The Null Device
Posts matching tags 'venezuela'
2009/11/9
Some news from Venezuela, the Another World that Is Possible. There, the "Bolivarian" authorities have criminalised "violent" video games (a move which may be intended to shut down internet cafés which depend on game players for revenue but also bypass official means of the dissemination of information), and routinely round up gays and lesbians:
One Friday at around midnight, on Villaflor Street, a favourite spot for gays and lesbians in the Venezuelan capital, Yonatan Matheus and Omar Marques noticed two Caracas police patrol vans carrying about 20 detainees, most of them very young.
When Marques and Matheus, who are gay leaders of the Venezuela Diversa (Diverse Venezuela) organisation, approached to find out what was happening and take pictures, they were picked up too.
"Like most of those arrested, our identity documents and mobile phones were taken away, we were beaten, our sexual orientation was insulted in degrading language, and we were refused permission to speak to the Justice Ministry officials and members of the National Guard who were present," Matheus told IPS.
(via Boing Boing) ¶ 0
2007/9/21
Venezuela's increasingly autocratic socialist president Hugo Chavez's latest act has been to change Venezuela's time zone by half an hour. The announcement was made suddenly, and takes effect on Sunday. Chavez says that the shift will improve the "metabolism" of Venezuela's workers and allow children to go to school in sunlight. There may be geopolitical symbolism in the act, though: the majority of the Capitalist-Imperialist world's time zones are in one hour increments from Greenwich, whereas time zones breaking away from the Greenwich-imperialist tyranny include ideologically sound holdouts against the Washington consensus, such as Iran, Afghanistan and Burma. (And, oddly enough, South Australia.)
It has not been recorded whether Chavez intends to rename the months, seasons or ages of man. Rumours that Ken Livingstone is planning to shift London's time zone by half an hour in solidarity have not been confirmed.
2003/2/14
The scarily left-wing regime in Venezuela is tipped as a hot candidate for next target in the War On Terrorism after Iraq is knocked over; and now we have a convenient pretext: Venezuelan national arrested at Gatwick with grenade. Clearly this shows that we must now crack down on Venezuelan terrorism just like we did on Chilean terrorism in 1972.
2003/1/10
Hugo Chavez, leftist president of oil-rich Venezuela, No Logo anti-globalist posterboy and target of an unsuccessful (and some say US-organised) coup last year, gave US$1M to al-Qaeda shortly after September 11. Chavez is also trying to turn his country into another Cuban-style dictatorship, suspending elections and ordering troops to fire on pro-democracy protestors. Or so says a "high-ranked military defector". The truth or a convenient pretext for toppling an irksome left-wing populist regime? (Didn't they say similar things about Allende?)