Reading Between Yoani's Lines
This post in Yoani Sánchez's justly famous Generation Y blog strikes me as surreptitiously reassuring. Sánchez notes that Cuban doctors sent to Venezuela are immediately forced to surrender their passports - lest they make a run for freedom - and are just as quickly issued Venezuelan Cédulas (National IDs) and instructed to vote for Chávez at the next election.
Decrying this as illegal would be handing out the proverbial speeding ticket at the Indianapolis
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When your morning newspaper reads like a hackneyed 50s comic book plot device (UPDATED)
Update: SEBIN has now denied this report.
Last night, Venezuela's new National Police's headquarters building was robbed. A gang of sixteen used a blowtorch to extract Bs.120,000 ($10,000-55,000, depending on the exchange rate you prefer) from the ATM of a bank branch housed within the Police headquarters building itself.
The building - the storied, retrofuturistic Helicoide
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The Guardian goes right wing
Ugh. Just look at the type of people they are letting in the door.
Honestly.
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Winning ugly
The opposition's election slogan - "¡pa que coja mínimo!" or "to knock some sense into his (implicitly: Chávez's) head!" - has come in for quite some criticism recently. The slogan stands accused of "preaching to the choir" - appealing narrowly to an opposition base convinced the guy needs sense knocked into his head at all. That's bad, right?
Not necessarily. The opposition's only plausible path to
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Fact-checkers of Caracas Chronicles: unite!
OK, folks, can this be right?
Is Tibisay Lucena correct in saying the opposition has 75% of all campaign TV ads? Or is she pulling these numbers out of her ass?
We need those of you on the ground to give us your opinion. Have you seen government ads in Televen? Opposition ads in Venevisión? And who the hell watches Tves
Chabuki watch #7
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The You know how playwrights talk about "the arc" of a character? They'll go on and on about a character's "inflexion point", the moment when they come to an important realization that changes them.
Here is Hugo
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Chavismo's Crap-o-rrific Swing-o-meter
Alberto Federico Ravell's leaky-as-hell La Patilla scores chavismo's electoral forecasting platform...and it's hysterical! Figured - unlike the election - on a statewide basis, the thing ignores the circuits, and is generally about as sophisticated as asking your aunt where Chávez is popular (bueno, more in the llanos than in big cities, me
At war with the people (Updated)
It's really sad to write the headline to that post, but how else can you interpret what Hugo Chávez did yesterday?
The Pérez de León hospital in Petare is, by law, managed by the Sucre municipality. The mayor is Primero Justicia's Carlos
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Another ad - The Electoral Brothers!
The opening sequence to this latest Chigüire Bipolar video is sheer genius...
Tienes que agarrar las fresitas, y echarle la lluviecita de chocolate...
ROFLcity...
Plus Juan thinks the bearded guy is hopelessly trying to look like this guy.
Turns out you can follow
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Oliver Stone-style Pendejos sin Fronteras like to make Venezuela out to be some beacon of democracy, complete with scrupulously fair elections.
Why just today, they might say, we learn of the CNE's Tibisay Lucena (aka Rojisbeth) threatening the State-run (Read: Chávez-run) Broadcaster with a fine (read: slap on the wrist to be
New Legislative Election Forecasting Tool Now Available
The new and much improved Caracas Chronicles Forecasting Tool for the 26S Elections is now available. You can download it here. (Users of older versions of Excel should download this version. Descárgala en español aquí.)
This new tool, developed with invaluable help from longtime-reader and professional-number-cruncher Omar, improves
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National Assembly 2010: It's on...
The most intriguing and volatile election campaign of the last six years officially kicked off yesterday, as Venezuelans prepare to pick the 165 members of our single-chamber National Assembly on September 26th.
With an increasingly unpopular government, and the country mired in stagflation, the opposition heads into this campaign stronger than ever: united, setting the debate, and mobilized
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Meet Nancy Wexler
Meet Dr. Nancy Wexler, a hero to the people of Barranquitas, Estado Zulia.
The Columbia University professor has been coming to this impoverished village on the western shores of Lake Maracaibo for many years.
The reason?
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Taking it out on seriously ill kids...
Caught up in chavismo's latest bizarre crusade is...the Ronald McDonald House Charities. Not the artery-clogging-burger peddlers, mind you, but the Social Responsibility arm of the operation, suspected of the heinous crime of...putting up the parents of seriously ill children who've had to travel to
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NicaCat56
Francisco Toro
Vinz
