Venezuelan Protests
Protesters and security forces continue to clash in Caracas. A broad coalition of other governments have recognized the opposition leader as the rightful leader of the government (because his legitimately elected position is the highest one that appears to have been lawfully filled so the Venezuelan constitution does support this interpretation), and the EU has called for new elections within eight days (As of Saturday, so six days remain), to which president Maduro said “No one can give us an ultimatum … Venezuela is not tied to Europe. This is complete insolence.” So I quite rather feel it may pan out like the LJ Idol entry I wrote the other day, it will take a large scale mutiny of troops deciding they'd rather support the protesters than suppress them.
You may recall my girlfriend is in Venezuela. She, fortunately, has been posted to the remote island of Gran Roques, which is remaining relatively peaceful. I still worry about her family and friends back in Caracas though.
I tried to resist making my lj entry explicitly specific if for no other reason than I'd drive myself insane trying to get all the details right if I had set to make it explicitly that situation -- for example, my earlier idea for the topic was to write about the episode of Jason and the Argonauts where the harpies keep stealing food from an old man every time he tries to eat it and spent several hours researching exactly where that most probably would have taken place, where there were iron age settlements around the Bosporus, what the specific place I was thinking of using was called at the time (Galata, across the Golden Horn from old town Istanbul (where there was an iron age settlement), was in the earliest recorded reference "the other side with fig trees"), what direction the current flows through the Bosporus...
I realized after I wrote it that I did accidentally give the protagonist's general boss the exact name of who his boss plausibly would have been, the defense minister General Vladimir Lopez. And I did read somewhere that Venezuelan security forces were running out of tear gas. And there have been small troop mutinies but not enough to accomplish more than the arrest of the mutineers. For descriptions of the troops and the water cannon trucks I used what I saw myself in Taksim Square in Istanbul when I was there while protests were ongoing. And of course I had to borrow the iconic red woman of Taksim.
While I certainly believe President Maduro should step down, I didn't want to portray the security forces as the monolithic "bad guys" its so often tempting to do in stories of repressive regimes, but rather as boys in uniform with little choice until it comes to actually pulling the trigger, and the almost-sympathetic protagonist as sandwiched between preserving his family's very good quality of life under the current regime or backing the opposition.
Anyway, I'm currently in last place in the LJ Idol poll! Soo I would really appreciate anyone going over there and voting for me!
Also you should read and vote for furzicle, who used her "bye" to get me off the hook the previous week when I miscalculated the deadline and missed it :-[]