Blogging the democratic revolution
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has jerked Sumate around, with a high court throwing out the entire trial as it has been flimsily assembled, and a whole new one, on different grounds, in what’s known here as double-jeopardy, being started. This, in short, is political persecution, the acts of Chavistas desperately seeking a means of jailing…
Daniel in Venezuela has a fascinating political analysis of what the real meaning of Chavez’s thuggish outburst directed as United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair, calling him “a pawn of the empire” was really all about. Daniel thinks that Blair’s pointed remarks to the Veneuzelan dictator were completely intentional and signal that the European Union…
It’s a growing spectacle. Troops are taking control of every productive aspect of Venezuelan society as the private sector seeks to close shop. They’re in food production, in hotel security, in road maintenance – you name it. They are everywhere to be seen, something that Indonesia under Suharto and China before Deng Xiaoping’s reforms were….
The setup seems so marvelous, the U.S. bipartisan congressional National Endowment for Democracy gives funds to many nongovernment organizations around the world to spread democratic revolution. But what happens when the grants blows up in the recipients’ faces? Such as Venezuela, where Maria Corina Machado is facing charges for taking the money? Does anyone look…
In yet another mockery of democracy, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez has kicked off his presidential campaign … using misappropriated government funds, for it is not with bankrupt ideas that he leads his masses – but with buyoffs and handouts. Veneuzela’s election is in early December. Chavez cheats at elections, so it would seem he’s got it…
Another day, another neighbor abused. This time Venezuelan dictator has decided to abuse Trinidad over natural gas concessions. This adds to his long list of regional neighbors he’s tried to bully and destroy. The story is here.
A one-man Venezuelan court demanded 16 years in prison for Venezuelan democracy campaigner Maria Corina Machado. The one-stop-judge/jury/jailer also violated her rights by refusing to allow her to speak in the courtroom as is her right. The jail sentence he’s demanding is much higher than anyone expected. The politicized judge also demanded to detain her…
Thousands of Venezuelans rallied against Venezuela’s dictator today, protesting the anniversary of the awful day in 1992 when then-Colonel Hugo Chavez tried to seize power through military means. But Hugo Chavez had a surprise of them – a demonstration of his own to insist that this attempted military coup, I kid you not, was a…
Venezuela’s dictator is now celebrating his seven miserable years in power with self-satisfying congratulations and an obligatory trip to Fidel Castro in Cuba. This extravaganza is happening as Venezuelans find themselves poorer, bleaker and less free than ever before. Teodoro Petkoff, an intrepid dissident editor of the left in Venezuela, writes a moving essay on…
I watched the President’s State of the Union address with a French diplomat friend and my friend remarked that about 2/3 of Bush’s speech was on foreign policy, with a significant amount of it on democracy movements. “As it should be,” he added. I thought there was a nuance to it, though, and it was…
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has been openly meddling in Peru’s April election. He’s hurled insults at centrist Lourdes Flores, a leading candidate, and cavorted on camera with Ollanta Humala, in a message implying to Peru’s voters that a vote for Humala was a vote for Chavez’s abundant open checkbook, something Flores would never get. This…
Veneuzela’s vast gold and diamond mines, no small thing in the era of soaring gold prices, have sold concessions to several foreign firms to mine the minerals. But they have witheld the permits, so the firms, which have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on infrastructure, are unable to mine them. Squatters are jumping in,…
I spent some time at Globovision in Caracas. It is a fearless television station that insists it will defy the newly declared censorship from the Venezuelan government. This is all fully in character. During the coup attempt of 2002, when Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez tried to break into all the television stations with a speech…
Venezuela is literally breaking off in chunks under the Hugo Chavez dictatorship. The Viaducto 1 bridge to the airport is tottering on its last legs, and unusable, leaving anyone flying in from the Maiquetia airport on the coastline the wretched specter of mountain donkey trails to cross in order to get to homes or hotels…
A few months ago, a 70s-leftist at Columbia Journalism Review, John Dinges, smugly assured us all was well with Venezuela’s press freedom and the only problem in that country was the ‘irresponsibility’ of the private media. For, you know, printing unfounded rumors and stuff. And not liking it (due to their being hopelessly middle class!)…
Miguel has the story here, the background here, and the new freedom-babe photos here. UPDATE: I grossly underestimated the size of the crowd in my original headline, it was 120,000, not 10,000. I have since updated it. El Universal has story here.
About 100,000 leftwing activists will arrive in Caracas for the World Social Forum next week. With numbers that great, there will be sane, thinking people among them, even if they are on the far left. And maybe, some will be in moderate and democratic left, it’s pretty sure. That’s why Venezuelan bloggers are doing their…
…that doesn’t read like satire. Miguel got human nature and the Chavista mentality down on the effect of tax cuts, business incentives and housing shortages so precisely that he fooled me into thinking he had posted a perfectly straight news story! It wasn’t! Ohmygosh! You have to see this thing here!
No one, not even north Americans or Mexicans, waves the national flag quite as intensely as Venezuelans do. The three bright primary colors and the halo of seven white stars, en masse, on a bright blue day, is a spectacular sight vividly illustrative of the anti-Chavez opposition. The photo at the side of Daniel’s blog…
Gustavo Coronel has written powerful, readable, interesting essay about all the new problems besetting Hugo Chavez – against all expectations. Chavez should have the wind at his back now that he’s consolidated power, but precisely the opposite has happened. It’s all falling apart on him, the center is not holding, which is exactly what happens…
Katy at Caracas Chronicles stayed up late to watch Chilean elections, because she’s got family in Chile but also because she sees Chile’s polar opposite, nightmarish Venezuela, up close. Her contrast of the two systems, and her good common sense on what next for Latin America’s brightest democracy is well worth reading here. Daniel in…
Even the headline is hilariously tragic: Venezuela to Eradicate Poverty. Venezuela began an offensive against poverty, starting the “Negra Hipolita” Mission, which is financially supported by the high profits of oil, like other official social programs there. The initiative made official on Saturday by President Hugo Chavez is part of a long-term plan to end…
Via Daniel’s Venezuela News & Views I learned that all is not well in Guyana and its western neighbor, Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. Like Jim Jones before him, Chavez has designs on the country and much grander than that Marxist Jesus Socialist before him, he intends to one day take over half the country. He is…
Do it! You can almost hear Gilbert and Whitey egging on The Beav to do something stupid. And so it seems with this new spectacle of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez announcing he intends to replace the IMF with his own self-financed IMF, to be called ‘Bank of the South.’ This bank wouldn’t really be a…
…and not just in Caracas. But what’s happening in Caracas is bad enough. Here is a Guardian account, straight out of the history of the Soviet Union with ‘Venezuela’ pasted over the ‘Russia’ part. It is a real escalation of the shortages that are engulfing Venezuela – and soon it will be made worse by…