CARACAS, Venezuela (AFP): President Hugo Chavez Sunday announced that Venezuela's official time will be put ahead by half an hour starting January 1, and its first-ever offshore oil rig will start pumping before the year is out.
I wondered what the justification would be. Maybe something about conforming to time zones set up by capitalist, imperialist countries while Venezuela straddled two of them? Maybe something about a compromise, single time zone for the whole country to help bring it together?
"Its about the metabolic effect, where the human brain is conditioned by sunlight," Chavez said in a rambling, seven hour discussion on his radio show "Alo, Presidente"
When I was there the television appearances would last a few hours, which was bad enough as it interrupted any TV you might want to watch that evening, but SEVEN HOURS? That's a whole workday. He's extended his own regime indefinitely and consolidated all federal power into his hands in the name of democracy. How does the guy have time to govern a country that he single-handedly controls? I feel like the power grabbing can be explained by a hunger for influence that I can sympathize with, and seems more normal, less diseased, than the thought process that makes him believe his countrymen want to listen to him talk for 7 hours in a day. He realizes that his biggest supporters are the country's poorest citizens and probably have to, you know, work, right? But I guess with the new 6-hour maximum workday they'll have more time to spend listening to him and less to waste on diversifying and strengthening the national economy in preparation for the inevitable oil decline.
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