No one, not even north Americans or Mexicans, waves the national flag quite as intensely as Venezuelans do. The three bright primary colors and the halo of seven white stars, en masse, on a bright blue day, is a spectacular sight vividly illustrative of the anti-Chavez opposition. The photo at the side of Daniel’s blog shows perfectly the intensity of color at mass demonstrations here.

Today, Venezuela’s rubber-stamp Chavista parliament decreed that no one can wave the Venezuelan flag at any public assemblies, putting a draconian limit on freedom of expression for Venezuelans, in one of the very few ways they can still express themselves.

Flags are always waved in times of national distress – we all saw it on 9/11 and I saw it in Malaysia during the Asia Crisis, every car waving the Malaysian flag. Chavez must be aware of this, knowing the power of symbols and he now wants it repressed.

Via Noticiero Digital, Venezuelans are wearing black now and protesting this madness as they can.

It’s astonishing and disgusting, because it’s a real sigh of how rapidly Venezuelans’ freedoms are eroding. Venezuelans cannot even wave their own flag anymore, a vicious expropriation of the national symbol against the people exclusively to the hands of the state.

But it gets worse. The ridiculous proposal to place an ‘eighth star’ on the Venezuelan flag, to represent half the territory of Guyana that is claimed by Venezuela, is moving forward with swift speed too. Updtate: In fact, it’s just passed in the one-house Assembly. Worse yet, the white horse national symbol of Venezuela is about to be flipped from a traditional right-facing position to a new left-facing position, to represent Chavez’s leftwingery.

Miguel has the story of this here.

All of this was done not after deliberations by the assemblies of the people, but at the whim and suggestion of Chavez’s minor daughter, Rosines.

One wonders if Chavez has got a guilty conscience for being a rotten father and wants to somehow make it up to the girl, kind of like a divorced dad (which he is). Or if he is just anxious to parade her whimsy to Venezuela’s battered opposition to rub into their faces their powerlessness against even the arbitrary whims of a little girl with the right power connections.

This isn’t the only flag chicanery going on in Venezuela, by the way. George at The Real Cuba has photographs (scroll down) of the new Cubazuela flag being spotted around on government buildings in Caracas. I saw these Cubazuela flags myself and given the massive Cuban influence all around the city, I didn’t realize how disgusting this new development was, a real insult at the sovereignty of both nations, something happening with the consent of neither people. George writes:

The flag of a country is one of its most sacred symbols. Cuba and Venezuela are no exceptions. Millions have died defending the flags of their countries. But it seems that in his obsession to turn Venezuela into ‘Cubazuela,’ Hugo Chavez would go as far as changing the flag of his country and turn it into a combination of the Cuban and Venezuelan flags.

It’s one dark day for freedom of expression in Venezuela.