Blogging the democratic revolution
Blogger Daniel Duquenal in Venezuela reports existing conditions and probable coming food shortages at Mercal, the regime’s subsidized food stores where Venezuelan locals are being conditioned to accept food rationing and to wait in long lines. Communism is much further along than we had previously thought in dictator Hugo Chavez’s regime. Be sure to read the valuable, and alarming, account right here.
I was bothered by Indonesia’s Abu Bakar Bashir verdict and realized it was going to amount to a political struggle in Indonesia’s six-year-old democracy, because voters there had just elected a new president who ran for office on an anti-terror platform. That sham verdict is going to pose some problems for Indonesia’s new president as terrorists grow emboldened there.
Publius Pundit isn’t the only one thinking about democratic revolutions – it’s a idea that’s caught fire in the minds of people all over the world. Val Prieto at Babal???? reports that there’s a young man at Columbia University, Loren Crowe, who’s studied in Cuba and now made it his mission to get documentary word out, in a non-ideological way, about that closed society. He’s seen the place up close and he’s doing it to counter all the tired Che-tee-shirt romanticism he sees around campus. What Loren’s doing is a revolution, too. I had a look at his site and…
Like Fidel Castro before him, Hugo Chavez for a long time has insisted he was lots of things, but definitely not a communist. We see this a lot at the beginnings of communist regimes, and it’s done mostly for domestic reasons. However, another reason is that it’s easier for internationalistas to champion the dictator as he quietly consolidates power. Pol Pot, after all, for years was just an agrarian reformer. Ho Chi Minh was just an aggrieved nationalist and never mind what followed. Communism cannot be sold on its own merits but only through deception. Now that Chavez has fully…
Blogger Miguel Octavio, who’s an expert on markets, has come up with a startling new idea about how to make Venezuela’s pathetically money-losing state oil company profitable enough to benefit from current high oil prices. Sell shares of Citgo. An idea way too revolutionary for a leftist backwash like Hugo Chavez. This is an especially well written and informative read.
Venezuelan blogger Daniel reports that Miguel’s powerful exclusive on photoshopping is now having a big impact in Caracas through a Venezuelan newspaper pickup. This is a great victory for the blogosphere, and very sweet for Publius Pundit which was first to link Miguel’s scoop on the fake photos. After that, Miguel’s post was linked to huge effect on Little Green Footballs. And soon after that it made its way into the important Venezuelan Spanish-language blogosphere. Following Miguel’s high hit count, a local newspaper got wind of its impact, and ran with it as a news story. That’s no small thing.…
Cuban refugees risking it all to flee communism arrive at the gates of Guantanamo and are ordered by US troops back to communism – through a field of landmines. One of the troops who had to carry out these illegal orders tells the terrible story here and I blanch at the inhumanity. Where is the outrage? Update: The serviceman who describes the account says this happened ten years ago and from what he understands, US policy has changed. Who says Cuban-Americans’ raised eyebrows at Clinton were confined only to Elian? Clinton was capable of incredible inhumanity to the helpless.
Why does the Venezuela’s thuggish dictatorship cringe at the cold spotlight of one of Aleksander Boyd’s meticulous investigations? Find out here.
In a truly alarming development, Miguel Octavio reports that Venezuela’s dictatorship is handing over the job of issuing identity cards for every Venezuelan to a Cuban “company.” With this measure, every Venezuelan’s fingerprints, photograph and identity particulars will be in on file with Castro’s secret police. Every one. Given that the Chavez dictatorship enacted a recent law to allow Castro’s secret agents to question, arrest and spirit back to Cuba for Castro’s “justice” any Venezuelan they like, this complete citizen database in the hands of Cuba’s secret police has got to be the most damning dangerous thing Hugo Chavez has…
The Reuters headline says it all: Oil Rich Venezuela Devalues Currency. Just as the IMF always recommends to developing (but not donor) countries. ‘It will raise your exports!’ they lie. Chavez didn’t need the IMF to order him to do this, he was happy to commit economic suicide on his own. What’s confounding is that Venezuela is an oil-exporting country with a huge stream of dollar revenue, quite unlike the usual IMF-bait basket case. The net result will be theft of savings, soaring inflation, and reduced purchasing power, impoverishing the poor most of all. Venezuelan is a high importer of…
Blogger Randy Paul from Beautiful Horizons has a welcome perspective on Uruguay and its new president, Tabare Vazquez, a leftist, whose party is unpromisingly identified on the radio here as a collection of ‘communists, socialists and tupamaro guerrillas.’ Understandably, Vazquez is a cause for alarm to some – even some Uruguayans. But Randy checked around, and so did I, and the most likely outcome is Vazquez will be a pragmatist – more Lula than Chavez. Randy outlines several interesting reasons why. Randy’s Uruguay analysis isn’t firsthand but he’s got a good feel for much of the region and his take…
Alek Boyd has located a disturbing new story out of Rome about a member of Chavez’s trusted inner circle – a presidential guardsman charged with protecting Chavez’s life, who’s now charged with drug trafficking among Europe’s dangerous syndicates. In light of recent stories about Chavez’s permitting FARC Marxist drug lords like Rodrigo Granda to walk freely in Venezuela with a cheaply bestowed passport, this could signal Chavez’s growing involvement in narcotrafficking on world markets. We should all be concerned.
