Blogging the democratic revolution
UPDATED: While President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia was ringing the opening bell of the New York stock exchange today, his ministers back home were announcing that interest rates would be slashed 50 basis points and nearly a billion more dollars in debt was being repaid. Meanwhile, Colombia’s trade surplus was expanding, tourism was up 19.5%, foreign investment was soaring, banks were lending and remittances were up. Goldman Sachs noted admiringly that Colombia retained a tight fiscal policy despite an election year ahead. The only worry Colombia seemed to have on that day – probably unique in Latin America – was…
The signatures that led to a recall referendum in Venezuela last year have since become Hugo Chavez’s blacklist against his political enemies. Aleksander Boyd has a stunning collection of screenshots showing how Venezuela’s increasingly freedomless regime has used the latest technology to perpetrate low-tech vengeance. It’s a don’t miss because there’s something mind-changing about the images. You won’t look at the issue the same way after you see these photos. See it here.
That’s what Alexandra Beech argues is the real meaning of Secuestro Express, a scary new movie about ‘express kidnappings’ in Venezuela that is making waves in Hollywood. Read her fascinating analysis here.
Driving Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is his animosity directed at the U.S. He loathes the U.S. not only because it’s what he really feels (he is said to stiffen in the presence of U.S. citizens) but almost as importantly, because it is politically useful. In Chavez’s logic, if all the blame about the poverty and oppression in the world can be focused on just the detested U.S., the rest of the world will unite behind Chavista ideas and he can then build an alliance to eventually challenge the hated “hegemon.” It’s not working the way he planned though. There are…
One of the most difficult things for outsiders to understand about Venezuela is the passion with which both sides argue about the April 2002 political mess that shook Venezuela. Chavez calls it a coup attempt. Opponents say it was pre-planned violence. Tiny details are bickered over and held up as proof. To an outsider, it’s bewildering. Chavez stayed in power, after all, didn’t he? Why the debate? Analyst James Sweeney points out some new and compelling facts about this incident. Chavez is desperate to convict his opponents as coupsters in court. But even though he controls the courts, he has…
Qando.net blog has a point-by-point comparison of the land confiscations going on simultaneously in both Venezuela and Zimbabwe. Other than his hint that Hugo Chavez, unlike Robert Mugabe, is actually a reasonable man who doesn’t quite realize what he is doing, it is a very valuable list of comparisons whose facts speak for themselves. Read it here.
Have you ever heard of anything more macabre? Dozens of life-size , lovingly constructed cardboard skeletons have appeared all over Caracas, on overpasses, on lampposts, on bridges, over highways. Miguel has a photo of the freakish spectre here. The dozens of hanging skeletons are a protest, something from a mysterious youth group called Cambio, which says it is protesting Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s casual murders of young people without punishment across the country. It’s also a legacy of Chavez’s willingness to shoot demonstrators, something that has damped protest rallies, this knowledge that one execution by Chavez goons will be carried…
In Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s army, there is something called ‘military doctine’ and within that doctrine, is a weird fascination with ‘asymmetrical warfare.’ That asymmetrical warfare, of course, is block committees and ragtag guerrillas, all keeping their eyes on the barrios amid revolutionary vigilance in a strong bid to repress spontaneous groupings. It’s a real clown show. Alek Boyd has a scintillatingly detailed and interesting account of the strange innards of Chavez’s military here.
The Zimbabwe effect is rolling in fast and thick in Venezuela. Confiscations of churches, land, businesses and bank accounts are accelerating. Each day brings news of new expropriations in ‘the name of the people.’ Never before has such an abuse of property rights been so bold. Today, we noted that a Church had been taken over on these dubious grounds with Alek Boyd’s story here. But that’s hardly all. Tomas Sancio shares his thoughts on the blatant theft of several grain silos belonging to a beer company in Venezuela. Supposedly they were ‘idle’ but Tomas asks, ‘what is the definition…
Three attacks on the Church from the hemisphere’s Marxist Axis in two days makes me think there may be a coordinated effort by Chavez-Castro & Friends to confront the Church. Given the weak state of the Church in most of the world, it’s hard to grasp why dictators should see it as such a threat but perhaps this is an region where the Church remains a robust force. It certainly was in Poland back in the 1980s. There may be a brewing showdown between the Church and communism, something not seen since Pope John Paul II verbally mauled Daniel Ortega…
In the Chavista Revolution in Venezuela, no one is more neglected than the helpless. There are all kinds of soup-kitchen programs and money flying around, but they benefit only those who can help Chavez politically in return. That excludes many. Chavez’s revolution is Marxist, and as such, its philosophical foundation is materialism. For Chavez, the materialist fuel driving his revolution is U.S. dollars from Venezuelan oil revenue. This is an advantage no previous communist state has ever had, neither Eastern Europe, Russia, China, Vietnam, North Korea nor Cuba, making Venezuela’s descent into communism one virulent revolution that will be hard…
What does 6,000 extrajudicial killings by police sound like? Oh, but you remind yourself that Argentina’s and Chile’s dirty wars have long been over, as dictators like Pinochet are brought to justice. Well, there is one part of South America where these dirty wars have not stopped – in fact, they have started. Venezuela, one of the few countries in South America with no history of a dirty war is resurging as the dirty war capital of the Americas, a horrific title as the bodies and mass graves turn up, a title that one had hoped had long passed for…
