Blogging the democratic revolution
Olavo de Carvalho is a brilliant Brazilian intellectual who keeps closely focused on the origins of the far left movements that exist in Latin America and why they are so insidious. Aleksander Boyd at VCrisis spent some time with him, and a terrific, deeply thoughtful exchange of ideas between the two revolutionaries followed. Carvalho attributes the new traction for nondemocratic leftism in the Americas to the writings of an Italian intellectual named Antonio Gramsci. In the ruins of communism’s demise in Eastern Europe, this Italian’s stock has risen, because his approach to Marxism is quite new and different from the…
”We are not a shill for anyone in this,” claimed Steve Schwadron, chief of staff to U.S. Congressman Delahunt who’s just concluded an oil-for-loyalty deal with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, in the first-ever brazen effort to buy political influence through cheap oil to the underclass through the offices of willing U.S. Congressman. The real story on this gamy political deal to buy political influence in the U.S., and the dangerous implications for Venezuela’s democracy can be read in this spectacular expose by a Venezuelan oil director here. Meanwhile, the depth of Venezuela’s own poverty can be seen in photos here…
Venezuela’s Aleksander Boyd at VCrisis has a stunning piece translated from the Mexican press about the extent of Hugo Chavez’s and Fidel Castro’s political meddling in Mexico and its elections. That’s MEXICO – right on our border, walking distance from San Diego and El Paso and Laredo and Matamoros and Yuma – that Mexico! The extent of the cash shoveling and gunrunning is far deeper than anyone knew, and extends even to violent groups who have commenced blowing up banks in Mexico these days, over free trade. Which just happens to be what Chavez has declared war on. With Chavez’s…
…through free trade. It’s put Mexico on the world map as a player, while Venezuela grows ever less significant. The Fox-Chavez spat just brought it all to everyone’s attention. Investor’s Business Daily has the editorial here. Meanwhile, via Boz, I read in Marcela Sanchez’s pretty good column of the critical need for free trade and all the Neanderthals in Washington who are blocking it. She’s right, but doesn’t mean they should not be fought. The whole story is here. Andres Oppenheimer hit a true home run, one of his best columns, called ‘Chavez Started It’ describing what went on at…
Relations have been strained between Mexico and Venezuela since the conclusion of the free trade summit of the Americas. The precise issue at stake: Free Trade. This Sunday, Chavez on his radio program launched a huge hurl of insults directed at President Vicente Fox, resulting in demands from Mexico for an apology within 24 hours: Academic Elephant puts it best here: President Fox has demanded a formal apology and threatened to downgrade diplomatic relations with Caracas. Good for him. Chavez should learn that not all of central and Latin America will roll over for his petrodollars and that his gross…
In the post-Summit-of-the-Americas, wake, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has lashed out at Mexican President Vicente Fox, publicly hurling a slew of insults at the unexpected star of the Argentina gathering. Fox was so brilliant and forceful in his advocacy of free trade for the Americas that he actually did manage to draw a few cameras away from the Argentina rent-a-mob smashing shops amid exhortations by Chavez, through his own considerable star power. That was a disaster for Chavez. Now, the Venezuelan dictator has struck back. Chavez does this as Mexico is in the throes of an election to be held…
Investor’s Business Daily has an excellent editorial up about President Bush’s visit to Argentina for discussion about the FTAA. It lashes at the negative media portrayal here in the United States, despite the fact that the vast majority of countries are on board with it. Make sure to check it out.