One of the best Venezuelan bloggers has today’s pickings from Hugo Chavez’s latest lunatic ravings. The unpopular Venezuelan dictator’s going off the deep end.
Val Prieto, who writes the more-than-excellent Babalu Blog, outlines an old story for Cuban-Americans – the blindness of those who will not see Castro’s atrocious tyranny. Miami Cubans, more so than many exiles on the freedom fighting frontier, run into these dictator-worshipping jackasses all the time. Val’s exchange with one of them is worth reading here.
If you are prominent, you get arrested. If you are not, you get the death squad. Hundreds of complaints about dozens of discovered bodies signals an extremely alarming new development out of Venezuela. The details are atrocious. UPDATED
These are dark days for Venezuela. Dictator Hugo Chavez has ordered a terrible string of arrests of some of the country’s most prominent journalists, bankers, union leaders, lawyers, and political leaders. I have never seen anything like this, coming in such a sudden, synchronized wave. This is a dark night of totalitarianism descending.
One of the worst canards out there, sponsored by pro-Chavez leftists, is the repetitively boring claim that Venezuela’s opposition “has no ideas” other than to get rid of widely despised Marxist dictator Hugo Chavez. Alek Boyd at VCrisis has an interesting outline of proposals he thinks would benefit Venezuela in a post-Chavez area. It’s a fascinating glimpse of what’s likely to come and I enjoyed the read.
Val at Babalu Blog has gotten his hands on an important 15-minute Cuban film that’s spreading like lightning around Castro’s oppressed island. It’s all about local KGB goons. He’s painstakingly uploaded it to his blog and from my machine it works perfectly. However, he’s only going to have it up for two days, so it’s important to see it now. It’s in Spanish today, but even if you don’t speak Spanish, go see it anyway because you can still tell what’s going on. Val will have English subtitles up tomorrow. See the whole thing here.
Venezuela Today has found an extremely significant strategic development in the Colombian press: Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez is thinking of withdrawing Venezuela’s membership from the Organization of American States. He would do that to circumvent the regional organization’s group efforts to strengthen the OAS’ Democracy Charter, which of course does not serve his interests as a dictator. This wily move comes as a blow to the Bush administration, which has stated that its strategy is to force Chavez to adhere to democratic norms or face OAS sanctions – and, at this meeting, the U.S. is proposing to add the additional…
Jimmy Carter’s minions have been turning up a lot in Caracas lately, and bloggers like Miguel Octavio aren’t particularly impressed. Neither is blogger Daniel Duquenal. And neither am I.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez ordered the arrest of a past president who ordered some massacre back in 1989 to preserve ‘order.’ What’s disgusting to blogger Alek Boyd is that he’s ordered the same kinds of massacres himself. He has it on tape. Obviously, Chavez doesn’t think he’s ever going to run into a future president who will, in turn, arrest him for his own massacres, citing precedent. Chavez is aged 48. Says a lot, don’t you think?
Remember Stalin’s airbrushed photos, reflecting who was purged and who was in favor? The trend seems to be beginning in Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s political propaganda these days. Venezuelan blogger Miguel has come up with a classic blog expose about crowd pictures in Hugo Chavez’s propaganda. All of the people in the crowds are phony repeat images. He has the photos with diagrammed lines showing the ridiculous fakery. So much for Chavez being a popular guy, he can’t even get a crowd together to illustrate his own propaganda!
From a Venezuelan blogger, citing dictator Hugo Chavez’s declaration: ???????The US is planning to kill me…??????? “He should be so lucky; his complete failure should be judged with him alive.” (Read the rest here.)
Whenever Hugo Chavez of Venezuela’s popularity drops, he weighs in with “news” of an American assassination plot against him. He’s feeling some kind of heat today and needs to talk assassinations. Or maybe he’s heard about that upper bunk General Noriega’s reserving for him. Whatever it is, he’s talking like a madman running from the white coats. If you can read Spanish, it’s right here. TRANSLATION: This is Rob. Though I’d practice my Spanish a bit and try to translate this: President Hugo Ch????vez Frias assured that the government of the United States is planning to assassinate him, “the first…