Posted on 01/21/2006 4:23:54 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
CARACAS - For firebrand President Hugo Chávez, the white horse on Venezuela's national coat of arms is galloping in the wrong direction -- to the right. So it will soon be changed to gallop in step with his politics -- to the left.
''It's a reactionary symbol,'' said Chávez, a populist who already changed the country's name from the Republic of Venezuela to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and launched this nation on what he calls a revolution toward ``21st Century socialism.''
A bill that modifies the shield was put at the top of the legislative agenda after Chávez mentioned the subject several times before Christmas. It received initial approval Tuesday, and with Chávez's supporters holding all 167 seats in the legislature -- the opposition boycotted the last elections, alleging the electoral deck was stacked against them -- its passage is virtually assured.
Chávez said it was his 7-year-old daughter, Rosinés, who first brought to his attention that the horse was galloping to the right but looking to the left. 'Rosinés said, `Daddy, why does that horse look backward?' '' Chávez said Nov. 20 on his Sunday radio and TV show, Hello President.
But it was Chávez who saw politics in the pose of the horse, which is supposed to symbolize liberty.
''Ideological codes are often sown in national symbols,'' Chávez added, noting that the horse was, ''not Venezuelan [but] imperial.'' Its rightward gallop and backward gaze, he added, was designed during the 1908-35 dictatorship of Gen. Juan Vicente Gómez, who ``sold out to U.S. imperialism.''
NOT AMUSED
A few days later humorist Laureano Márquez poked fun at the president's comments in a newspaper column titled ''Dear Rosinés'' suggesting that a more appropriate symbol might be ``a golden retriever with a stick in its mouth, sitting at its master's feet.'' Chávez was not amused. Without mentioning Márquez by name, he later alleged that the opposition media ''don't even respect children'' and called them ``beasts that swarm in the sewers.''
NEWSPAPER TARGETED
Two weeks later, the government's Council for the Protection of Children and Adolescents announced it was taking action against the newspaper, TalCual, for violating Rosinés' reputation and privacy. It ordered the paper to remove the article from its website, and could impose a fine and even order a temporary closure.
Another part of the bill changing the coat of arms would add an eighth star to the Venezuelan flag to represent the country's eastern Guayana region, the eighth of the original provinces that revolted against Spain in the 19th Century.
DIVIDED HISTORIANS
Historians are divided over the wisdom, relevance and historical justification for the change in the national symbols. A few support it while most are bemused or openly antagonistic.
Such proposals ''lack seriousness, given all the other things that need doing,'' said history professor Margarita López Maya.
But this is not the first such controversy in the seven years since Chávez first came to power.
The 1999 assembly that rewrote the constitution changed the country's name to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela after the president attacked its initial vote against changing it. Simón Bolívar, hero of the South America's independence struggle, is Chávez's avowed inspiration.
COLUMBUS NO MORE
More recently, the anniversary of Christopher Columbus' arrival in the new world on Oct. 12 was renamed the Day of Indigenous Resistance. And the Education Ministry's official school calendar for 2005-06 lists Feb. 4 -- the anniversary of Chávez's failed military coup attempt in 1992 -- as the day of ``a rebellion that changed the destiny of the republic.''
i gotta wonder what chavez'z I.Q. is.
At least he is not adding a bend sinister. ;-) (Some, just somehow, I suspect President Chavez is not familiar with the phrase "bar sinister", or the imputed meaning of the bend sinister.)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Bar sinister is a heraldic term symbolizing bastardy. Since its invention, apparently by Sir Walter Scott, there has been a good deal of objection to it by people full of heraldic lore. In the arcane world of heraldry there is no bar sinister; it is illegitimate and unrecognized there. Heraldry does have a bend sinister, but that carries no information about bastardy at all. In any case, it is not in technical use.
Nevertheless, for the world today the term bar sinister is a standard figurative term symbolic of illegitimate birth.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bar_sinister"
Somehow, I suspect that a "serious illness" or an "accident" is in the near future for this jerk.
Somehow, I suspect that a "serious illness" or an "accident" is in the near future for this jerk.
This is so unfair. The U.S. should offer to help by replacing the horse on all crests at Chavez's residence with a JDAM aimed at the left. Of course, Chavez should be there to receive it personally so that we know the gift reached its intended recipient. :-)
I'm wondering if Castro gave Chavez a copy of the same blackmail material that has kept Castro breathing all of these years. I don't buy for a moment that Castro lives because he is lucky. There is some dirty laundry involving the Kennedys after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. Probably a sell-out executive order or some such nonsense.
With Chávez at the helm, proper orientation on the coat of arms would be the horse's posterior facing front.
"i gotta wonder what chavez'z I.Q. is."
It's not the intelligence, it's the insanity.
Done. Now all he has to do is declare that everyone read and write backwards.
The exact type of thing done by two bit dictators!!
Bingo!
The USSR is not dead, just look at Putin...
I don't see how he can win the next election. Than again I doubt he legally won the last election.
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