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Venezuela Falling Behind
Christopher Frank writes "Seems Venezuela's lack of power has finally caught up with them! MSNBC has the story: 'If you thought Venezuela's political crisis seemed to be dragging for an impossibly long time -- you were right. In a bizarre mass-malfunction, Venezuela's clocks are ticking too slowly due to a power shortage weakening the electric current nationwide. By the end of each day, the sluggish time pieces still have another 150 seconds to tick before they catch up to midnight.'"
It's not the lower power / current / whatever. It's the lower frequencies on the AC lines.
And besides any quartz clock won't be affected anyway. The ones that will suffer is those bedside alarm clocks you plug in - those red / green ones that are oh-so-common in the US.
Any idea why there are 0 of them in Japan? Japan runs on 50Hz east side and 60Hz west side, which would make clocks like that completely fall over itself. (something about buying geneator equipment from siemens (europe) for the east side and from US for the west-side - and stuck)
Interesting, but I don't think it's really that much of a "news." should at least up the "it's funny" icon
My life in the land of the rising sun.
The leader of the country, Cesar Chavez I believe, wants to turn the country into another Cuba. He is really communist and was elected to a six year term by 80% of the population.
The economy collapsed and now the business, political elite, Army, Navy, and Unions want him gone.
He was couped against for two days last year and he was put back into power by his allies. But they can't get rid of him till August, so they are holding a national strike every couple of months to get rid of him with varying success.
It's the main reason gasoline is so expensive and oil is now $40 a barrel, not Iraq. It accounts for %15 of our supply.
It's not cocaine to the lower posters, that is columbia. Chavez does host some of the rebels, supposedly, but he doesn't really care one way or the other.
Unfortunately, I can't seem to find (quickly) my links to the forums or best analysis I have read about the situation there
Maybe tomorrow I will send you more links (this should keep you busy for a litte bit anyway) ;o)
will work for Karma
Cesar Chavez was a Mexican union activist in the 1960's. Hugo Chavez is the man you want, a man who attempted his own coup in 1992. When that didn't work, he ran for el Presidente. And won.
About 70% of the population is in poverty, the base from which Chavez draws his support. The middle class (and upper class) seemingly hate him, which is why his communist ideas resonate with most poverty-stricken Venezuelans.
[ I am not sure about the numbers (80% or 40%) but it's roughly within the ball-park figures ]
will work for Karma
The link below discusses not just the Iraq war, but the how oil is tied to the world economies at a very low level and how Venezuela is in some sense at the heart of the matter with their use of oil as a fiat currency in lieu of the US dollar among their latin american trading partners. http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/RRiraqWar.html
Although completely suppressed by the U.S. media and government, the answer to the Iraq enigma is simple yet shocking -- it is an oil currency war. The real reason for this upcoming war is this administration's goal of preventing further Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) momentum towards the euro as an oil transaction currency standard. However, in order to pre-empt OPEC, they need to gain geo-strategic control of Iraq along with its 2nd largest proven oil reserves. This essay will discuss the macroeconomics of the `petro-dollar' and the unpublicized but real threat to U.S. economic hegemony from the euro as an alternative oil transaction currency. The author advocates reform of the global monetary system including a dollar/euro currency 'trading band' with reserve status parity, and a dual OPEC oil transaction standard. These reforms could potentially reduce future oil currency warfare.
My DVD and Game Collection Tracking L
Consider an economic model of massively concentrated wealth based on control of a single natural resource, and the distorting effects on markets of land, labor, and goods created by a small cash-rich sector, and you'll understand what happened. More or less a classic race-to-the-bottom scenario.
I do not where you get your information but I get it straight from the horse's mouth as my family lives there.
I lived there for 20 years and, as I said, my family still lives there. We have never been well-to-do. If anything, we have always been very-low-middle class (because I could not consider myself poor when I had food on my table -sometimes just two meals a day- and a roof on my head).
