Blogging the democratic revolution
Inflation, as Milton Friedman said, is a monetary phenomenon. The only way you get inflation is to print out money like there’s no tomorrow. Because when you do that, there IS no tomorrow, money-printing destroys savings and with it, future investment. Which would have great implications for a nation’s stability and passage to or from democracy. Slobo of Yugoslavia, for instance, achieved his greatest repression, after he triggered the worst money-printing orgy in history, printing literally at the speed of inflation for a 313,000,000% rate. A dark curtain of tyranny descended over the country after that. You can read about…
Vietnamese wave as the motorcade of U.S. President George W. Bush makes its way through the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Monday, Nov. 20, 2006. (AP Photo/Nghat Le) Vietnamese onlookers react to the arrival of U.S. President George W. Bush at Ho Chi Minh Museum in Ho Chi Monh City, Vietnam, Monday, Nov. 20, 2006. (AP Photo/David Longstreath) Vietnamese cheer U.S. President George W. Bush as he arrives the Ho Chi Minh City stock exchange Monday, Nov. 20, 2006, in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. (AP Photo/David Longstreath) A volunteer waits to get a glimpse from leaders dressed…
Milton Friedman, Democratic Revolutionary Source: John Petrie’s Milton Friedman Quotation Page The great Milton Friedman died yesterday in San Francisco. His ideas changed the world the most in our era. When we say ‘free markets,’ we think of him. I can think of no one whose ideas made more revolution and genuinely changed the world more for the better. He was the biggest democratic revolutionary of our age. Friedman won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1976. He brought forward free market ideas that were grounded in an Aristotelian understanding of human nature. Among his great ideas are that profit…
You’ve heard of VCrisis for Venezuela, no? Now, there’s ECrisis, for Ecuador. A couple of Ecuador hands who believe in democratic revolution and free markets, have gotten together and come up with a beautiful new Web site for all developments regarding turbulent little Ecuador. It’s full of richly sourced stories and the most up to date developments. This new blog is a sorely needed addition to all the good Latin American blogs out there and I will link it here often. It’s a must-see here.
The mind of Hugo Chavez is like a compost heap. It’s full of layer upon layer of muck, and when he gets to spreading it out through what comes out of his mouth, you never know what will come up to the top. Greg Wilpert, a Chavista agent who edits a prominent Chavista Web site, wrote an amazing piece about Chavez’s relations with the West and his own view of himself for Political Affairs, the official magazine of the Communist Party USA. He had a long rambling chat with Chavez, who proves he’s congenitally unable to keep his mouth shut.…
Monday the trade Neanderthals in Congress rejected endorsement of Vietnam’s entry into the World Trade Organization. It was slopped through a lame-duck committee and Congressional Republicans and Democrats voted against bringing Vietnam into the world trading system. They wanted to shut Vietnam out. And keep all the trade to themselves. Problem is, it takes two to trade, so we all are dimished by keeping a good trading partner out. Vietnam went from zero trade ten years ago to our 16th largest trading partner. What a lousy way to treat a country we’ve made money off of and they’ve done the…
Alek Boyd has taken some photos of Puerto Cabello’s refineries, showing all how Hugo Chavez is painting the entire industrial complex a bright communist red. Rather than the ethereal white of the Long Beach refineries, it’s this rage-inducing comrade red, Chavez’s own color. The only othe place I’ve seen this done is Tijuana, Mexico, where the ruling PRI party has begun painting the flimsy corrugated metal border fence their own vulgar PRI red. No wonder everyone hates the border fences. No wonder everyone hates Chavez’s ugly paint job on refineries. It’s really gross. This may surprise you, but taking those…
What’s gotten into Brazil’s supposedly decent president, Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva? He flew up to Venezuela and openly endorsed Hugo Chavez for president, hugging and kissing him, and openly meddling in an election for a country that’s not his own. Oddly enough, Chavez did not do the same for him, which is to say meddle, as he openly and shamelessly did in Peru and Mexico. Meanwhile, the lovefest between the Brazilian and Venezuelan leaders comes a day after Peru’s leader, Alan Garcia, paid a visit to Lula and then openly declared verbal war on Chavez, calling him the scum…
