Blogging the democratic revolution
Hugo Chavez has consolidated power in Venezuela. But that is not enough. He has taken his oil earnings to buy influence all through the Americas. At the expense of Venezuela. It’s a growing issue there. Gustavo Coronel has one of the most comprehensive and eloquent essays on the issue. Read it here.
There they are, Chavista Cheesecake at the Chavez Youth Festival, posing away in exclusive photos for a blog site called ‘Chase Me Ladies, I’m In The Cavalry.’ Boy are they gonna be in trouble when the comrades on the block committees back in the barrios find out. There goes the party card. Harry has more here. UPDATE: Whoops, forgot a Chavista babe – Boli-Nica has a photo of Evo Morales cavorting at the Chavez Youth fest here.
Daniel at Venezuela News and Views has a STUNNING piece about what the Venezuelan opposition should do now in the wake of Venezuela’s failed municipal elections this past weekend. It’s is AWESOME, beyond Daniel at his finest to something quite godly. He’s like Alexander Hamilton in his suggestions for the opposition of what arguments to use, what tactics to take, what strategy to follow now, in these conditions. It’s truly awesome. Daniel’s rapier diagnosis: The other fact is that at way more than half of your voters, those that usually vote for you, did not bother to vote this time.…
Some Brit named Harry who has a very valuable Web site obnoxiously titled ‘Chase Me Ladies, I’m In The Cavalry‘ has gotten into the Chavista Youth Festival, and loaded up his blog with a dozen pictures and sarcastic commentary. Harry writes: Streets full of communists. Please advise. (As Tim Blair would say, check out those awesome power fists! -Mora) (Another youthful Chavista Babe Of Politics -Mora) UPDATE! It turns out to be the International Festival of Youth and Students. (Walking around Caracas the other day I thought some hippies were having some kind of giant fucking jumble-sale.) 17,000 students and…
Cheap oil for rich Uruguay – that’s Hugo Chavez’s masterplan for winning influence in the region. What’s news to him is that it won’t buy him any influence. Down in that part of the world, people who are bought don’t necessarily stay bought. Just ask the IMF and emerging market investors about Argentina! Not that Uruguayans enjoy that comparison to their neighbor, but I think it’s highly questionable that Uruguay will become a Venezuelan satellite over this. They are able to buy oil at market rates. Hugo Chavez is just not making them have to. Uruguayan per capita income is…
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, like Evo Morales of Bolivia, has enemies among leftwing extremists. Strange but true. And they are angry about the election – apparently, none of their votes were counted. Now, they are rioting, against Hugo Chavez. Miguel has the first reports here. Daniel has the bigger story with photos. He and I agree that this is the state of chaos to come in Venezuela given the destruction of democratic institutions and avenues of dissent. As I warned earlier in some of my writings. The mob is angry at Chavez and it’s heading for Thermidor. Read it here.
The U.S. is preparing sanctions against Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, based on its cutoff of drug cooperation. Hugo Chavez, along with Fidel Castro, is creating a drug corridor to the U.S. for the benefit of their FARC allies. It’s a chilling new front in the war on narcoterror. With sanctions on the horizon, as early as next month, Chavez moves Venezuela ever closer to pariah-statehood, forcing it to join the ranks of Burma, another narcostate that fails to cooperate on drug enforcement, and edging toward the kind of relationship the U.S. has with Fidel Castro. It’s an interesting coincidence that the…
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has made his first address to the World Congress of Youth, one of these Soviet-era leftover mega-events that young Sandalistas from the West go to, along with their communist-youth cousins from communist countries. I’ve been to these, still have the photos, the main purpose is to get drunk and laid. Apparently, it’s no different this year in Caracas where Sandalistas from mostly commie countries but at least 300 from the states are partying hearty. Amid all this joint joy, in came the penguin-shaped Hugo Chavez, bellowing that he would repel a U.S. invasion with both hands…
They are edging in, and splattered all over the election commission’s Web site for non-easy reading. Miguel has an absolutely fascinating description, which suggests this was a disaster for the Chavistas they are trying to hide. Check out the Zulia numbers – Zulia is where the oil workers live. It’s here. Daniel has more excellent stuff here.
Click here, trust me. TechCentralStation.com published my article about it. Hope you like! PS: Carnival of revolutions.
First reports are in on today’s municipal elections in Venezuela. Hugo Chavez is “winning.” But turnout is so thin that the government has extended voting by two (update: now three) hours to try to make it a double-digit turnout. First reports say it’s running at about 8%. Updated, with the polls closed, the turnout is estimated at 20%. That’s an 80% abstention rate. What a sad sorry affair this is. About 3350 municipal positions are at stake. Jimmy Carter must be so proud of his job instilling confidence in the system last August, which by his own words, was the…
El Universal’s Roberto Giusti has an insightful interview with a top pollster in Venezuela who’s found that President Hugo Chavez is rapidly sliding in the popular approval polls. Among many reasons, he’s found that poor people can only be bought off with ‘social programs’ for so long. Chavez also has dropped in a relatively short period of time, to 45% support, partly because most of his programs have not panned out to expectations (e.g., 400,000 Chavez ‘scholarships’ were dangled before the poor, but only 78 were forked out). And about a third of that popular support is purely for practical…
Election day is tomorrow in Venezuela. It’s more awful than anyone realizes. Not only are the results stacked and foreordained, the electronic evidence one leaves at the ballot box is easily traced to the individual voters, effectively nullifying secret ballot. What will follow will be retribution for dissidents. No one will be permitted to dissent in secret. Anymore. In the end, Venezuela will get Saddamite and Albanian and Castro style “democracy” where 99.99% of the votes go to Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. That wrenching knowledge is fully on the minds of Venezuelans as they decide whether to vote or abstain…
Meanwhile, down at the Crawford Ranch… Source: Associated Press …too bad I don’t have a good horsy picture with ten-gallon hats, but a pickup-truck picture will do. Venezuela’s dictator can only wonder what his next door neighbor is laughing about with President Bush right here – because it’s almost certain Chavez’s name got brought up at some point. Probably with a lot of ridicule too. Hey Hugo – they’re laughing at you!
