Blogging the democratic revolution
Oil prices are rising. Yet US inventories are up. That’s not normal. Venezuela is pumping below its OPEC quota, with production down. (Link UPDATED). The state oil company is in shambles. And Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez is on the rumored verge of firing 12,000 oil workers in already-rebellious Zulia state in the west. Meanwhile, his oil minister denies it. Screaming ‘sabotage’ and ‘CIA infiltration’ and ‘silent strike,’ Chavez’s underlings are in distress as the oil refineries (including the gigantic Amuay refinery which was shut down last month amid rumors of worker sabotage) slide into turmoil. The generals of the military…
Bolivia’s excellent Miguel Buitrago, who blogs in English, warns that big trouble may begin tomorrow in Bolivia. The Congress is set to vote on the question of taxes and royalties on Monday, May 2, and Coca King Evo Morales, fresh from being succored by Chavez and Castro in Havana this past week, is in no mood for backing down. As such, Bolivians will be deprived of the opportunity to develop their resources and Bolivian natural gas faces a great future underground. If the worst happens, Evo Morales should be so proud. But Bolivians may not stand for it, and that…
Fidel Castro’s Big Dumb Houseboy down in Caracas will listen to any sweet talk from his hairy Havana caudillo provided he says it nicely enough. That was why it was so easy to convince the hulky fool to turnnnnnn the checkbook, uhrrrr …. precious oil resources … over … to Castro’s own loving care. Fidel, you see, has convinced Chavez that he knows his wants and needs better than even Chavez himself. And can take care of Venezuela’s oil supply mucccccchhhhhh better than the Venezuelans can. It all makes perfect sense. Doesn’t it? Miguel Octavio has the deadly lowdown on…
How bad is it for Venezuela? Is it really a colony of Cuba? This essay by Gustavo Coronel should settle the question definitively. Read it here.
Venezuela does not have a conventional revolutionary set-up. It’s a revolution within a revolution, where, six years ago, “reformer” Hugo Chavez was elected to power as an outsider who would make a difference, and who instead ran his country’s affairs like an old-line caudillo party boss, his cronies lining their pockets, but with the added detail of retrograde Castroite communism as his substitute for reform. Of course he is hated. Essayist Gustavo Coronel takes a serious, scholarly look at Chavez’s decaying revolution and the prospects for a more authentic one replacing it. Read it here.
I’ve been reading a lot about the maneuvering in Asia between China, India, Australia, and India. Of course, in the midst of all this, it doesn’t help U.S. policy that China has been portrayed as a capitalist boomland with the slight burden of a communist regime. Up until now, most people and even legislators have been growing too friendly with the China’s expansion. In case anyone forgot, let me refer you to the previous sentence: China has a communist regime. At large, China is becoming a major power player on the world stage, and because of it, many issues ranging…
Thomas Lifson at American Thinker has an important item out about growing unrest in China. Huge riots are occurring, not just in the remote, impoverished west, but now in the wealthier coastal cities. At issue is corruption and impunity. And with the rise of mass communications and Internet connectivity, Chinese expectations about governance are rising. A billion people are getting sick of all the corruption and oppression they see around them. The root of the problem is this: the government will not renounce unworkable communism as its philosophy. It says communism is its system but capitalism is its policy. That…
In unstable countries, the fuse of revolution is lit from a burning dollar bill. And right now in Venezuela, there’s very dry tinder indeed. Billions of dollars of oil cash is being stolen by the cronies of dictator Hugo Chavez on a scale never seen while poverty there rises. Forty percent of Venezuela’s economy is oil, and all of that from an inefficient state oil company. What does that mean? Money that should be used to reinvest in equipment and maintenance to create jobs and keep the operation going is instead going into corrupt pockets while the pumpjacks, pipelines, refineries,…
Miguel has translated a dazzling article from Spain outlining, in the most precise and concrete terms, why Venezuela can have all the poverty it cares to pay for. It’s chilling and illuminating. Read it here.
…and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez behind it. I wrote an analysis for American Thinker this morning. It’s here.
