Blogging the democratic revolution
Dictator Hugo Chavez of Venezuela breaks everything he touches. He’s destroyed Venezuela’s democratic institutions, wrecked its judiciary, laid waste to its oilfields, subverted its elections, desecrated its ecology, devalued its money, trashed its free press, busted its banks, stomped its property rights, tore apart its relations with the U.S., gutted its civil service, split its…
If you want to read something that’s a real treat and explains out well the nature of Hugo Chavez in light of his bizarre claims about becoming a nuclear power, you can’t do better than read Alek Boyd’s excellent – and highly entertaining – essay today debunking the dictator’s nuclear pretentions, which also giving a…
The words of Mexican communist novelist Carlos Fuentes. Coming from him, it’s pretty damning. Obviously, he can’t stand the guy, and among other leftists, he’s influential. Hugo Chavez, beware. Not even the communists are sticking up for you now. Read it here.
Counting oil sands, Venezuela has more petroleum reserves than any country on earth. Even Russia. Even Canada. Even Iran. Even … Saudi Arabia. It’s unbelievable what the Texas-and-Oklahoma-sized country only 1350 miles away from us really has. Venezuela could probably supply the entire world with oil if it wanted. That road you are driving on,…
Have you ever wanted to read the past six years’ of history in Venezuela? What really happened? What the role of people power is? And why it failed? (Hint: Jimmah Cotta). Have you ever wanted to read it in ace writing form? Then click here, it’s the best summary of Venezuela’s revolution I’ve ever read….
The people of the Americas have the right to democracy and the governments have a duty to generate conditions for governance and also to carry out their mandate in a democratic fashion. The guarantee of respect for the fundamental rights of the citizens, the Rule of Law, civil liberties, the respect for minorities and the…
The Venezuelan dictator has a way of finding it…based on who he is, a creature of chaos. It’s not the other way around, says Pedro Burelli, a razor-sharp analyst of Venezuelan affairs. He is an oil man, and one of those people who knows the deal. Every word he writes is worth pondering closely. Take…
Is that a great headline or what? I wish I had thought of it myself. Read the whole thing here.
Alek Boyd has some shocking information about the extent of Hugo Chavez’s international networks. Not only is the Venezuelan dictator suspected of being fully engaged in meddling in the internal affairs of Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay, Nicaragua, Grenada, Argentina, Chile and Mexico – he’s meddling in France! That’s right, the thug is buying up the…
Venezuela’s vindictive dictator, Hugo Chavez, was revealed in all his glory to be the author of the infamous ‘Tascon List’ – a blacklist of all the people in Venezuela who legally and openly signed the referendum petition to recall Hugo Chavez last year. The price they paid for that was high. The Thug of Caracas…
Miguel has some new developments on the Posada Carriles case that illustrates just how weird this case is getting. There’s all kinds of information the mainstream media hasn’t touched on yet, and should. Why does the government of Venezuela really want this guy back? That it does doesn’t make sense, so it’s going from bad…
Miguel Octavio explains in a good piece the dynamics of oil production in Venezuela, all of which proves that Venezuela’s oil production is severely lower than anyone thought, and its earnings are crippled. That’s bad news for dictator Hugo Chavez who depends on oil earnings to buy the loyalty of his shantytown voters. It’s worth…
Right on the heels of the U.N.’s oil for food scandal, where much of the U.S. is appalled at the chutzpah of British MP George Galloway and his defensive tantrum in U.S. Congress today over his oil for food take, who should come along but some bureaucrat from Mayor Ken Livingston’s office – that’s ‘Red…
Word is out that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez was ranting and raving about this El Universal piece we linked this morning here. Chavez angrily cited it by name, calling it all lies. The piece itself was built around the first-rate research and writing of Gustavo Coronel, whose essay this morning we linked here. Coronel clearly…
Profoundly good analysis by Gustavo Coronel. A must read. Read it here. UPDATE: My own take here. UPDATE: Another good take from El Universal. (Man that must have been a beach to translate!)
Luis Tascon, the Venezuelan congressman who put signers of a recall referendum against dictator Hugo Chavez on a special Internet-accessible blacklist, has met a miserable demise. In this way, he would seem to parallel Joseph McCarthy, who died an isolated drunk. That said, the signers of the petition cannot be compared to McCarthy’s targets –…
On Val’s Babalu blog, I wrote a long essay on the Posada Carriles case. It is a foreign policy issue, but now that Fidel Castro has made the claim that it’s a U.S. ‘credibility’ issue, there is a people-power dimension to it. People with access to mass communication would think so, and that is who…
Tomas Sancio has a superb piece noting the strong and growing presence of Latin American popular culture into mainstream American culture. He takes a screenshot from a Web site to show his point. I am always fond of telling my Latin American friends that when they come to big cities here in the states, they…
“Fidel Castro asserted terrorist should be judged in Venezuela” goes one headline from one of those impartial and objective Cuban propaganda sources; another one reads “New York Times Urges US Government to Deny Asylum to Terrorist Posada Carriles”… The majority of the 176 Posada Carriles-related articles, indexed by Google News, originate from Cuban or Venezuelan…
Miguel has an item out from a Mexican newspaper reporting that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez may have shipped weapons to Mexican Marxist guerrillas, bought with funds from Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s office, who is now running for president of Mexico. Via Havana. AMLO denies he knew anything about it, but that’s not…
Leftist ecology outfits are basically money-making operations. The more of a stink they can raise on an issue, the more the cash rolls into their coffers. It has nothing to do with merit, only buzz. And the causes they champion are not based on principle but on how leftwing. Ask anyone who’s ever been involved…
I’m tempted to pontificate on the cult of personality and the nature of totalitarian regimes. Never mind that. Just click here.
Some newspapers have dismissed Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s moving of his oil company’s headquarters to a Havana, Cuba, as just a small detail. Well, it is not a small detail, according to one respected Venezuelan journalist, it is a sign of a spreading shadow of tyranny over a huge region of many flags. Daniel Duquenal…
Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez has created another useless union this week, positively thrilling the Canadian press, but in Latin America, there is nothing new about it. So here is the deal: In Argentina during the 1990s, people used to joke about the extent of something known as ‘the corporate republic’ or ‘corporate state.’ The corporate state…
I didn’t watch the UK elections very closely because I was pretty sure that one way or another, the excellent Prime Minister, Tony Blair, would win. But it was a wonderful experience to see how people abroad and from other lands marvelled at this English spectacle, in all its civilized execution. I’ve always liked the…