Miguel has first details of the broadcastings of the TeleChavez network. It’s totally weird. BLECCCCHHHHHH!!!!!!
Here’s a small item that looks like real news – Nick Burns, the number three guy at State, insists that the Andean Free Trade Agreement (this is CAFTA, but for Andean states like Colombia, Ecuador and Peru) is advancing nicely. News sources have repeatedly said that the bloody and terrible Congressional battle to pass CAFTA probably made the Bush administration too demoralized to try to pass more free trade agreements for the foreseeable future. But I am not so sure about that. Maybe, as Burns’ statements suggest, the Bush administration is instead emboldened by CAFTA’s success. And it will grow…
Is there anything harder than picking yourself up to vote in an election you know won’t win? Such is the question confronting Venezuelans this weekend. In the States, those of us who are blue voters who live in red states, and red voters who live in blue cities know what this is like. But it does not stop us. How much harder it is, though, when one knows the system is RIGGED with signs of fraud. It’s hard to lose, but it’s even harder to lose when one really wins. That is what Venezuelans are confronted with. They say vote…
Venezuela’s fearless Rosalio Cardinal Castillo Lara has warned that Venezuela faces a bloodbath under dictator Hugo Chavez, and specifically cites the “unfortunate intervention” of former President Jimmy Carter. It’s about time. Carter has pretended for decades to be this pious man of peace, and feasted off his ‘Nobel laureate’ reputation while doing untold damage to democracies around the world. Because of Carter, North Korea’s monster regime is entrenched, the Iranian ayatollahs are firmly in place, Central America has endured ten years of war, Afghanistan got a communist invasion, the Soviets marched all over the world, and now Venezuela’s democracy has…
Breaking news – Colombia has jammed Telesur, the pan-American Chavez TV Station, because of its glorification of Colombia’s murderous FARC narcoterrorists. Colombia is at war with these animals. They just murdered at least a dozen policemen, see here, note that President Uribe was ‘visibly shaken.’ Now, at war, they’re acting it. It’s another sharp blow for Hugo Chavez and his Masterplan For The Takeover Of The Americas. Colombia is having none of it. Go, Colombia!
Alek Boyd has a good essay describing in detail all the suspicious meetings around machinery ahead of the August 7 Venezuelan local elections. The circumstantial evidence suggests that the fix is in. Read all the way to the end, where he has some interesting speculation about the real role of the Chavista International Youth Festival. I’ll give you a clue: They are up to no good. Read it here.
It’s as if the mighty impact of CAFTA that we all worked so hard to achieve has really started to yield something. Veneconomy, in a brilliant essay here, noted the signs of stinging defeat it rained on Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Suddenly all his oil billions are meaningless compared to the vast opportunity of the great Gringo market up north. What’s Chavez’s oil billions compared to the U.S.’s trillion-dollar buying market? Who wants charity when they can have something way bigger and own it free and clear, no strings attached, through honest two-way trade? National sovereignty? Get it, for real,…
All communist regimes are characterized by shortages. In Venzuela, the government suddenly announced it was suspending all steel exports, creating a new commodity shortage on world markets. But the export gate might not be where the real shortage is. I am wondering if investment-starved Venezuela simply cannot produce the steel it used to produce. It’s only a matter of time before this happens, it may be happening now. Veneconomy sees something more sinister and directional – they argue that Venezuela cannot possibly use the extra steel it produces, at least not for awhile, and will probably end up with stacks…
The best part about CAFTA is upon us – Hugo Chavez has come out screaming on Venezuelan television about CAFTA’s passage. And why shouldn’t he scream about our CAFTA victory? A rich El Salvador, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica are the last things Chavez wants to see. It’s bad enough that these democracies are friendly with the U.S. – now they have free trade rights, too, and as nations they have embarked on a great regional mission to become as rich as America. Why shouldn’t they be? They’re our friends. But for Chavez, it’s pain upon pain.…
It’s the biggest demonstration since the August Recall Referendum. Chavez sicced the firehoses on the thousands of demonstrators. Miguel Octavio has the story and the first dramatic photos here. UPDATE: Daniel has further information here. And Instapundit has taken note, too. UPDATE: Associated Press reports that rocks and bottles were hurled at the thousands of opposition marchers by two dozen chavistas screaming insults. UPDATE: Reuters reports that the chavistas blocked the marchers and set piles of garbage on fire.
Tulio Alavarez, the respected Venezuelan attorney who conclusively proved that there was fraud in Hugo Chavez’s recall referendum, was set upon by Hugo Chavez’s thugs as payback for his democracy work. The goons stopped him as he was preparing to get on an airplane. They tried to call his car stolen. They tried to plant weapons on him. Alvarez was released but he attributed it only to the swift response of the Venezuelan bloggers, who rapidly publicized the travesty. Now, Chavista goons are pretending nothing happened. These thugs, along with their fellow thugs in Havana, have clearly begun an assault…