Saladman fucked around with this message at 19:03 on Feb 20, 2017

Labradoodle fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Feb 22, 2017

Chuck Boone fucked around with this message at 23:28 on Feb 22, 2017

• The writer refers to the “United Nations Organization (UNO)”. In English, we refer to that body simply as the United Nations (UN). However, in Spanish, the name of that same body is “Organización de las Naciones Unidas (ONU)”. In other words, the writer appears to have gone for a literal translation of the Spanish name rather than going with the English one.
  
• The writer refers to “drugs trafficking” more than once. In English, the term used to describe the illicit transport of narcotics across borders is “drug trafficking”, using the singular form of the word “drug”. However, in Spanish, the equivalent term is “trafico de drogas”, which uses the plural of the word for drug, which is “droga”. Again, the writer appears to have literally translated the Spanish term into English instead of defaulting to the English term.
  
• The writer capitalizes words that shouldn’t be capitalized (i.e., “US Administration”, “People”, “Homeland”). These are words that are routinely capitalized in Venezuelan Spanish (whether correctly or incorrectly), and I do not believe that a fluent English speaker would have made the error of writing these words in capital letters to essentially no effect whatsoever.
  

• Legal counsel to the Venezuelan embassy in Trinidad and Tobago from 2008 to 2010.
  
• Provisional judge at the Caracas Penal Court from 2002 to 2005.
  
• Convicted of murder in Caracas in 1989; released one year later.
  
• Convicted of murder in Ciudad Bolivar in 1987; released two years later.
  

Labradoodle fucked around with this message at 00:50 on Feb 25, 2017

• February 27 marked the anniversary of the 1989 Caracazo, which is the name given to a couple of days of looting and violence that broke out in Caracas and left as many as 2,000 people dead. The unrest broke out after the government, in a desperate attempt to correct-course on an economy that was rapidly tanking, introduced what we would call today an austerity package that included an increase to the price of gasoline. The unrest was suppressed violently, and included soldiers firing indiscriminately onto civilians.
  
  Each year, the government finds itself in the uncomfortable position of having to praise the Caracazo as the event that planted the seed that would eventually become the Bolivarian Revolution while simultaneously trying really hard to not give people the impression that acting violently in response to government failures is a good thing. Another interesting hypocrisy is that the PSUV will often decry how the government used violence to suppress the unrest then, completely ignoring its own use of lethal force in the suppression of the 2014 protests (plus its continued persecution of dissenters). This year, Minister of Defense Vladimir Padrino Lopez had the honour of writing a statement commemorating the date. I think he got the same guy who writes Kim Jong Un's speeches to help him out. Here is the statement:
  

  quote:

  February 27 1989 marked a tragic moment in our republican history, and twenty eight years later the wounds are still proving themselves difficult to heal. This day represents a sad page in the evolution of Venezuelan society, and demands our constant reflection.
  
  This was a popular storm on a massive scale, which arose as a way to defy a ruling, conceited and arrogant elite that was submissive before foreign powers, one that betrayed and insulted the masses by imposing neoliberal measures that attacked their economic stability and dignity.
  
  On that fateful day, the government at the time relied on an overwhelming use of force in order to repress, creating chaos, anarchy and ultimately massacring unarmed civilians, something that was and will continue to be rejected as a bankrupt policy, something that always characterized the Fourth Republic [the name of the political era before Chavez].
  
  But that anomie contained a beginning, the genesis of a new social revolution, the Bolivarian Revolution, which under the leadership of Supreme Commander Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias grew out of the same principles from [Simon] Bolivar and [Ezequiel] Zamora in order to consolidate the creative consciousness of a people in the indomitable search of their rights and social demands.
  
  The soldiers of the new National Bolivarian Armed Froces, [which is] anti-imperialist, chavista, anti-oligarchy and zamorista, pray to the Almighty that these types of events never repeat themselves. Today more than ever we strengthen our commitment to the civil-military union, and under the light of the Bolivarian Revolution we find ourselves in the sublime task of re-vindicating its popular and humanist essence in order to adhere to the commitment to always serve the best interests of the noble and glorious people of Venezuela.
  Chavez Lives… the homeland prevails.
  
  Independence and a socialist Homeland [sic]… We will survive and we will prevail.
  
  Vladimir Padrino Lopez
  
  General-in-Chief
  

  
  
• VP Tareck El Aissami spoke in a television interview on Sunday for the first time about the sanctions placed on him by the U.S. Department of the Treasury. He of course denied the whole thing, and said that he'd never been to the U.S. and that he'd never had or even asked for a U.S. visa. He also said that he had no connections with the 13 corporate entities that were sanctioned, and that he does not own any property or bank accounts outside of Venezuela.
  
  
• A professor of economics named Santiago Guevara at the University of Carabobo was arrested last Thursday by the army's intelligence department, which is weird because normally if someone commits a crime they get arrested by the police. Guevara was taken before a military tribunal and charged with treason and conspiracy to overthrow the government. That is absolutely insane because military tribunals exist only to adjudicate in matters involving active duty military personnel (i.e., if I'm a soldier and I kill another soldier in our barracks, I go before a military tribunal). There is absolutely no possible way for a civilian to be placed before a military tribunal other than "Venezuela is a dictatorship and the PSUV does what it wants". Guevara is currently being held in detention at the Fuerte Tiuna army barracks in Caracas.
  
  I can't find details on the case, but it seems to me like the pretext for arresting Guevara is that as an economist, he has published and presented work on what a post-chavismo Venezuela might look like.
  
  
• In slightly less depressing news, the largest private bank in the country (Banesco) caught word that the inmates in the Tocuyito prison in Carabobo state had somehow managed to open up a bootleg branch of the bank inside the prison. The "bank" looks just like a real Banesco down to the colour scheme of the decorations and marketing material. The service was set up with the prison pran (read: the kind of the prison), and apparently it allows inmates to deposit money for safekeeping at a fee (much like a real bank, I guess!).
  
  Here's an image of the "bank" inside the Tocuyito prison, including what appear to be makeshift client cards including client names and account numbers:
  

My Imaginary GF fucked around with this message at 01:14 on Mar 2, 2017

MullardEL34 fucked around with this message at 09:59 on Mar 4, 2017