Can you imagine what it’s like to collect a bill from Castro? The guy defaults all the time, he owes about $6 billion in defaulted loans to banks all over the world, if I recall correctly. For some reason, though, Swiss banks have continued to do business with the Cuban government, perhaps because that’s where the Castro fortune is stashed. Well, they aren’t anymore. Val at Babalu, citing Child Of The Revolution (an excellent blog) has the scoop on the reason why: “it costs too much to ensure that Cuba respects and conforms to legal and financial regulations” Hear that?…
Alan Garcia, out to break Hugo Chavez Source: Libardo Buitrago Meet Hugo Chavez’s worst nightmare: President Alan Garcia of Peru, who blasted Hugo Chavez as a thug, meddler, briber and intimidator yet again, in an interview with a big Venezuelan newspaper, El Universal. The nightmare Hugo Chavez didn’t foresee: Alan Garcia of Peru Source: AP, via Yahoo! News Garcia, as we all know, is no poodle of George Bush. In fact, he’s a leftist in his own right, a nationalist – as in wanting Peru to be sovereign from all foreign interference – and once gave Ronald Reagan all kinds…
Andres Oppenheimer of The Miami Herald, in a public service, has done us all a favor by identifying the Dirty Dozen of the new congress, the creeps who would keep free trade from enriching and helping the nations of the Americas. These are the poverty-enforcers, the anti-Latin Americans, the rust-belt oppressors, hobbled by their own wilfull ignorance of economics (I can’t even excuse that ignorance, there is no excuse for that kind of unwillingness to know about the benefits of trade in this day and age). These are the dogs who would keep Latin America down, keep it out of…
As Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez prepares to “win” a new election with Jimmy Carter’s renewed collaboration, suspect “polls” executed with Chavista funding, are preemptively declaring Chavez the runaway winner. That’s funny because Chavez sure isn’t acting like a winner. He’s acting like a dictator who’s running scared. Like Robespierre staring down Danton, fearful of losing power, lashing out and ultimately unleashing terror. Check out what Gustavo Coronel, writing in Venezuela Today, has to say about this. He says what’s going on is a slow coup d’etat to consolidate total power and it’s happening right now under the Organization of American…
You are a very poor farmer in Sichuan and out in the countryside live far away from everything else, schools, medical care, government, roads, running water, everything. You are only poor because the communist government has taken away everything in the name of “the people.” Your two-year-old toddler swallows farm chemicals and is sickened. With everything you’ve got, you get into the rickety jalopy and drive as hard and fast as you can to make the long trek to the hospital to get the child to treatment. Your child is unconscious and struggling to breathe and the Chinese hospital, true…
U.S.-Mexico border walk, near San Diego and Tijuana Source: Alex Jones, via Dan Watman Even if you support the U.S. border fence with Mexico, you cannot help but feel deeply saddened by the very idea of a wall going up between two close nations whose citizens’ lives and cultures overlap eternally. A high Stalag-style fence to keep “intruders” out is a disturbing specter between friends Mexico and the U.S. It’s an ugly intrusion and an artificial marker of otherness. Sure it may be in the name of sovereignty, but it comes at the cost of unity. The concept of a…
Red Chinese national ballet performance in Guangxi, Nov. 9 Source: AP, via Yahoo! News Here’s a stunning development: Activists in China are starting to say out loud what the government is trying to muffle over without discussion: Communism is the problem in China. What is communism even doing in China in this modern age amid the glittering success of capitalism? What is it DOING here? And they are standing up to say it, taking to the streets, handing out leaflets, exercising their God-given human right to free speech, and property rights, and risking major consequences from the regime: Like this:…
I have had long running arguments with naivos even close to the oil industry that Hugo Chavez of Venezuela intended to turn not just Venezuela’s state oil company into a worker-ant collective but Western oil majors’ Venezuelan operations into them as well. Today, I stand vindicated. Today, workers from Chevron, Repsol, Shell, Exxon, Total and others must put on red t-shirts and stand at attention, worker-ant-style, wave their fists and shout pro-Chavez slogans for their new Chavista masters, who’ve taken over their firms in broken contracts. No wonder Venezuelan oil production is a mess. They have to have Chavista indoctrination…
