Blogging the democratic revolution
Venezuela’s bloggers are now under an explicit threat of prosecution from known Chavista agents. It started with Alek Boyd’s effort to expose the Chavista regime and the post directly below this one provides the background. Miguel, however, adds a post of much further clarity here. The short story is: Venezuela’s dictator has issued his first…
Alek Boyd at VCrisis recently exposed the bizarre structure of one North American Opinion Research organization, a Florida-based group that shares office space with something called ‘Petrotulsa‘ and purports to take polls in Venezuela which repeatedly claim that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez is “popular.” It’s nothing but a front for false propaganda extolling Chavez, which…
Venezuela was fighting like a lone jaguar in OPEC meetings today to urge the cartel to cut oil production so that prices would stay high. Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez needs those high prices to bankroll his fake ‘revolution’ and finance his external meddlings abroad. His so-called revolution is an increasingly ravenous one, and an expensive…
A newspaper office in Los Teques, a small city south of Caracas, was bombed in a multiple molotov cocktail attack that was politically motivated. There were no injuries. The paper, La Region, had done too much reporting on the state of Venezuela’s abysmal health care, led by Cuban agents. Angry fliers were left at the…
Venezuelans are fleeing their country. When we last looked at the matter, about 300 Venezuelans sought asylum in the U.S. Now, that figure has since grown fourfold, and over 1000 Venezuelans are seeking asylum in the U.S. a year later. The figure is only for 2004, so god knows what it will be for 2005,…
You gotta see this hilarious post from Mark in Mexico about Hugo Chavez’s 100,000-strong quasi army of reservists from the shantytowns that he’s assembling to fend off a U.S. “invasion.” With his great sense of detachment, Mark shows how illogical it is, how unlikely it will be to incentivize anyone to join it, and just…
Oil-rich Zulia state in western Venezuela, right under the radar, is seeking autonomy or possibly independence from Venezuela. There are now growing calls for it, from an independence group called ‘Our Course.’ Situated near Lake Maracaibo, the rightwing stronghold on the Colombian border is the only state that’s never been mowed down by the forces…
Miguel Octavio has a couple of new pictures up showing the extent of Chavista vulgarity. Chavez’s so-called Bolivarian “revolution” has come to this here.
Bubba and Junior, some of the oilmen down in Lou’siana, are getting a little disgusted about a certain Senor Chavez of Venezuela, and it might just be about to affect bidness. Seems one of Citgo’s top suppliers, Evans Oil, is preparing to dump Venezuela as a supplier and move on to other sources of petroleum….
Michelle Bachelet of Chile has just kicked Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez where it hurts again, and this isn’t the first time. Awhile back, the Venezuelan dictator said he wanted to ‘hug’ her and was met with stony silence. She’s been even more assertive on other fronts with him as well. Today, she’s somehow gotten the…
A Chavista women’s collective in a small city called Los Teques in Venezuela recently sent this letter to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and some of his key minions. If this is Chavista, then we are ALL Chavistas. Their fascinating statement highlights the growing popular opposition to the corruption, the thievery, the bureaucratization and the barbarism…
Alek Boyd at VCrisis and Daniel at Venezuela News & Views alert us to a new Chavista propaganda offensive against some of the best reporting on Venezuela coming out these days. It looks like Venezuela’s attacks on the free press do not stop at its water’s edge, but extend to any media anywhere in the…
Alek Boyd has another bombshell on the details of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s family fortune and all its offshore accounts. Using the offices of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, Chavez has a sprawling network of bank accounts spread through Panama, Europe, Brazil and other places, amounting to billions of dollars in ill-gotten wealth. What, you may…
Is Venezuela running out of oil? This Bloomberg article certainly suggests it, and if so, it’s an earmark of a communist regime. There’s no such thing as a communist regime without shortages. Russia the breadbasket ran out of wheat. Cuba the sugar king ran out of sugar. Vietnam the rice bowl ran out of rice….
Right under the news radar, the U.S. and Colombia are hashing out their last differences for the free trade pact that will create confidence and prosperity on an untold scale for already star-performing Colombia and will enrich and enliven the U.S. with the bright and brilliant side of Colombia from its private sector, not its…
Every dictator dreams of consolidating power into the ‘dictator for life’ designation and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is no different. Today he’s announced he’s set to change the constitution to his liking, which would mean he would no longer be limited to two terms, but to as many as he wants. As many unlimited terms,…
Miguel has parts II and III on the vast, tangled, family fortune of the Hugo Chavez family of Venezuela, none of it acquired honestly. So much for the “revolutionary” man of the people! He’s nothing but a two-(billion)-bit chorro. Read it here and here.
Via Real Clear Politics, Donald Rumsfeld has presented his thinking on the new kinds of challenges the U.S. faces as it fights the long hard war on terror and seeks to win the hearts and minds of the Arab world in spreading the idea of democracy. He lays out all the angles on how this…
Dying to know the deal on Peru (hint: to watch a Marxist sink?) Want to see what kind of garbage Telesur is up to? (hint: maybe this explains why Uruguay asked to have its name taken off the masthead?) Want to see something cool out Mexico? (hint: the good guys are continuing to rise). Boz…
In a beautiful statement, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called on the world to stand up for Venezuela’s battered democracy. Rice appealed to the governments of Austria, Spain, Brazil and others to get up off their duffs and face facts and start saying something to defend the last tattered remains of Venezuela’s democracy. To…
Miguel found something on VCrisis that I’d missed, a remarkable consultant report outlining the ownership structure of a string of state-owned companies controlled by the family of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez along with an analysis of the potential of these entities for money-laundering. The network of what the Chavez family controls, in food processing and…
This just in from Goldman Sachs – I have not seen this in the media but this is a credible source. I suspect the U.S. company is Heinz: Land Expropriations Continue The National Land Institute continues to survey large rural estates with a view to repossessing land holdings that are considered idle or underutilized or…
Francisco Toro has a fascinating essay about the findings of pollster Alfredo Keller. As Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez prepares to seek reelection in December, the composition of those likely to vote for the supremodomo becomes important. Francisco reports that 52% of the electorate plans to vote for Chavez. Of this 52%: -33% do so only because…
…everywhere a bil bil, old McChavez had a well… On hearing that oil prices took another serious beating today (think they are below $60 a barrel, so happy times are coming to a pump near you) I clicked onto El Universal to see if there was any reaction from Venezuela’s oil-drenched supremodomo Hugo Chavez, who’s…
Miguel Buitrago at MABB has radical information – Hugo Chavez and Evo Morales may not after all be the best of fraternal socialist buddies – the problem starts because Chavez is up to no good trying to take over Bolivia’s natural gas reserves, something I could see coming from a mile away – Chavez ruined…