Blogging the democratic revolution
Have you ever wondered how Venezuela ended up with a thug like Hugo Chavez as president? He didn’t blow in out of nowhere – if you watch Venezuela, you might hear scattered reports about how crummy and corrupt the political parties he replaced were, sowing the seed that eventually grew Chavez. Alek Boyd at VCrisis…
Marxist party hacks, the world over, have the world’s worst record on the environment. Black rivers, dead lakes and Chernobyl are their legacy stretching from the Oder to Hainan. It’s particularly bad when they go after nature preserves, distributing them as political spoils to reward party hacks for their loyalty. That is why the Venezuela…
Larry Kudlow on Real Clear Politics has an important analysis on just how out out of whack oil prices are and why skyrocketing prices at the pump won’t last. If he is right, there will be political consequences for oil giants like Iran, Venezuela and others whose dictators have sealed their claims to power on…
I just flipped through the keywords on Publius’ tracking system and one keyword search a minute ago was the whole sentence: “Is Tulio Alvarez in jail?” The answer to that seems to be yes, because this lawyer was sentenced to prison by a Venezuelan puppet court, but anyone who knows more, please help us out…
President Hugo Chavez has stacked the Supreme Court with his political cronies, people of very little legal background, and they’ve begun reversing decisions from the previous court – in a bid to persecute Chavez’s political opponents. Those who oppose Chavez are finding that earlier rulings in their favor, shielding them from political revenge, are now…
This week, the U.S. declared Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s economic model an absolute failure and warned him against exporting it abroad. That’s the right thing to say, and obviously, they have looked at what he’s done domestically. But for ordinary Venezuelans, there is still hunger and poverty. Venezuelan blogger Gustavo Coronel gives an important description…
We noted that Venezuelan blogger Alek Boyd exposed some stunning tax irregularities among the chavistas in the U.S. here. Now, the chavistas are scurrying to alter their Web sites. This blogger’s work the only accountability this regime has. See Alek’s expose and its aftermath here and here.
Cuban thugs and machine-gun goons surrounded the arrogant Venezuelan president, who made the press wait an hour and a half before showing up and then only took five questions. “Coincidentally” they were from from communist newspapers like L’Humanite. If Chavez was looking for bad PR and the opprobrium of the otherwise friendly Parisian media, he…
Both blogger Miguel and blogger Daniel in Venezuela see growing examples of media self-censorship in the light of dictator Hugo Chavez’s all-encompassing media law. The details are disturbing and this is quite serious. Read and compare each of these unrelated news items here and here.
Venezuela for the first time in decades has a first rate soccer team. But given its leadership, it’s still not ready for prime time. Pathetic. See here.
Daniel in Venezuela has a sombre, moving essay grasping for meaning of the strange cases of Venezuela’s soldiers who are being set ablaze in prisons with impunity for unknown reasons by the military. The cowed media whisper it down but the horrified public gazes on. Daniel closes with this warning: But I am not afraid…
Blogger Daniel Duquenal in Venezuela reports existing conditions and probable coming food shortages at Mercal, the regime’s subsidized food stores where Venezuelan locals are being conditioned to accept food rationing and to wait in long lines. Communism is much further along than we had previously thought in dictator Hugo Chavez’s regime. Be sure to read…
Like Fidel Castro before him, Hugo Chavez for a long time has insisted he was lots of things, but definitely not a communist. We see this a lot at the beginnings of communist regimes, and it’s done mostly for domestic reasons. However, another reason is that it’s easier for internationalistas to champion the dictator as…
Blogger Miguel Octavio, who’s an expert on markets, has come up with a startling new idea about how to make Venezuela’s pathetically money-losing state oil company profitable enough to benefit from current high oil prices. Sell shares of Citgo. An idea way too revolutionary for a leftist backwash like Hugo Chavez. This is an especially…
Venezuelan blogger Daniel reports that Miguel’s powerful exclusive on photoshopping is now having a big impact in Caracas through a Venezuelan newspaper pickup. This is a great victory for the blogosphere, and very sweet for Publius Pundit which was first to link Miguel’s scoop on the fake photos. After that, Miguel’s post was linked to…
Why does the Venezuela’s thuggish dictatorship cringe at the cold spotlight of one of Aleksander Boyd’s meticulous investigations? Find out here.
In a truly alarming development, Miguel Octavio reports that Venezuela’s dictatorship is handing over the job of issuing identity cards for every Venezuelan to a Cuban “company.” With this measure, every Venezuelan’s fingerprints, photograph and identity particulars will be in on file with Castro’s secret police. Every one. Given that the Chavez dictatorship enacted a…
The Reuters headline says it all: Oil Rich Venezuela Devalues Currency. Just as the IMF always recommends to developing (but not donor) countries. ‘It will raise your exports!’ they lie. Chavez didn’t need the IMF to order him to do this, he was happy to commit economic suicide on his own. What’s confounding is that…
Alek Boyd has located a disturbing new story out of Rome about a member of Chavez’s trusted inner circle – a presidential guardsman charged with protecting Chavez’s life, who’s now charged with drug trafficking among Europe’s dangerous syndicates. In light of recent stories about Chavez’s permitting FARC Marxist drug lords like Rodrigo Granda to walk…
One of the best Venezuelan bloggers has today’s pickings from Hugo Chavez’s latest lunatic ravings. The unpopular Venezuelan dictator’s going off the deep end.
If you are prominent, you get arrested. If you are not, you get the death squad. Hundreds of complaints about dozens of discovered bodies signals an extremely alarming new development out of Venezuela. The details are atrocious. UPDATED
These are dark days for Venezuela. Dictator Hugo Chavez has ordered a terrible string of arrests of some of the country’s most prominent journalists, bankers, union leaders, lawyers, and political leaders. I have never seen anything like this, coming in such a sudden, synchronized wave. This is a dark night of totalitarianism descending.
One of the worst canards out there, sponsored by pro-Chavez leftists, is the repetitively boring claim that Venezuela’s opposition “has no ideas” other than to get rid of widely despised Marxist dictator Hugo Chavez. Alek Boyd at VCrisis has an interesting outline of proposals he thinks would benefit Venezuela in a post-Chavez area. It’s a…
Venezuela Today has found an extremely significant strategic development in the Colombian press: Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez is thinking of withdrawing Venezuela’s membership from the Organization of American States. He would do that to circumvent the regional organization’s group efforts to strengthen the OAS’ Democracy Charter, which of course does not serve his interests as…
Jimmy Carter’s minions have been turning up a lot in Caracas lately, and bloggers like Miguel Octavio aren’t particularly impressed. Neither is blogger Daniel Duquenal. And neither am I.