The U.S. has a new congress and boy is it hostile to the concept of free trade. Sadly, the Republicans in power were just barely there on this issue and the Democrats to a lesser extent, but not exactly absent. Now, with a Democrat-dominated House and Senate, it’s going to be very tough to get trade treaties already signed ratified. At stake are the ratification of trade pacts with the remaining CAFTA states that haven’t got all their papers and regulations in order, with Colombia, and with Peru. Peru’s a really important one. This nation elected Alan Garcia on an…
Christmas season in Venezuela and nothing upsets Santa Chavez more than a little competition. That’s why the Venezuelan strongman, who’s famous for doling out pork-barrel goodies has made it abundantly clear that there won’t be any Santa Claus, any lighted Christmas trees, and certainly not Frosty the Snowman in his Castroite fiefdom. After all, HE’S the Santa around Venezuela, not some North Pole-dwelling invader! Isn’t he the man who wears red in the family? Can’t have any graybeards from faraway lands taking from his trademark regalia in the name of some holiday. I was in Caracas last year around Christmas…
Urrrrghhhhh! Wonder why. UPDATE: Chavez is just beaming at Rumsfeld’s resignation. Rumsfeld, you may recall, compared Chavez to Hitler. Alex Beech sent me some additional thoughts here: What Hugo Chavez Could Learn from Bush 08.11.06 ö There is no one celebrating the Republicans’ defeat today more than President Chavez, who said on Wednesday that the defeat was a “whipping that they’ve given the US president???????which means that US citizens do have a mind and a conscience.” Rather than celebrate, Mr. Chavez could learn a lesson about why many Americans switched their votes to the Democratic party on Tuesday throughout the…
U.S. voters go to the polls in Tempe, Arizona Source: AP, via The Guardian Today’s a big election day in the U.S. for the seats in Congress. At stake is whether the war in Iraq will continue to victory or a cut-an-run strategy, similar to that employed to end the Vietnam War, is implemented. Both houses of Congress are up for grabs. The Republicans are in power right now but the Democrats have good chances of winning both. For that reason, I’m on my way to the polling station which is about to close in one hour and twenty minutes.…
I just got this note in from Alex Beech: Censorship in Venezuela official Begins; Live Broadcasts are Forbidden On Tuesday afternoon, a National Guard major notified the country’s private television networks in Venezuela that requests for live broadcasts would have to be submitted to the National Guard twenty four hours prior to transmission. According to Globovision News Channel Director Federico Ravell, National Guard Major Rafael Medina prevented private networks from performing technical alignments necessary for live transmission. Ravell said that the communications regulatory agency (CONATEL) denied any knowledge of the measure. Globovision, which broadcasts opposition campaigning events, will be prevented…
Police scene after the bomb attack on Mexico’s electoral authority Source: Reuters, via Yahoo! News Today, violent thugs launched a new attack directed explicitly at Mexico’s democracy. Someone doesn’t like the results of Mexico’s elections and is trying to destroy Mexico’s democracy, not through the power of reasoned ideas, but by blowing things up. That’s his solution. Two new bombs went off in Ixtapa, hours before the arrival of President-elect Felipe Calderon who had been planning to take a few days off. Clearly, some leftwing terrorist barbarians know Calderon’s schedule and are willing to make terror attacks based on it.…
As Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez continues to crash in the polls, we are seeing a growing campaign of what can be summed up in short as lies and intimidation, explicitly centered around the Venezuelan oil company, Chavez’s own cash-cow. Over the weekend, Chavez’s energy minister, Rafael Ramirez, explicitly threatened oil workers at the state oil company with firing if they didn’t vote for Hugo Chavez. That’s illegal. But it’s also a sign of desperation. That’s a sign of trouble brewing. But It didn’t stop him. “We are here supporting Chavez, who is our leader, who is the top leader of…
Nicaraguans line up to cast their ballots in Managua this Sunday morning Source: AP, via Yahoo! News Today is the big decision day in Nicaragua, the presidential election. Three major candidates are vying for the presidency, along with two minors. The outcome in the hotly contested race in this nation of 5.4 million could be very fateful indeed. Will a hardcore Marxist aligned to Hugo Chavez win? Or will a free trader? If no one manages to get 35% of the vote and five points ahead of his nearest rival, there will be a runoff. That setup is where the…
As Nicaragua goes to the polls Sunday, and Venezuela watches the fast rise of Hugo-Chavez challenger Manuel Rosales, it helps to have a good grip on opinion polls. Boz has the latest on those critical two, as well as updates from Chile, Costa Rica, Colombia and elsewhere. It’s well worth reading here.