{"id":1976,"date":"2008-01-17T05:07:43","date_gmt":"2008-01-17T10:07:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1976"},"modified":"2008-01-16T13:08:10","modified_gmt":"2008-01-16T18:08:10","slug":"its-election-time-in-siberia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1976","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s Election Time In Siberia"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m always puzzled when American news outlets report <a href=\"http:\/\/news.yahoo.com\/s\/ap\/20080116\/ap_on_re_la_am_ca\/cuba_castro\">this kind of story<\/a>\u00a0with a straight face:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>Fidel Castro said Wednesday he is not yet healthy enough to speak to <span class=\"yshortcuts\" id=\"lw_1200506170_1\" style=\"cursor: hand; border-bottom: #0066cc 1px dashed\">Cuba<\/span>&#8216;s masses in person and can&#8217;t campaign for Sunday&#8217;s parliamentary elections.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I am not physically able to speak directly to the citizens of the municipality where I was nominated for our elections next Sunday,&#8221; the ailing 81-year-old wrote in an essay published Wednesday by state news media.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>In other news<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Kim Jong Il was criticized for missing his precinct caucus meeting.\u00a0 &#8220;This is where the People&#8217;s Democracy in North Korea starts&#8221;,\u00a0said Noh Chuk Tae, spokesperson for the Ward 2, Precinct 45 Central Committee of the North Korean Communist Worker&#8217;s Party.<\/li>\n<li>Robert Mugabe reportedly failed to register to vote in his district&#8217;s upcoming elections.\u00a0 &#8220;In our one-man, one-vote system&#8221;, said Lester Mkangangwe, precinct election judge, &#8220;the one man that votes had better register, for the good of democracy in Zimbabwe&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>Thousands of HAMAS gunmen put down their AK47s and picked up stacks of campaign literature in the Gaza Strip today.\u00a0 &#8220;We&#8217;d hate to lose the election&#8221;, said one masked gunman.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>That is all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m always puzzled when American news outlets report this kind of story\u00a0with a straight face: Fidel Castro said Wednesday he is not yet healthy enough to speak to Cuba&#8216;s masses in person and can&#8217;t campaign for Sunday&#8217;s parliamentary elections. &#8220;I am not physically able to speak directly to the citizens of the municipality where I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1976","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1976"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1976\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1976"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1976"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1976"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}