Blogger Daniel keeps us well-apprised of the everyday aspects of Venezuela’s descent into communism. Today, the grocery stores are demanding ID for even the purchase of bread and water. This is the beginning of rationing. Daniel also gives us a rundown on Venezuela’s state oil company and Hugo Chavez’s mysterious unwillingness to open the books on it, and wonders if might be the real reason he wants to cut off oil from the U.S. Americans keep very good tabs on how much they buy and how much they pay, and Hugo Chavez probably doesn’t want anyone to know how badly…
Jorge Arena has an extraordinary personal account of what Venezuela was in the 1960s, the 1970s after the Arab oil embargo, and the conditions that led up to the rise of Hugo Chavez. It’s readable and lucid and a must read – a truly excellent essay. Read the whole thing here.
The Nation magazine has a sugar-coated vision of Hugo Chavez’s Veneuzela, described in an article purportedly written as a “news” story by Christian Parenti, someone who used to spend his time at Young Communist League meetings in San Francisco. Parenti’s trying to make his story appear a respectable reporting job (as Cuban propagandists coincidentally advise) but it’s pretty clear he’s ignoring the biggest parts of the story in his bid to plug Hugo Chavez. Essayist Gustavo Coronel, a Venezuelan who knows the deal, gives a good factual, statistics-heavy rebuttal to this blatant propaganda effort to defend the indefensible. Read the…
Common canard holds that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, whatever his faults, at least is ending poverty through his soup-kitchen programs. Andres Oppenheimer blows the lid off that steaming pot, though, by taking a good look at the Venezuelan government’s own statistics. What he sees appalls him. He writes: Indeed, the latest poverty figures from Venezuela’s official National Institute of Statistics — buried in a mountain of figures deep in the bowels of its Internet site, www.ine.gov.ve — contain the most damning condemnation of the Ch????vez government I have seen anywhere. The figures, on Page 5 of the Institute’s Social Report,…
A few significant things have happened in this arena besides the sale of fighter jets to both Pakistan and India. Secretary of State Rice has recently said that the U.S. aims to make India a world power in the 21st century. Washington: The United States unveiled plans Friday to help India become a “major world power in the 21st century” even as it announced moves to beef up the military of Pakistan. Under the plans, Washington offered to step up a strategic dialogue with India to boost missile defense and other security initiatives as well as high-tech cooperation and expanded…
If you need a summary of what has happened to Venezuela since the dictatorship of Hugo Chavez, Gustavo Coronel, an elegant essayist, has a long but well-written description of the path to ruin, “In Venezuela: The Time of the Barbarians” here.
Larry Kudlow on Real Clear Politics has an important analysis on just how out out of whack oil prices are and why skyrocketing prices at the pump won’t last. If he is right, there will be political consequences for oil giants like Iran, Venezuela and others whose dictators have sealed their claims to power on a foundation of soaring oil. The market gets these bastards every time.
This week, the U.S. declared Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s economic model an absolute failure and warned him against exporting it abroad. That’s the right thing to say, and obviously, they have looked at what he’s done domestically. But for ordinary Venezuelans, there is still hunger and poverty. Venezuelan blogger Gustavo Coronel gives an important description of how this Chavez model has created new hunger in his essay: ‘The Venezuela of Hugo Ch????vez: The truth in numbers.’ What is happening there is devastating.
In my recent post, Has Qadafi Caught the Spirit?, I wrote that there were mixed signs that Libya’s ruler, Mu’amar Qadafi, was committed to ending his country’s economic and political isolation. In today’s Al-Quds Al-Arabi, it was reported that Libya plans to cut 46,000 government jobs over the next year. As the article notes, Libya has 862,000 government workers, a huge figure when you consider that the country’s entire population is only a little over five million. Libya’s Prime Minister, Muhammad Mu’atuq, stated that some of the positions were to be eliminated through privatization, pushing them into “other productive work.”…
While the New York Times spews Molotovian propaganda for land reform in Venezuela, Miguel’s got some AUTHENTIC reporting about what a terrifying disaster it’s becoming, a serious maelstrom of murder, violence, bloodshed and thuggery. This is a must read, the important truth from the blog trumping the flowery ‘Imagine’ picture written up about in the ever-diminishing-in-credibility New York Times.
Gustavo Coronel, a retired Venezuelan oil executive weighs in with a superb essay on Dutch Disease, the impact of oil on an economy and how it is fueling Venezuela????????s dangerous swing into backward communism.