Blogging the democratic revolution
Venezuela: Where products are generic – and customers are branded Source: Anibal Barreto, Correo de Caroni, via Feathers In the slums of Caracas, Chavista grocery patrons are now being branded on their bellies (food goes into your belly, right?) with indelible ink by store personnel to ensure that they do not buy more chicken than the government arbitrarily allows. Since at least the beginning of the year, Venezuela’s groceries have been wracked by food shortages due to Chavista price controls and controls on foreign currency. Beef, sugar, pork and coffee have disappeared from store shelves. Meanwhile, at state-controlled Chavista stores,…
Fausta has an impressive piece at Pajamas Media on how and why Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez was able to rise to absolute power as a dictator of Venezuela, which he announced on Jan. 9 and consolidated on Feb. 4. If you’re new to Venezuela, or if you just want to read something summed up perfectly, make sure to have a look at Fausta’s flawlessly written piece, one of her very best and that is saying a lot. Read the whole thing here.
After years of braying about ‘food security’ – Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has accomplished the opposite of that: widespread empty shelves for basic food stocks like meat and sugar, throughout Venezuelan grocery stores, duplicating Soviet-style food shortages. The next step will be rationing. As of now, only chicken feet can be bought, according to this AP report. The brutal dictator is repeating the failures of Castrodom in Cuba, as he completely politicizes the economic realm. Chavez is also yelling about ‘speculators’ when the fact is, these food shortages are the natural result of Chavista control over the economy. This goes…
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Source: AP, via Yahoo! News U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came out with strong and unambiguous language for Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, warning that he was trashing democracy and destroying his country. She went after him with a sledgehammer. Naturally, the Venezuelan thug will response with those weird kissing noises or perverse and undignified gibberings about his own sex fantasies, but that doesn’t reduce the power of the condemnation emanating from Washington. Rice warns that Chavez is a dictator, says he is wrecking Venezuela politically and economically and notes he is a menace…
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez assumed power to dictate by decree today Source: EFE, via Yahoo! Mexico Never let it be known that Hugo Chavez is not a dictator now. Anything he says, goes. The Venezuelan rubber-stamp assembly passed a legislative bill to let Hugo “rule by decree.”He will continue to expropriate property, devalue the money, levy punitive taxes, indoctrinate Marxism in the schools and install block committees for neighbor to spy on neighbor, creating a Cuba. He is nothing but a brutal leftist thug who’s stolen power in a democracy and used its means to create a dictatorship, and the…
RCTV workers in Caracas today protest Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s vow to shut them down Source: Reuters, via Yahoo! News Venezuela’s oldest television station is under the gun from the Venezuelan dictatorship of Hugo Chavez. When I say ‘under the gun’ I mean that literally, and you’ll see if you read further. Chavez has vowed to shut down the 53-year old station and throw its workers onto the streets. Never mind what its workers want, what its advertisers want or what its millions of viewers want. Chavez wants this television station destroyed. He not only wants revenge on a political…
Gisele Bunchen in Esquire, 2004 Source: Thomas Hawk blog Beautiful Gisele Bundchen of Brazil has always been my favorite supermodel. Her regal good looks, her tall physique, and her unusual grownup features have always made her a natural for the camera and great photographs. Now she’s given me a reason to really like her – by telling Hugo Chavez he’s repulsive. In fact, she pretty much screwed up her stately nose, narrowed her feline eyes, and sweetly told the fat, leering Venezuelan dictator that he was the Swamp Thing. The Venezuelan dictator had been ogling her like a pervert, in…
Charallave airport west of Caracas Source: Globovision I am getting weary of the words ‘expropriation’ or ‘confiscation’ – what’s going on in Venezuela right now is outright stealing. Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez stole himself an airport today, taking over the Charallave small airplane airport well outside Caracas, which is where all the small planes in Venezuela were diverted after Chavez helped himself to Carlota airport in the center of the city in 2004 or so. Of course he has no intention of paying – he didn’t pay any of the oil companies for his thefts and there’s no way he’s…
