Is Hugo Chávez Preparing Venezuela for His Departure?
Get your personal affairs in order. It’s the hardest thing doctors have to tell cancer patients who are as ill as media reports suggest Hugo Chávez is. With an election looming in less than five months, the 57-year-old Venezuelan President would also need to get his political affairs in order – and many believe the socialist leader took the first step last week when, before going to Cuba for more treatment, he named a “council of state” as a presidential consulting body. But the council’s murky role is now as much a source of morbid speculation as Chávez’s health is, and that has raised the level of tension and uncertainty inside the home of the western hemisphere’s largest oil reserves.
When Chávez announced the council on May 1 — its eight members, including Vice President Elías Jaua, are all loyal Chavistas — he only ordered it to draft a plan for withdrawing Venezuela from the Inter-American Human Rights Commission. (The commission, an arm of the Organization of American States, or OAS, has often butted heads with the often authoritarian President and his left-wing revolution.) But since then, pundits across the hemisphere have surmised that the council’s real purpose is to steer Venezuela and Chávez’s United Socialist Party (PSUV) through a chaotic transition after his death. That includes picking his replacement, if need be, on the October 7 presidential ballot. “Chávez is setting up a mechanism for the final phase of his presence in this world,” one anti-Chávez analyst breathlessly told the Miami daily El Nuevo Herald.
Read more: http://globalspin.blogs.time.com/2012/05/10/is-hugo-chavez-preparing-venezuela-for-his-departure/#ixzz1uWPjl05H
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that particular thorn in their side will be around for a while. I know he's ill but people do survive cancer all the time (speaking as someone who had it twice).
When the Miami Herald "breathlessly" reports that Chavez is worse, I have to assume that they're full of shit. 
People DO survive cancer now in large numbers. It's so much different from when we were kids, isn't it? We also hear news of changes and potential breakthroughs regularly, as well.
Sure glad you bounced back. You have always sounded like a very focused person, and I'll bet that has been a real asset in your return to health.
The Miami Herald is a joke for the last couple of decades or more. McClatchy's Spanish version of the Herald, El Nuevo Herald, has been caught making ridiculous image statements by magically manipulating a picture of women in Havana, showing alleged hookers calling out to tourists while standing within a few feet of two Havana cops, making it appear the government was OK with prostitution.
You will notice the shadows at the feet of the cops trail off to the left, and there are NO shadows by the women, standing only a few feet away, according to the photo.
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DU'er Eugene posted the story in LBN some time ago here:
Spanish-Language Paper Altered Photos
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x2420339
El Nuevo is so tricky with its writing that a website was set up originally to serve as a watchdog for the public, and they ran articles on El Nuevo, informing people of how much they were distorting the truth, then pointing out the true information which gets mangled there.
It's http://progreso-weekly.com and it's a good one.
