Posted on 12/09/2007 9:14:19 AM PST by blam
Hugo Chavez invents new half-hour time zone
By Jeremy McDermott, Latin America Correspondent
Last Updated: 3:35pm GMT 09/12/2007
Venezuela has created its own, unique time zone on the orders of President Hugo Chavez, setting clocks back half an hour and putting the oil-rich nation out of step with its neighbours.
"I don't care if they call me crazy, the new time will go ahead," said Mr Chavez.
Hugo Chavez has already changed the national flag and coat of arms
The president said the change would improve health, as the sun will rise before most Venezuelans get up ensuring all go to work or school in daylight.
"These children have to get up at five in the morning... they arrive at school dead tired," said Mr Chavez. "And why? Because of our time."
Government ministers lined up to support the president's theory.
"The human brain is conditioned by the light of the sun," offered Hector Navarro, the Minister of Science and Technology, assuring that the health and productivity of the nation will improve thanks to the change.
Many Venezuelans were not impressed with the change or bamboozled by the technical jargon coming out of the Science and Technology Ministry.
"The only thing this will do is inject yet more chaos into our lives," said John Marulanda, a young executive. "This president believes in change for change's sake." President Chavez has now changed the flag, the national coat of arms, the salute of the armed forces and the constitution.
He sought to change Venezuela's political system on Dec 2, when he proposed a referendum to enshrine socialism in the constitution and grant the president indefinite re-election and even greater powers.
Fifty-one per cent of Venezuelans said no, delivering Mr Chavez his first electoral defeat in nine years.
However the president has vowed to press ahead with his changes and has enough power through his control of the armed forces, the National Assembly, the judicial system, the Central bank and increasingly of the media, to introduce change without recourse to another referendum.
Hmmm...couldn't be because they're getting up at 5AM, could it?
Next, he will turn the calendars back to 1937!
Would that be B.C. or A.D.?
Smells like sulfur.
This little midget assclown never ceases to amaze me.
BCE Before the Chavez Era and may it be a short one.
Uhhh....why doesn't he just change the time the kids have to be at school?
"I don't care if they call me crazy,..."
He's crazy.
What are we paying the CIA for? This guy should have been wormfood a long time ago.
Hello, Newman
Keep it up, Hugo. We've got plenty of fawning pics and statements from our homegrown moonbats that we're dying to drag out when you really go over the edge. Don't fail us, nutter--we're all counting on you!
Just like our Dems!
And they'll still be getting up at 5 AM, but it's the new time, see? It's much, much better. The Supreme Leader says so.
The little caudillo is genuinely, barking-at-the-moon nuts. Most of the people this project impacts are not "his" people anyway, but "his" people are getting tired of bread and milk lines and stayed away from the last election in droves. Huey's going to need to bribe them and amuse them pronto - yep, I'm talking "bread and circuses" - or he's going to be joining a long line of ex-dictators at the crap tables in Monaco wondering where it all went wrong.
The Kommies, the Huffies, and DUmmies will find this to be a brilliant move.
CAN SOMEONE Post a “Cookoo Clock”??
Fielding Mellish: What’s the Spanish word for straitjacket?
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