Blogging the democratic revolution
He just doesn’t get it, does he? Just picture what the people in that room were thinking. Just when you thought the revolution had gone dead in Venezuela, this thug reminds you there is still reason for one out there. He never lets you down. Miguel has a photo of Hugo Chavez pontificating away at…
The press is reporting that Paraguay’s ambassador to Venezuela was physically attacked in Caracas Friday. This comes on the heels of the kidnap/murder of Paraguay’s former first daughter by FARC guerrillas directing the operation by email from downtown Caracas. Paraguay has done literally nothing to Venezuela to attract this kind of thuggery. It does however…
Alek Boyd emailed one of Prime Minister Zapatero’s minions about the purpose of selling chemical agents to Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. He writes that in the reply he got from Spain, the Zapatero official said the exported chemical agents were used in tear gas. I guess we know what Hugo Chavez is planning now, given…
Venezuelan journalist Patricia Poleo, whose case we have tracked here was sentenced to six months’ jail by a Venezuelan kangaroo court. They said she misidentified a photo in one of her stories. It’s a characteristic of tyranny to issue draconian sentences for technicalities. But for Venezuela, the free press loses another voice. Government bureaucrats can…
The sad reality of Venezuela’s opposition is its meltdown. Agencia EFE gives a good description of how opponents of the Chavez regime have largely drifted over into Miami, where they are both invisible and increasingly irrelevant to the revolution. Coming to the U.S. is, in a sense, a revolution of its own, because it’s a…
In Venezuela during the April 11, 2002 coup attempt, Miguel analyzes the chain of checks and balances that prevented the event from being far bloodier and more violent than it originally began. Those checks and balances – which he broadly reads as ‘decency’ – are now absent in today’s Chavez regime, which has since slid…
In unstable countries, the fuse of revolution is lit from a burning dollar bill. And right now in Venezuela, there’s very dry tinder indeed. Billions of dollars of oil cash is being stolen by the cronies of dictator Hugo Chavez on a scale never seen while poverty there rises. Forty percent of Venezuela’s economy is…
Remember how thrilled you were when that clown-faced leftwing South American dictator with the leering grin got thrown out of power, in April 2002? And then just as swiftly, like some demented jack-in-the-box popping back out of his sealed box, he popped back into the seat of power? Jorge Arena has an interesting interview with…
In view of the utter silence of the anglo phone MSM with respect to recent announcements of chemical warfare agents and other weapons sold by Spain to Venezuela Ä1Å I decided to dig a little and the findings, as usual, are rather grim. It turns out that Venezuela has been spending, since 2000 Ä2Å, substantial…
Miguel has translated a dazzling article from Spain outlining, in the most precise and concrete terms, why Venezuela can have all the poverty it cares to pay for. It’s chilling and illuminating. Read it here.
Miguel Octavio reports a wave of purges in Venezuela for workers who had the temerity to sign the Recall Referendum petition last August. Dictator Hugo Chavez’s vengeful party apparatus is hunting them down, one by one, and either denying them employment or firing them from their jobs. It’s all very redolent of the days of…
Venezuela is the only country I know of whose Embassy employees in Washington are regularly commissioned to harass bloggers. Honestly, I don’t understand how this can be legal. We all get emails from them. They are worse than that, though – their crazed leftist “press” minions on the Internet, who have some sort of relationship…
Blogger Miguel Octavio warns that despite the difficulty for many of taking Hugo Chavez entirely seriously, we Americans would be wise to pay attention to the rising tide of anti-Americanism now appearing in Venezuela. Don’t dismiss these ravings, they mean something, he warns. Based on what he knows of the Chavistas and their inherent psychology…
Even if you don’t speak Spanish you can probably figure out what this cartoon, posted by Mexican blogger Cosme Hace says. I laughed when the cartoon comparison was made between Lopez Obrador and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Lopez Obrador was described as not another Chavez because he wasn’t ‘frivolous and stupid’ enough. Obviously, Hugo Chavez’s…
…and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez behind it. I wrote an analysis for American Thinker this morning. It’s here.
Blogger Daniel keeps us well-apprised of the everyday aspects of Venezuela’s descent into communism. Today, the grocery stores are demanding ID for even the purchase of bread and water. This is the beginning of rationing. Daniel also gives us a rundown on Venezuela’s state oil company and Hugo Chavez’s mysterious unwillingness to open the books…
No, it’s not a democracy. No, Hugo Chavez was not fairly elected. Yes, there are arbitrary arrests. Yes, there are political prisoners. Alek Boyd has an ever-lengthening list here.
Jorge Arena has an extraordinary personal account of what Venezuela was in the 1960s, the 1970s after the Arab oil embargo, and the conditions that led up to the rise of Hugo Chavez. It’s readable and lucid and a must read – a truly excellent essay. Read the whole thing here.
There’s no clearer sign a regime is going communist than in the telltale spread of mediocrity. Communists are the great levelers, the equalizers, the exponents of the lowest common denominator as an end in itself. This is why communism in theory is so attractive to tyrants, regardless of their beliefs. If everyone who can make…
Venezuela and the U.S. won their wars for independence against their respective colonial masters at about the same time. Six years ago, Venezuela, very quietly, was our number one overseas oil supplier. You never heard about any of this because – guess what – the U.S. and Venezuela have always been amigos. There’s never been…
The Nation magazine has a sugar-coated vision of Hugo Chavez’s Veneuzela, described in an article purportedly written as a “news” story by Christian Parenti, someone who used to spend his time at Young Communist League meetings in San Francisco. Parenti’s trying to make his story appear a respectable reporting job (as Cuban propagandists coincidentally advise)…
Common canard holds that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, whatever his faults, at least is ending poverty through his soup-kitchen programs. Andres Oppenheimer blows the lid off that steaming pot, though, by taking a good look at the Venezuelan government’s own statistics. What he sees appalls him. He writes: Indeed, the latest poverty figures from Venezuela’s…
Back at Columbia, my roomate was a Cuban-American lawyer. She insisted that if you are a lawyer, it is an absolute that you can write. All lawyers know how to write, she added. If law school can teach you one thing, it is the capacity to write well. But now an apologist for Venezuelan dictator…
It’s a little known but important topic – the systematic war on science that is fuelling the coming Venezuelan revolution. It might come as a surprise to many but Venezuela produces some of the finest scientists in the world and they have low tolerance for the political hackery of Chavistadom. They stand up for their…
Alek Boyd is doing an extraordinary job exposing the Venezuelan communist networks that are infiltrating the U.S. through Venezuela’s oil cash. He’s uncovered another $180,000 that’s been spread around like butter today. I am in awe of his extraordinary work, miles ahead of the news and performing a valuable service to any American interested in…