Monthly Archives: March 2010

Dear lord almight. Painter, tank commander, baseball player, military ethicist, variety show host, coup plotter, poet and now…blogger! It had to come to this. It was just bound to. Welcome, Hugo! This is going to be great fun… (I wonder if his … Continue reading →

What the government is doing to Judge María Lourdes Afiuni staggers the mind. No other single story captures Venezuela’s slide to dictatorship quite like her’s.  Jailed summarily simply for doing her job, Judge Afiuni was sent to Los Teques Women’s Penitentiary, … Continue reading →

Tomorrow, March 18th, I’ll be participating in the BBC’s SuperPower Nation conference, live online, all day long. It’ll be really cool: there will be bloggers from all over the world there, some of whom you may even have heard of. To set things … Continue reading →

Just a couple of days after Spanish newspaper ABC noted that a second high profile ETA sympathizer, José Antonio Egido Sigüenza, is also on the Venezuelan government’s payroll, a Spanish government spokesman reaffirms Spain’s "full confidence" that Venezuela will cooperate … Continue reading →

This last weekend was the bloodiest of the year in Caracas’ undeclared civil war: 67 people were murdered between Friday and Sunday.  The AFP account – which, by the way, makes its way to newspapers the world over – is … Continue reading →

For much of the last eleven years, one of the hardest-to-miss themes in the Chávez era has been the incongruence between the residual bits of liberal democracy in our political life and Chávez’s obvious, fawning admiration for every tin-pot dictator … Continue reading →

Think they could never censor the Internet? Think again. Think they won’t take away all the powers of the legislature if they happen to lose next September? Think again. At this rate, our best-case scenario is to have a majority … Continue reading →

It’s been barely two days since Chávez’s launched on that rant about "regulating" internet forums the same way he "regulates" dissident radio stations and TV channels (i.e., with a padlock) and already Noticias24 has turned off its comments forum. (Yes, I … Continue reading →

Teodoro Petkoff’s editorial today is, as usual, worth a read. In it, he takes stock of the opposition’s method for deciding unity candidacies. He finds a lot to like, but takes the opportunity to slam the naysayers. Petkoff reminds his … Continue reading →

Is it just me, or is the chavista reassurance-to-onslaught-on-civil-liberties cycle getting quicker? Barely 48 hours had passed after Franco Silva, who heads the Nationalized telecom giant, CANTV, had calmly reassured us that the company’s plans to force all net traffic in … Continue reading →

I’m really glad the New York Times is devoting some real resources to this ETA-Venezuela story: chavismo’s willingness to entwine itself with every weirdo fringe group out there, no matter how violent, never ceases to fascinate. But the piece they ran about it today … Continue reading →

Correction: El Nacional sneakily got ahead of me by running a correction for the article I accused them of not correcting, mooting pretty much this whole post. The one bright spot is, I didn’t need to change the title! Sigh…esta … Continue reading →

Bogota’s El Tiempo has obtained a leaked copy of the Venezuelan Military Intelligence Directorate (DIM)’s strategy vis-à-vis Colombia’s presidential election. The thing is…remarkably sane. Featuring the kind of cool-headed assessment of the situation we so seldom see from the public face … Continue reading →

According to El Nacional, over the last 11 years, prices have gone up 733%, while remunerations have risen just 571%. Ergo, since 733-571 is 162…purchasing power has fallen 162% since Chávez came to power!  Somebody pleaaase save these people from … Continue reading →

It’s now been a month and a bit since the first and – AFAIK – the last broadcast of "Suddenly…Chávez", the "new" Chávez radio show launched with such fanfare ("as part of the artillery of thought") in early February. When you … Continue reading →