As Jesse Jackson visits Venezuela’s strongman Hugo Chavez at the presidential palace this weekend, with timing that suggests a plan to denounce what he calls the ‘Rumsfeld-Robertson connection’, outside in the streets – violent protests have engulfed Caracas in a sign of Chavez’s tightening grip on power. El Universal has the story in Spanish here and Globovision has the story in Spanish here. Miguel explains it in English for us here. Sources: El Universal, Globovision, Union Radio, Venevision, Reuters and El Nacional. Reuters has the story here. UPDATE: Aleksander Boyd points out media errors in some of the captioning in…
More thoughts on Pat Robertson’s public recommendation that Hugo Chavez be assassinated from Venezuelan bloggers: Tomas Sancio in Venezuela, in an open note to Robertson, notes Chavez’s many incompetences and says he’s incapable of being the ruthless dictator who could use assassination. (I strongly differ with Sancio here – all the dictatorships I have seen up close or studied are characterized by venal incompetence, including Nazis.) But its broader point about Chavez’s sloppiness is correct and it’s a well-argued essay full of interesting information. Aleksander Boyd takes a clear-eyed view of Robertson’s cheap inane statements and makes the point that…
Alexandra Beech has a fantastically insightful essay debunking a truly lousy piece by airheaded Washington Post columnist Marcela Sanchez, who claims Hugie Chavez is just a teddy bear in the region capable of stabilizing it. Well, yeah, the way graveyards tend to be stable places I guess. But Alex shows the reality much better – take a look at the depth of this: That Ms. Sanchez has been hood-winked into believing that Chavez has a Robin Hood side is not surprising. After all, she believes that ???????Latin America today is not in the midst of a Cold War where externally…
Oh man, this is really gross – Hugo Chavez is bed with Marc Rich, the most corrupt speculator of all, a guy who makes George Soros look like a sweet little daisy. Rich is the ultimate sleaze in the world of capitalism, in bed with every dictator and criminal out there. I know a lot of speculators myself but none, not one, ever wants anything to do with his tainted name. They back away from him like salt from pepper in a bowl of water not out of fear or shame, for they have none, but out of disgust. They…
Venezuela’s revolution is complex because it has two sides claiming to hold the revolutionary mantle. The reality is, only one does, the one that does the democratic housework, not the one that spends the night painting the town – with red graffiti. What do the real revolutionaries do? They build the case for democratic revolution. They hold the powerful accountable. They show where the problems are, and precisely. They don’t focus on personality (like the Chavistas do, and come to think of it, Pat Robertson, too). They focus on acts, deeds, facts. Tangible things. They act as voices in the…
‘Christian’ televangelist Pat Robertson generated unprecedented headlines about Hugo Chavez in the blogosphere and in the U.S. media Tuesday when he publicly called for the assassination of the Venezuelan dictator. Technorati listed it as its top search on the blogosphere. Google listed it as its top story worldwide in all categories and ran it as its first banner story above a fatal Peruvian jetliner crash. Bloomberg did five updates on this ‘stop the presses’ news item before beginning more coverage here. CNN did a special report. Wikipedia was flooded with inquiries about who Hugo Chavez is. It was the biggest…
In the new era of revolutions, tyrants often are reluctant to send troops in to shoot when the millions of people roll into the streets demanding justice. They don’t want CNN’s cameras on them and 20-year war crime trials in the Hague to follow. That’s one reason why the whole world has seen a democratic awakening – in Ukraine – in Kyrgyzstan – in Lebanon – in Bahrain – in Kuwait – in Maldives – in Philippines – in Russia – in Georgia. But in countries with certain authentic tyrants determined to cling to power past their mandates, like Venezuela…
Ecuador is a basket case about to blow. It’s likely to get yet another a new president before U.S. Labor Day. And with its sudden oil production shutdown and troop dispatch, it’s also the leading news story moving world financial markets, hitting stocks and oil prices Friday. Just see the Top Ten leader here. No country is more important. And what is the turmoil about this time? A splitting apart government, with Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro in the middle of it. Alek Boyd has an excellent – and rare – political x-ray of the shenanigans going on there. It’s…
More from Harry Hutton on the Chavista Festival of Youth. Go see it here. UPDATE: Alek Boyd has more good stuff from disgruntled delegates who saw Chavez Venezuela just a little too closely – read it here.
Commercial aircraft crashes in Venezuela, 152 dead. How long before Hugo Chavez tries to politicize this? Prepare for any of these explanatory templates from Hugo Chavez sometime this week. That’s the kind of atmosphere Hugo Chavez has created for Venezuela. He’ll do it to whip up popular support, given his abysmal showing (last figure: 9% voted for Chavez’s MVR party) in this month’s municipal elections. Here are some likely possibilities: 1. What a coincidence – three planes crashed in this month – Canada, Greece and Venezuela. The gringos obviously bombed this, planes don’t crash that often on their own. 2.…
from Harry Hutton: QUOTE “At the Conference of the Americas, I????????m going to sneak up on him ÄBushÅ real quiet and shout BOO!” Hugo Chavez, speaking at the Tribunal Against Imperialism this evening. (Imperialism got convicted, you’ll be pleased to hear.) He doesn????????t often refer to him as Bush. Calls him Mr Danger. Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the Republic. Meanwhile, how did I miss this? Alek Boyd has a good writeup from the other day of other things that went on at that Chavista youth festival, besides the Chavista mock trial of America starring former garage band singer…
The Florida register of companies contains details of the board of directors of Smartmatic Corporation, which is formed by Antonio Mugica, Alfredo Anzola, Antonio Mugica Rivero, Roger Pi????ate, Antonio Mugica Sesma and Luis Feliu Ä1Å. Its principal place of business is 1001 Broken Sound Parkway, NW, STE D, Boca Raton, FL 33487. The company’s history in Venezuela dates back to seven years ago when the venture was “the Research and Development Unit of Panagroup in Venezuela” (sic) and in “2000 we realized the true impact of our technology in the growing device-networking market, and we emerged as an independent company”…