Archive for the 'Hugo Chavez' Category
ChrisB on Mar 03 2008 | Filed under: Chris' Page, Hugo Chavez
McQ alerts us to this developing story in South America.
Colombia, apparently, struck at a narco-terrorist camp inside Ecuador after tracking FARC spokesman Paul Reyes and other leaders there. Reyes and 16 other terrorists were killed.
Chavez reacted by sending troops to the Venezuela/Colombia border:
Now you might ask why Chavez would involve himself in this conflict that [...]
MichaelW on Feb 11 2008 | Filed under: Economics, Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, MichaelW's Page, energy
Joseph Kennedy II supports blood for oil.
In recent months, my TV has been bombarded with ads from Joe Kennedy promoting his Citizens Energy program, such as the following:
The heating oil distributed by Citizens Energy comes from Venezuela on a subsidized basis (which its been doing since 1979). Since Hugo Chavez took the reins of [...]
MichaelW on Feb 04 2008 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, MichaelW's Page
John Lilyea has the goods:
So I decided to add my voice to the millions worldwide from here in DC.
I was really surprised that an ad hoc organization put together such a large demonstration in such a short period of time.
More at Gateway Pundit.
UPDATE: Commenter logtar supplies a link to pictures of anti-FARC rallies from [...]
Lance on Jan 27 2008 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, Lance's Page
If Hugo inspires such love from the masses of South America, how do you explain this?
Colombia’s Uribe Approval Rating at Record 80%, Tiempo Reports
By Helen Murphy [...]
Lance on Jan 24 2008 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, Lance's Page
Following through on what was reported yesterday, Hugo Chavez continues to step up the pressure on food producers:
Venezuela’s top food company has accused troops of illegally seizing more than 500 tonnes of food from its trucks as part of President Hugo Chavez’s campaign to stem shortages.
The leftist Chavez this week created a state food distributor [...]
Lance on Jan 23 2008 | Filed under: Developmental economics, Economics, Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, Lance's Page
Haven’t we said this is the way things were heading once Hugo Chavez instituted price controls? Why yes we did.
From CNN via Pejman
President Hugo Chavez threatened on Sunday to take over farms or milk plants if owners refuse to sell their milk for domestic consumption and instead seek higher profits abroad or from cheese-makers.
With [...]
Lance on Jan 12 2008 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, Lance's Page
McQ points us to a new, if all too familiar, turn the ugly situation in Venezuela is taking:
Venezuelan Jews, long uneasy with the Chávez government’s alliances with Iran and other Middle Eastern countries that espouse anti-Israel views, are concerned that the government is sponsoring anti-Semitism in this hemisphere, a prominent journalist said Tuesday.
”The situation we [...]
MichaelW on Dec 18 2007 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, MichaelW's Page
Apparently Hugo Chavez takes the resurrection of historical idols quite seriously. And much too literally [HT: Dave In Texas]:
President Hugo Chavez said Monday that Venezuela should open the coffin of independence hero Simon Bolivar to examine the bones, saying there are sufficient doubts about his death in 1830 to warrant a full investigation.
Although history [...]
MichaelW on Dec 17 2007 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, MichaelW's Page
It seems that Hugo Chavez is not the only one having trouble instituting his Bolivarian dream state. Evo Morales is facing troubles in Bolivia as well:
Since the election of avowed socialist Evo Morales to the presidency of Bolivia, some have not been particularly happy with the direction he is trying to take the country. [...]
MichaelW on Dec 10 2007 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, MichaelW's Page
In the wake of the Venezuelan electorate issuing Hugo Chavez a defeat (his first) at the ballot box last week, there was much speculation from blogospheric skeptics about the actual tally of the votes, and about whether or not Chavez manipulated the results. In a report by Jorge Castañeda for Newsweek comes [...]
Lance on Dec 05 2007 | Filed under: Economics, Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, Humor, Lance's Page
From E. Frank Stephenson:
From the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez thinks it’s curtains for America as a world power. “By the crash of the dollar,” he says, “America’s empire will crash.”Tyler Cowen’s suggestion that currencies are not markers of economic success notwithstanding, I hope Chavez’s theory that declining currencies signal the end of regimes [...]