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has hurled a major strike at the free press. Patricia Poleo, the fearless journalist who exposed government shenanigans over a mysterious car-bombing last year of a prosecutor, has been arrested — and along with a military man, a banker and a Cuban exile, charged with the murder herself. The background to her story is here, here, here, and here. Poleo is a dissident, and has even organized protests against Chavez, like this one we blogged here, but she has never engaged in or advocated violence against the Chavez regime. Her only obsession seems to have been…
Try as he did, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez still hasn’t made America’s coveted ‘Axis Of Evil’ list of nations. But it’s not all a vale of tears for him, he did get Venezuela promoted to ‘Rogue State,’ right up there alongside Syria, quietly raising the likelihood of military conflict with the U.S. No fireworks, no glory, no presidential speeches denouncing him as ‘evil.’ But it is certainly an accomplishment, a badge of honor, a gang tattoo, in Chavez’s circle of friends. Chavez will have quite a bit to talk about at the next UN cocktail party before this new status…
Here in the states, we all had a good laugh when Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez denounced Halloween as part of ‘the U.S. culture of terror.’ He also said that Halloween costumes were terrible efforts to scare people as well as alien to the Venezuelan culture. By the sound of it, you could almost imagine that he actually believed that Halloween’s playful merrymaking with ghosts and goblins was actually real to him. To U.S.-Americans, Chavez sort of sounded like a stereotypical backwoods Christian fundamentalist preacher. I grew up with such people and remember hearing the exact same exhortions against the ‘celebration…
Aleksander Boyd has posted a long and extensive report on the state of democracy in Venezuela from its leading democracy advocate, Sumate. The report shows in precise terms the parlous state of Venezuelan democracy and the news is not good. But it is a very important and historic report and Alek read all of it and urges the rest of it to do the same. He writes: Sumate has produced the most comprehensive report about the state of democracy in Venezuela. I highly recommend to read through and analyse the facts presented. By far the best resource for information on…
El Universal has its weekly Venezuelan land-expropriations roundup, illustrating how the increasingly Marxist government is taking ever greater numbers of rights from the people. The disturbing string of ongoing confiscations is here.
Now this is something you have to see! Venezuela’s Francisco Toro has challenged Venezuela’s Gustavo Coronel to an ‘Opinion duel’ on a special blog they set up for just that purpose. They are arguing about the nature of the ‘ni-ni’‘s, those people in Venezuela who have not made up their minds about whether they support Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez or not. The ground rules are posted, with each post limited to 750 words and no more than four posts allowed. Naturally, both parties will argue like Adams and Jefferson, rather than Chavez and his latest Barbie doll, so reason will…
The bloggers have come up with a real big one on voter fraud in Venezuela. Miguel explains it out very well here. Venezuelan congressional elections are being held on Dec. 4 and a court has ruled in favor of stacking the vote today. See my post here. But that’s not the only problem. Now Javier at Notiven has found thousands of Gonzalezes all born on the same day and the same state, 95% of them in Zulia. He’s got the documents to go see. Here is a translation below from the original on Notiven: Can Venezuelan Electorate Authority explain this?…
In a significant defeat for Venezuela’s democracy, a new voting system installed by the Chavista government, called ‘los morochas’, which disproportionately benefits Chavista incumbents, was affirmed by Venezuela’s Supreme Court, an appointed body stacked with Chavista loyalists. It is expected to raise Hugo Chavez’s representation in the Congress – where he already has a majority – to Kim Il Sung levels of popular ‘support.’ The bell tolls for Venezuelan democracy with this ruling. Non-government organizations like Sumate have stated that this is a blow for democracy and there is no chance of fair elections being held now. This is a…
…on poverty figures. It’s one of the most disgusting things he’s ever done. Andres Oppenheimer of the Miami Herald, in one of his best columns, uncovered what bloggers have been saying all along: poverty has risen, not fallen, in Hugo Chavez’s ’21st-century-socialist’ Venezuela, supposedly a champion of the poor. They of course meant: creating more poor during a time of record high oil prices. The item is here. Miguel Octavio had the original item on the re-cooked statistics on poverty, probably as a result of Oppenheimer’s column. In all, it amounts to the Cubanization of Venezuela’s once-reliable statistics, a corruption…