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, who now rules by decree Source: AP, via Yahoo! News So how’d you like one man making all your decisions for you? He’d pick your legislator, or dump him, as he pleased. He’d decide your food security – what you would eat. He’d decide whether you get housing or whether you’d own what you thought was your own house, you’d not make any such decisions as yourself. He’d decide how much of your money you could keep or he could take, just like that. Anything he said, would go. He’d be the law of the land.…
In Cuba, instead of using democratic decision-making conventions, like voting, governance is done through the screams and hurled objects of swarming Castroite mobs. Any time a dissident becomes known, the mobs which carry out actos de repudio – acts of repudiation – are right there on the scene, howling communist slogans, throwing rocks, and wielding fists. That’s what passes for governance in Cuba, which calls itself a ‘revolutionary democracy.’ Nature’s bullies never had it better. Today, that Castroite practice has been imported to Venezuela. Miguel Octavio, writing on The Devil’s Excrement posts a passage from an article about a terrifying…
No one relishes the idea of getting into a verbal spat with the likes of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. The Venezuelan president is a thug, a dictator, a caudillo and atrociously violent and vulgar with words, not even counting spit flecks and dog breath. Fighting with him is like wrestling a pig – you both get dirty and the pig likes it. George Bush won’t do it. Condi Rice wouldn’t do it. Neither will Vicente Fox or Felipe Calderon. Alvaro Uribe won’t, and lately, neither will Alan Garcia (although we hope that will change; Alan knows how to mop the floor…
You can kind of hear it in the distance, the tolling bell for Chavez as his regime spirals into ever louder lunacy. But there is a real tolling bell that will get him, the bell of plunging oil prices. That bell is starting to ring so you can hear it. This week, oil prices fell below $52 a barrel. That’s not just bad news for Hugo Chavez, it’s the worst news there could be. Combined with declining production, falling oil prices will ensure that Chavez won’t be making the buku bucks he’s been making in oil earnings, something he’s currently…
Yelling “Fatherland, socialism or death!” Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez was sworn in for his third term, to the sound of crickets chirping. Not one world leader showed up to this Caracas spectacular to witness it – not a single one. Chavez says he didn’t invite anyone, but given his need for adulation, I leave it to you to make up your own mind about the veracity of that. Even Evo Morales said he had better things to do. But the skies were full of world leaders in transport – they all found time to attend tiny Nicaragua’s presidential inaugural, of…
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has signalled his true intentions with more clarity than ever today, announcing that he would expropriate: 1. All the phone lines 2. All the electricity As this happened, a provincial governor from Bolivar state down south let it all hang out, simply saying he wanted to confiscate the entire media, forcing it all under state control. Just ‘nationalization’ don’t you know. Think of the implications of Chavez’s move, there, as well as the nutty governor’s statement. Chavez intends to control all the media and information all through the country. CANTV’s stock has now plunged 16% on…
Like a rotting jungle, redolent of every odor and fetid color, yet utterly impassable in viney tangles, nothing seems to stop the spreading corruption that has now gripped Hugo Chavez’s communist caudillo hacienda known as Venezuela. Daniel in Venezuela, at Venezuela News & Views has an excellent Venezuela corruption roundup, with links to several sources showing the extent of how corruption is overtaking the country and spreading beyond any reasonable reach of reform, showing itself in many different kinds of forms. Read the whole thing here. And don’t miss Miguel’s excellent translation of corruption stories from Le Monde of Paris,…
Is there any such thing as a Marxist regime without an invasion for territory? The Soviets did it – in Chechnya and elsewhere inside the marginally consolidated Tsarist empire, including the vast booty they took in one quarter of the Ukraine in the aftermath of WWI. Then they moved on to other territories, including forays into Mongolia and Afghanistan over the years, as well as spreading their influence significantly in other nonmilitary manners. Mao did it, rolling into Tibet and Xinjiang. The Southeast Asians did it, with Vietnam invading Cambodia and China – which in both cases were curiously justifiable…
When I went to Venezuela late last year, I came back with the impression that it was heading well into Jim Jones territory. There was too much cult of personality there, starting with the gigantic Hugo Chavez billboard that greets you from Caracas airport before you take the highway into the shantytowns, and within the city, all the ‘Chavez IS the people’ posters, with him looking soulful and thoughtful, if not nauseastingly adored by small children gathered around his side. This imagery went well beyond the political and deep into the cultural realm, and beyond even cultural, to the religious…
