Bill Cosby Mode]Riiiiiiiight!are we on Candid Camera?[/Bill Cosby Mode]

And to end the post with a depressive note......

Ugandan Slum, Venezuelan Eyes

[Swift]

So, Maduro promises to "clean up the place".

[Sigma_Orionis]

Yeah, of course, what else is the idiot going to say? Right now, not even his own people believe him. Apparently, Chavistas have their panties in a bunch because they're scared of losing the elections next year which means they'd lose control of the National Assembly.

One could say that in a year a lot could happen but unless the situation improves dramatically in the short term I don't think it's going to help them.

ETA, I just noticed the pun,

[Sigma_Orionis]

Here we go again.

Two days ago, a member of the National Assembly was murdered, he was a Chavista.

Guess what?

Venezuela lawmaker Serra's murder blamed on far right

All of you who are surprised by this raise your hands

[FZR1KG]

You live in a really fucked up country.

[Sigma_Orionis]

And in other news, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead

[SciFiFisher]

Here we go again.

Two days ago, a member of the National Assembly was murdered, he was a Chavista.

Guess what?

Venezuela lawmaker Serra's murder blamed on far right

All of you who are surprised by this raise your hands

OK, not really.

[Sigma_Orionis]

Why am I not surprised?

[Sigma_Orionis]

Just one step from here to Somalia

This can be summarized as:

Yesterday there was a major ruckus downtown: a group of PRO-GOVERNMENT activists (collectively known as "Colectivos". And yes, bi-lingual pun intended ) had a rather nasty standoff with the Police. One of their leaders and 4 other people were killed.

These "colectivos" have the reputation of being a little less than armed thugs. Rumor has it that they keep the people in the slums in line so they don't complain about our socialist paradise.

Press coverage has been minimal, official reports claimed they were nothing but common criminals. Interesting that activist leader killed had pictures of himself with Nicky's wife though.

The video shown in the link (which of course is in Spanish) shows the activist leader talking to the news (a Colombian TV News Network). This man said on camera that if anything happened to him, the Minister of the Interior was directly responsible for that. An hour an a half later he was dead.

The blog post I have linked in the closest I have gotten to actual hard news, I heard about through the grapevine and was wondering if there was going to be any coverage on it.

Chalk up another milestone in the "how fucked up can we be as a country?" board.

Oh btw, rumor has it that this particular "colectivo" had something to do with the murder of a member of national assembly I mentioned before.

[Sigma_Orionis]

I just stumbled onto this

How much of it (if any) is true I don't know though.

[Cyborg Girl]

Summarized my feelings on that in the other thread where you posted it. It's a false dichotomy. Radical leftists being wrong doesn't make the status quo right.

[Sigma_Orionis]

Never implied that, if I believed the extreme right-wing I'd be listening to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and rooting for Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum, Paul Ryan, and the rest of that gang of nutjobs

I posted it because I am unsure of how much of that thing (again IF ANY AT ALL) is true.

First of all, the thing happened in 2006, in those days Chavez was flying high, in those days he was the darling of the People who were against the US.

Second, I find it weird that PDVSA folks (btw PDVSA's subsidiary in the US is called CITGO, not CITCO) were involved in making this dupe go talk to the FARC. Chavez was obviously sympathetic of them, but actually attempting to start an insurgency in the US with their help sounds a little too far fetched for me.

There were rumors of him attempting to do something vaguely similar that, but it was more like using OUR money to spread his nonsense in other countries ("Oil Diplomacy", funding Social Interest housing in Peru, things like that).

As for him being temporarily unable to leave the country I find it even harder to believe.

The thing is that, this country is so bizarre that maybe, just maybe some part of what he claims might just be close to the truth.

[Cyborg Girl]

Sorry, I was talking about what the author was saying re US "stability," not what you were saying.

I never got the impression that Chavez was gutsy enough to start an insurgency in the US, though. He always struck me as a kind of action movie star of politics; loud and bold and flashy in public, but basically a harebrained coward behind the mask.

Edit: but of course I wasn't the one who had to live with his antics... And he did always manage to surprise me with his stupidity. Maybe he still has some (posthumous) surprises in store.

[Sigma_Orionis]

I'd say that your appreciation is correct. When it came to "direct action" he was hapless.

In the 1992 coup attempt he was supposed to take the Presidential Office, he failed miserably.

In the 2002 quasi-coup against him, he was caught completely off guard. Most accounts say that he simply gave himself up. (I say "quasi", because to this day I have little proof that the opposition actually tried to topple him. The most believable accounts of it claim that due to his heavy handed response to the protests caused a lot of people in the Military to turn against him. And when they saw that the opposition was completely as useless, the Military turned against the opposition and reinstated him).

As a politician (by our standards that is) he was smarter than the opposition (which doesn't say much OF THEM does it?).

let's put it this way:

in the 1998-2002 period, the economy was doing well. He was fairly moderate (by our standards) there was the usual political mud slinging but little past that.

Things changed with the 2002 quasi-coup attempt and the 2003 Oil strike. (which were both major blunders by the opposition). His Rhetoric became more extreme. That's when he started spewing his nonsense in the international scene.

the 2004 recovery (thanks to the rise in Oil prices of course) and further blunders by the opposition made his position stronger. he then started nationalizing everything he could

The situation remained like that until 2008, when the the great recession began. While during the 2004-2007 period things were not great, they were sill tolerable.

When the great recession began he claimed were were well prepared and that the economy wouldn't suffer. He lied of course. It was obvious from day one that things were steadily going downhill.

Of course the crash came in the last trimester of last year. By then he was either dead (by some accounts) or dying.

[Sigma_Orionis]

Well, here's the economic war nonsense the government has been spewing for the last year.

A) According to the WSJ (the graph leads to the article at the WSJ, unfortunately is behind a paywall), WE the spiritually superior bolivarian idiots need the price of oil at US$ 121 to sustain our current level of spending. (just happens to be under US$ 90)

B) we have TWO bond payments due this month one was payed 4 days ago, the other one due the 28th.

So the "Economic War" bullshit was that the government clamped down on foreign exchange to scrounge money to pay international debtors, not even the Chinese, ain't that grand?

No, I have no issues with paying our obligations. Just after 15 years of hearing that we have gotten rid of the insolent heel of the gringos on our neck........

[Sigma_Orionis]

And according to the IEA, the ride is going to get a lot bumpier....

Oil price slump yet to hit US shale oil production: IEA chief

Apparently OPEC is ignoring the pleas of our energy minister in setting up an emergency meeting to try prop up the price of oil. If it's true that the Saudis are letting the price go down to make sure they are able to roll with the concept of the US not needing them for Oil, as speculated by this guy here, not only we're in for a ride worse than the last one, Nicky's hopes are going down the toilet, along with our economy.

And as an added attraction, I'd say Pooty's star is going to extinguish pretty soon as well.

[Sigma_Orionis]

And back to our second problem....

This guy is off his rocker

How exactly is that going to help?

[geonuc]

And back to our second problem....

This guy is off his rocker

How exactly is that going to help?

Shootouts between police and 'government-sponsored' paramilitary? Are the police not also 'government-sponsored'? Why is the government sponsoring paramilitary gangs that engage in shootouts with the police?