Venezuela’s main newspaper, El Universal, in a true blog style, is now putting out a weekly roundup of all the Zimbabwe-style land confiscations engulfing Venezuela under the far-left Chavez regime. The list of all the farmers who have had their ranches taken away ‘in the name of the people’ is long and horrible, given the fact that all of these productive farms will soon fall fallow. It’s also revolutionary tinder. No society can build itself on a foundation of stealing from others. It’s an important roadmap for the coming news and there is enough of it going on now that…
As we noted here, Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez has offered to take questions from the public through the BBC. It’s about what you’d imagine, with readers asking some fairly tough questions, along with plenty of softballs, and Chavez replying glibly and smoothly. If you ask me, it looked coached, due to the suaveness of Chavez’s answers, quite unlike the rougher impromptu ones he gave to Ted Koppel and the Washington Post. Contentwise, it sounds as though Chavez intended to be a crowd-pleaser in the West, because his BBC words not matching his words at home. If that’s so, it’s a…
Right on the heels of the Bolivian factory workers’ history-making march to demand a free trade pact at the U.S. embassy gates, one of Hugo Chavez’s minions has come out to condemn free trade with all of the Americas (ALCA), and said MercoSur (a smaller non-U.S. trade bloc dominated by Brazil and Argentina) is the way to go. Something in the Bolivians’ actions has stuck in the chavista craw. There is something odd about how they are raging against trade with the U.S. so virulently all of a sudden. When we last heard from such people, they were ranting on…
Investor’s Business Daily has an amazing editorial today suggesting that oil prices have probably peaked. It cites significant trading activity showing that some very big players are selling oil stocks like a herd of panicked elephants, unafraid to take losses now – because they know the losses are going to be bigger later. It’s really interesting stuff because this paper knows how to read stock markets in a systemic way and implicitly forecasts very well. If this reading is correct, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is finally in for some very bad times. Right now he has held onto power not…
Aleksander Boyd at VCrisis has an great post about how he, as a citizen journalist, confronted power directly in the most amazing way I’ve ever seen anyone in the blogosphere do. It’s a great lesson in creativity for any democratic revolutionary anywhere in the world. From his exile in London, he learned of a London trade show on Biometrics where the top Venezuelan election official would be addressing a business audience of peers. He creatively figured out a way to get an invitation and managed to get a question about Venezuela’s fraudulent recall referendum asked – and answered – directly.…
Boz has a new collection of polls from around the Americas, and with more than a dozen elections scheduled for this hemisphere in the coming year, they are all worth watching. One of the most significant polls he’s found is on Mexico, showing that upstart-dinosaur Arturo Montiel Rojas, was running even with establishment-dinosaur Roberto Madrazo, meaning that he was mounting a significant challenge to the oldest of the old party guard. His sudden exit after a finance scandal today from the PRI primary race will likely hurt the PRI’s chances for the presidency when elections are held in mid-2006. The…
Miguel Buitrago of MABB on Bolivia has a chart showing that the regions in Bolivia that receive the most and the least government spending. Guess which ones are the richest and which ones are the poorest? Go see here. For those who claim more government spending means more wealth, that the rich are only rich at the expense of the poor, that there is only so much to go around, that the economic pie is only a matter of slicing and not expanding, that redistribution from rich to poor is the only answer, there are going to be some surprises.…
Boz has a fascinating collection of polls from around the Americas in several countries signalling the political temperatures in assorted hot spots like Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru and others, all put together in a clean roundup of news. Don’t miss the weird Argentine soccer poll at the bottom. Well worth a click here.
Francisco Toro has an interesting item about the growth of the ‘ni-ni’s in Venezuela’s political system. These are the people who are neither for Chavez nor for the opposition to Chavez. They are sort of fence-sitters, or, as Francisco suggests, the political center. As a group, they are growing, and new parties like Venezuela de Primero (he has a link) are trying to cater to them. With an election approaching on Dec. 4, this trend will be well worth watching. Read it here.