My family's situation has not improved! Nobody's standard of living has improved. THEY ARE ONLY GETTING WORSE
When you lose any ability to educate yourself, freedom of expression, your job, social security, inflation and unemployment doubles and the right to use your own money (albeit in foreign currency, but still yours);
how can your claims be believed or even substantiated?
Please educate yourself in the matter before you make such *outrageous claims*
P.S. Let me know if you need actual examples of how things are getting worse over there (In fact the article that started the threat is one of many)will work for Karma
There was a really good documentary about the 48-hour Coup on Irish TV the other night. These two film makers basically got caught up in the coup against Chavez and so we saw the whole thing play out from inside Chavezs place. I unfortunatly only caught part of it, but heres the jist of it (as told by people who actually saw it
Chavez wanted (wants) to share the money generated by the countries oil reserves with all the nations people, not just the few rich oil barons (as was (is) the situation). In order to prevent this from happening, the rich people bought the support of the armed forces and private national TV stations to convince the people that Chavez was the bad guy. They even tried to insinuate that he had a sexual fixation with Fidel Castro
With 7 of the 8 national stations broadcasting anti-chavez propaganda, the coup started (with the unofficial support of the US Government might i add!). Chavez used the one remaining government station to try and tell the people what was happening.
Unfortunatly, I didn't hear how it ended
A quick search on Google reveals that the same show will premiere in the states in March - find a description here
You can find an excellent article here. Although there has actually been a fair amount of coverage in the media, it doesn't stay in the news long, and most of it does not cover what I would think would be the most important issue to Americans, which is the possible American involvement in the April 11, 2002 coup, and the continual "tacit approval" by both the Bush adminstration and a lot of Western media of the current _management_ led strike and the opposition politics it represents. If you try Googling for information, most of the articles seem to accuse Chavez of mismanaging the economy. I don't know enough about his policies to say anything, but the country has been in steady decline for 20 years, and the seemingly constant political turmoil is probably a big part of that. He certainly is not a communist, marxist, or even a socialist. The economy is very much capitalist, and very much a democracy. In fact, his reaction to these protests seems a lot more measured than what it would be in the US.
Actually, it so happens one of my good friends emigrated from Venezulea in the early 90s. He's pretty proud of his heritage, and a strong supporter of Chavez. Anecdotal evidence might not be scientific, but it still does a lot for me.
As far as I've read, Chavez is not objecting to the scheduled referendum, just the opposition's demands that he immediately hold one - see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/2724855.stm .
'The Venezuelan Government has rejected an opposition call for a vote on a constitutional amendment to allow the term of President Hugo Chavez to be cut short.'
'However, the government said it endorsed another plan - to hold a binding referendum on Mr Chavez's presidency after August.'
'We're proposing what we always have: referendum after 19 August as laid down in the constitution," Vice-President Jose Vicente Rangel said.'
I don't believe that Chavez is perfect, but he has done a lot of good for the poor majority of the country, and he did win the last election with a landslide. He is also lot preferable to the people trying to replace him (i.e. the coup leaders, who in the three days they had in power managed to establish a dictatorship).
If people in America started demanding Bush hold an election tommorrow would it make him a dictator to say 'wait till the next scheduled elections'?
Again, for more info see my website.
So it was the business people who started rewriting the constitution, enacted 40 economic 'decrees' to basically put economic control entirely into Chavez's hot little hands, subsequently sending inflation up to ~30% and unemployment up passed 20%, and it's them who are building their own extra-legal army just in case the real one turns on him (you say they bribed the military--it looks like they did a bad job)?
And I suppose they have a Hugo Chavez body double who they can put on camera saying "Saddam Hussein is a brother". Yep.
Hurray for populist socialism!
--RMT
I did contract work this past year at an appliance control manufacturer where they test the timing motors. There are commonly available power converters for test purposes. Program in a frequency over HPIB and run your tests. It's not hard to believe that years ago something like this would have happened, but not today.