I'm busy now. Daniel Duquenal and Miguel are covering the latest events in Venezuela pretty well.
What I will say here:
- The outgoing deputies of the National Assembly, almost all pro-military junta, are shamelessly approving all kinds of laws that are anything but constitutional. They are making the work of the democratic forces as difficult as possible, approving several laws a day without any consultation or real discussion. They have up to 4th January to do that.
- Among other things, there is a weird law approving a one-entry point for Internet in order to "protect against pornography" and other things, but in reality to try to control the information flowing to the big public, just like in China and Belarus now. The "vice president for Science and Technology" of the Military Regime, an old communist with an extremely good salary not just for Venezuelan standards but for Europe, declared, among other things, that "there is not only Internet, Internet is just one means, there is also Mozilla and..." This is the kind of preparation military and former guerrillas (against democratic governments, mind, not like in Brazil or Argentina against dictatorships) have. No wonder the Finance minister, as Miguel wrote, is an fan of the North Korean model.
- Some of the key "opposition" leaders seem to be - as usual - on vacation, even though we expected the regime to go into offensive mode during Christmas time, as it usually does.
- The military are taking over some of the most fertile lands in the Banana Republic of Venezuela...supposedly to give it to homeless people but apparently to build fincas to grow bananas for the Russians! If you read Russian or want to use a machine translation software on it, go to the Ria page. I have no time to go into all the details, many of which are about projects that will never take place or that make no sense. I will just mention this: apparently, Medvedev told Hugo the Coupster that the banana plantations could produce up to 20 000 jobs. Medvedev also told Hugo that Russia could invest millions of dollars there. And Hugo goes for it. The guy speaks for hours a week about how previous governments sold off Venezuela, but the way he plans and negotiates everything seems worse than the way our Indian ancestors negotiated gold for broken glass. Of course, the regime won't touch the lands of the Chávez clan, the lands of the Ramirez Chacín clan or the lands of many other boliburgueses.
Sorry, no more time. Bet on this: Chavismo will try to keep tension so high that National Assembly sessions will become a show. And most of Latin America is overtaking Venezuela and Venezuela is sinking in its self-inflicted "Bolivarian" nightmare.