Blogging the democratic revolution
What do you do if you are a Venezuelan? Your country is ruled by a madman, a communist, a tyrant. You are steadily watching as all of your freedoms erode. Your country’s institutions are being rapidly politicized, the gears of your own power are being stripped and you are powerless to stop it. The U.S….
You might wonder about the mysteries of the stars or you might wonder about why Ecuador is so screwed up, and in either case you’d be touching on the immutable truths of the universe. While we’re on Ecuador, something interesting has happened. After confiscating $6 billion in investment from Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum, and scrapping…
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez calls himself a revolutionary, but his principal achievement has solely been to tear things down. In a technical sense, I suppose that means he’s making a difference but its not quite the difference most people would like to see. Chavez has wrecked the political infrastructure of the country, the civil institutions,…
Venezuela is getting increasingly militarized. We know that from the photos of Hugo Chavez brandishing rifles, alongside his vow to start a Kalashnikov factory. That doesn’t mean his military is getting more professional, however. If anything, they are more incompetent, and easier to beat in battle than ever. Chavez’s priority isn’t military excellence, but to…
Less than a week after Hugo Chavez threatened to shut down the broadcast press by yanking their licenses, a newspaper editor for the weekly Ahora newspaper was gunned down in a targeted hit. His death raises the total of news editors shot dead to at least four that I know about. Hugo Chavez has it…
As Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez flashes his rifles this week, ranting on and on about a nonexistent “U.S. invasion” – a real war is going on in Venezuela, one in which real criminals are waging on Venezuela’s poor people, and one in which its combatants, the police, are starved for funds, as Chavez happily shoots…
Chavez taking aim Source: Globovision Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez vowed to shoot down the independent press today, in perhaps his most pointed threat against it ever. Amid all the Chavista propaganda reported here in the States, suggesting that Venezuela is not a dictatorship because of an existing free press, the fact today is that the…
Source: Reuters, via Yahoo! Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez unveiled thousands of cartons of rifles, bought from Russia supposedly to head off a U.S. “invasion.” Lovingly, his official press office released the dingbat photo above. What a bunch of slobs. Via a Bloomberg item found by Alek Boyd at VCrisis, here is what Chavez had to…
A new flavor Frito Bandito? Source: Venezuela Today Have you ever wondered whether leftist populist Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador was really cut out of the same kind of cloth as his natural ally, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez? This informed essay by Gustavo Coronel, on Venezuela Today lays the two of them out,…
In his most direct and brazen threat against the private sector yet, Hugo Chavez has warned Venezuelan businesses that unless they repatriate $10 billion in capital flight for his own disposal, he’ll take every last thing they have left in Venezuela. It’s a profoundly menacing statement, and not only because he mentions he’ll act in…
Here’s something exciting: In the days since his spectacular comeback election as president in Peru, Alan Garcia has made some softie statements about wanting to get along with Hugo Chavez and having no intention of leading a regional antichavez movement. However, Garcia’s first actions upon his election this weekend are telling quite a different story….
London 09.06.06 ö At last, a group of Venezuelan opposition politicos is playing the cards right and it’s cornering Hugo Chavez’s electoral minions. So far so good. As Miguel and I have reported any semblance of meaningfulness vis-a-vis the audit to the electoral roll proposed by Venezuela’s most respected universities -UCV, USB and UCAB- vanished…
Long overlooked on the world scene, China has been a great destabilizer of several regions of the world by its strategy in seeking to lock up supplies of oil. Sudan. Iran. Venezuela. Ecuador. China is a player in all of these areas and more. China’s efforts to lock up oil may not be as barbaric…
The unqualified success that Hugo Chavez has had at picking apart Venezuela’s democracy, buying political support with oil, getting his men into office in other countries, supporting terrorist groups, and pressuring political opponents has led many to think that a tidal wave of totalitarian leftism is sweeping the southern continent — and that it’s unstoppable….
Today’s the Big One, Peru goes to the polls today. I’ll have something up on that in a minute but here is an important background topic I post as a sidebar: Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s political meddling in Peru during its election. At times, it’s been the central issue of the entire Peruvian campaign in…
I visited Yaracuy, Venezuela, a few months ago. It’s an agricultural state famous for its sugar and it looks like this: A Yaracuy sugar farm But the atmosphere was tense everywhere, for land wars were going on, and people were getting their farms confiscated. That wasn’t the only fear. Every day, I witnessed people worrying…
It’s happening in three countries of the Americas, simultaneously at this very moment: Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba. In at least two of the three cases, Venezuela and Bolivia, there’s a rapidly building case for civil war as productive land owners seek to defend their life’s work from the Mugabization of it all into smoking ruins….
Whenever Sandalistas gather in Caracas, the net result is a grotesque orgy of consumption, where leftwing political tourist after leftwing political tourist buys up Che t-shirts, Hugo Chavez barbie dolls, hippie bracelets, Castro bumper stickers, tapes of Chavez’s speeches, pot-leaf ski caps, fake Birkenstocks, Hugo-Chavez coffee cups, hammer and sickle posters, Allende backpacks and anything…
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez addressing OPEC this morning Source: Associated Press, via Yahoo! OPEC is holding its quarterly meeting in Caracas right now and sure enough, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and his new best-friends-forever in the Iranian regime have sought hard to cut oil production to drive up prices and stick it to the Americans….
It was Publius’ and Venezuela Today‘s scoop last May 10. Hugo Chavez has a new role in Hollywood, not as an Oliver-Stone conspiracy hero, but as a videogame villain. Apparently, he caught wind of our post because we were the only ones posting about it, and has now blown up, calling it a CIA conspiracy…
I have dreaded this topic, because I hate the revolting Jimmy Carter more than anything. The only good thing Jimmy Carter did was give back the Panama Canal and make me a flaming Reagan Revolutionary. In other words, he’s a perfect example of a stopped clock being right exactly twice a day. Everything else Carter…
Nutsy leftwing conspiracy-theory-loving Hollywood director Oliver Stone repudiated Hugo Chavez’s claim that Stone would be making a movie, all about him. And that’s not surprising. Stone is trying to go mainstream in the U.S. film scene, cranking out a watchable, straightforward, decent portrayal of 9/11 cops in his upcoming World Trade Center movie, which is…
So goes the apocryphal “chutzpah” story of the man who was put on trial for killing his parents and asked the judge to show him some mercy for being an orphan. Such also is the world of Chavistas who get caught with their hands in the till. Francisco Toro at Caracas Chronicles has a short…
Ahead of December’s presidential elections, Venezuelans don’t have many avenues within their own government to plead for free and fair elections. Political power is consolidated into the hands of a single party, and what’s more, that one party is very closely aligned to the ideals of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, who has not allowed a…