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Yaz's Blog
I am a php developer. I am a geek. I am a fiction reader. A movie and tv addict.
An XBOX360 player. A snowboarder. A cyclist. A Softball player. A Venezuelan-Canadian.
About 16,000 Venezuelans have the PIP implants [silicone implants made by the now-defunct French company Poly Implant Prothese], making the country the per-capita leader in Latin America.
An estimated 35,000 to 40,000 women undergo breast enlargement surgeries in Venezuela each year, and doctors say the numbers have been rising.
"Hey we’re leading in something!
That’s pretty amazing though. And totally true, the procedure is as simple as and common as taking a vacation each year. Except that women spend their money in surgery.
(Source: google.com)
For reals, yo.
A cousin back home just witnessed a classroom get mugged. A dude with a gun came in, pointed the gun at the girl by the door and and asked for her phone.
She was at her University. In class. And someone got mugged.
I feel like laughing at the absurdity of it.
Cousin is fine —she almost peed her pants— but she’s fine.
A dangerously patriotic group now has weapons.
The guy is preparing for the next election.
(Source: Washington Post)
WikiLeaks cables re: Venezuela
The memos depict an unfolding economic fiasco and suggest some of Chávez’s key allies – Argentina, Brazil and Cuba – are gravely concerned at Venezuela’s direction.
No wonder.
Analysts have suspected all is not well, citing corruption, broken rigs and unpaid suppliers, but the foreign oil companies still in Venezuela stay largely silent lest they anger the government and find themselves locked out of the western hemisphere’s biggest energy reserves.
[…]a senior manager from Chevron estimated the state oil company’s output at 2.1m to 2.3m barrels per day, well below official declarations of 3.3m.
So you have a government that nationalizes the oil industry and puts a ton of incompetent like-minded individuals at the helm; the most obvious result of such a thing: they can’t product the amount of oil they need to fund their fantasyland….
Oh and this is fascinating, because if this is true, Venezuela is begging for deals with foreign investors. Which is ironic no? Since all they’ve tried to do for the last 10 years is kick foreign & private investors to the curb:
Italy’s ambassador to Caracas, Luigi Maccotta, told his US counterpart that Italian oil company ENI squeezed PDVSA over an Orinoco belt deal in January this year knowing it had no one else to turn to.
The Italians delayed the signing by two days to reinforce the Venezuelan government’s “need for ENI”. Paolo Scaroni, the company’s CEO, then faced down Venezuela’s oil minister, Rafael Ramirez, over changes to terms and conditions.
So as a result, Venezuela is trying to court like-minded countries. And here’s what they realized:
Venezuela’s oil minister, who is the head of PDVSA, travelled to Moscow and Beijing hoping for solidarity deals with allies, only to find the Russians and Chinese as profit-minded as western companies.
Fascinating stuff (Source).
In all seriousness though, this is actually terrible. From the comfort of my living room in Canada, sure I like to see Venezuela’s Chavez suffer. I do not like what this will translate to in local terms: more inflation, more corruption, and life implicitly harder for my family.
(Source: google.com)
Hugo Boss
“What I learned about Hugo Chávez’s mental health when I visited Venezuela with Sean Penn.”
- By Christopher Hitchens
So worth the read.
Learning to surf, in Margarita Island, Venezuela.
Taken with a waterproof, disposable camera. :)
I’m back!
Freedom of expression….
“The owner of Venezuela’s only television channel that remains critical of President Hugo Chavez was arrested Thursday, spurring concerns among rights activists of a widening government crackdown aimed at silencing critics.
Attorney General Luisa Ortega said a warrant was issued for the arrest of Guillermo Zuloaga, owner of the TV channel Globovision, for remarks that were deemed “offensive” to the president.
Zuloaga said that military intelligence agents detained him at an airport in the northwestern state of Falcon.
Ortega said prosecutors are investigating Zuloaga for statements he allegedly made during a recent Inter American Press Association meeting in the Dutch Caribbean island of Aruba, where media executives from across the Americas criticized Chavez’s government for limiting freedom of expression.”
——-
It kinda scares me a bit to think I could be put in jail for this very blog.
Want to hear about corruption?
Eligio Cedeño, a banker in Venezuela has an affair with the daughter of the Venezuelan president, then dumps her. A little while later, charges are brougth up against him.
He goes and hands himself in, saying he has nothing to hide. He then spends “34 months in jail, on charges that were never heard in court, for authorities kept delaying the trial, which had not even started.”
Then, in light of his long, and illegal, imprisonment, Judge María Lourdes Afiuni freed Cedeño; until trial starts, while retaining his passport and asking he reports himself to authorities every 15 days.
Venezuelan president gets pissed, announces on his TV show for the arrest of the Judge, saying she’s orchestrated his escape; then he asks that the Judge is sentenced to 30 years in jail (this is the same amount of time given to people charged with homicide).
She has now been arrested along with some other people (some of whom have absolutely nothing to do with the case), they want to put her in the same jail as with people she’s sentenced. A literal death sentence.
Sad part: the judge is my cousin. :(