Slavery, and human sacrifices, are the two great historic curses of our hemisphere that took vast amounts of blood and treasure and time to wipe out after great struggles. But amid these eradications, which were thought to be for good, the seeds of these evils apparently still exist. That’s why we are seeing slavery recrudesce. Who should be the caudillo to first to re-introduce that to our hemisphere? Why, the leader most in touch with his inner barbarism – Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Chavez is proposing to rope in every Venezuelan from ages 18 to 60 to “contribute” free labor…
Venezuela and Russia show remarkable similarities in their social, political and economic systems and levels of attainment, so it is perhaps not surprising to see their two tinpot leaders, Vladimir Putin and Hugo Chavez, seeking ever closer relations. An even more disturbing parallel, though, is that in both countries men who are essentially dictators have won ratification of their power through elections that, while fundamentally corrupt, are still a basic expression of popular support despite the vast majority of the population languishing in poverty while the regimes hoard oil revenue windfalls and obliterate individual liberty. UN data, as outlined below,…
Anti-communist women from Santa Cruz are detained in Bolivia by police enforcers loyal to the leftist government of Evo Morales, which is showing growing intolerance of political dissent. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez threatened them today for their refusal to support Morales. Source, all photos: Getty Images Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has warned the Bolivian babes of Santa Cruz that he’s coming after them. He declared them people of the ‘extreme rightwing‘ and warned that any refusal to support the oppressive greedy hand of the Evo Morales government, which is characterized by its confiscations, will be met by force – from…
Now that Hugo Chavez has been reelected president by a wide margin, Venezuela is swiftly moving toward a one-party state. I know, you think I’m just being a rightwing alarmist. I’m just making it up, it’s nothing but some ruse to make Hugo Chavez look bad. But this isn’t coming from Venezuelans, or from my imagination. It’s not even overtly coming from Chavez’s office, although he may be thinking it. Given Venezuela’s pretense of being a democracy in the eyes of members-only organizations like the OAS, Chavez may have reason to not say he’s moving to a one-party state publicly.…
In the wake of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s thundrous electoral victory on Sunday, he’s back in action, legislating new taxes on Venezuela’s battered middle class. For his first move, he’s decided to tax toilet seats as an “inessential item.” I guess the Venezuelans, some of whom elected him, are now supposed to just go without. Bloomberg reports: The announcement by the government follows the Dec. 3 re- election of Chavez, who had said in September that a tax on whisky mimics a tax on ééoligarchs.” The top surcharge of 35 percent will apply to whiskey, vodka, cigars, candles and toilet…
Voting around Caracas on Sunday. These photos were taken by a pool of 38 citizen journalists who documented the electoral process. Their fascinating slideshow can be found at this Flickr site, here. Hat tip: Venezuela Today Venezuelans went to the polls today to decide who their new president would be. The polls are closed, except that the army is said to be re-opening some by force, to bus in Chavista voters from the hillside slums. One exit poll, from a government-linked polling firms, the San Francisco Bay Area leftist one called Evans-McDonough, is dutifully leaking out, saying Chavez easily leads,…
Based on who I’ve talked to, here is the latest reading of what is believed to be likely to happen Sunday. It pretty much makes sense – on Monday, we can see how it stacks to reality. 1. Markets went hog wild Friday and one source tells me it’s because the markets are pricing in a Manuel Rosales victory over Hugo Chavez. Internal polls put Rosales five to 10 points ahead of Chavez. None show him behind and there is very high optimism in the Rosales camp. (I remember the high optimism pre-recall referendum so I am cautious about that.…
Venezuela is staring down D-Day, the great final election of a year full of Latin American elections, beginning this Sunday. At stake: Will Hugo Chavez be thrown out of power by his own people? Right now, the polls are mixed, with Chavista polls saying Chavez has a wide lead, and Opposition polls saying Manuel Rosales, his challenger, has a small lead. Besides that, there were the vast avalanchas, showing tremendous commitment from the opposition. The fate of the entire hemisphere – and whether we will have Iran-style nuclear issues directed at the states, from Iran’s ally, Hugo Chavez – hinges…