MichaelW on Nov 29 2007 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, MichaelW's Page
I’d say this is good news except that I have zero confidence that the referendum will result in anything other than what Chavez wants (i.e. dictatorial control):
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has lost his lead eight days before a referendum on ending his term limit, an independent pollster said on Saturday, in a swing in voter [...]
Lance on Nov 08 2007 | Filed under: Environment, Hugo Chavez, Lance's Page
Part I is here, but in The Ruin of Venezuela I wrote:
As we have seen with Mugabe and many others, once you go down this road it is very difficult to turn things around. As the situation gets worse, in order to keep socialism in place, more force is needed. A Revolutionary ideology cannot allow [...]
Joshua Foust on Nov 07 2007 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, Military Matters, Notes on the war
Cross-posted to The Conjecturer
Defense & The War
In the midst of petulantly crossing his arms and throwing a tantrum about the Future of Iraq Project, an anonymous FSO makes a really good point: “Sending officers into this failed, hideously violent exercise with no language training, no military liaison training, no arms or means of self-defense, no [...]
Lance on Nov 06 2007 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, Lance's Page
Heh:
What’s a fair indication that a fascist masquerading as a socialist has lost his “base”? When a student named Stalin says enough is enough:
“The message to the Congress and to the government is that there is … a part of this country that rejects these reforms and we want to be heard,” student leader Stalin [...]
Lance on Oct 28 2007 | Filed under: Developmental economics, Economics, Environment, Hugo Chavez, Lance's Page, Libertarianism
It hasn’t been all that shocking. Why not? Greg Mankiw supplies a few possibilities. My favorites? Well let us start here:
In contrast to much rhetoric to the contrary, capitalism is the most powerful weapon to achieve energy efficiency we have.
He provides us with some things I am fond of, conjectures. So I will call this [...]
MichaelW on Oct 24 2007 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, MichaelW's Page
The slow march towards full-fledged totalitarianism in Venezuela is picking up the pace. Citizens opposed to Chavez’s plans to change the constitution were forcibly deterred from meeting with the National Assembly by Venezuelan authorities:
Venezuelan riot police fired tear gas at thousands of protesters in downtown Caracas as they marched to oppose President Hugo Chavez’s [...]
MichaelW on Oct 11 2007 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Foreign affairs, History, Hugo Chavez, Media, MichaelW's Page
It is a sad commentary upon the state of the world that anniversary of a bloodthirsty tyrant’s death is celebrated around the world, and here in the United States, not with glee that his anti-freedom rampage was cut short, but with mourn for the loss.
“I halt in my daily combat to bow my head, with [...]
Lance on Sep 17 2007 | Filed under: Education, Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, Lance's Page
Chavez begins bending another set of private institutions to his will.
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Lance on Sep 17 2007 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, Lance's Page, Religion and theology
Lee over at Postpolitical has some thoughts on the mural below found in Caracas Venezuela:
Technorati Tags: Hugo Chavez, Venezuela, Jesus, religion, Last Supper, Marx, Castro, socialism, communism
addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fasecondhandconjecture.com%2Findex.php%2F2007%2F09%2F17%2Fsocialisms-last-supper%2F’;
addthis_title = ‘Socialism%26%238217%3Bs+Last+Supper’;
addthis_pub = [...]
Lance on Aug 22 2007 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, Lance's Page
From Fausta I get this:
Venezuela: A Decree for the Clocks
Moved by claims that it will help the metabolism
Wh?? Help what metabolism?
and productivity of his fellow citizens, President Hugo Chavez said clocks would be moved forward by half an hour at the start of 2008.
Effectively this means Venezuela will be in its own time zone. No [...]
Lance on Aug 22 2007 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, Lance's Page
Sometimes folks truth is way weirder than fiction. In the case of Hugo Chavez clownish doesn’t come close to describing him.
In the wake of the devastating earthquake that shook Peru, aid has flowed in, including from the government of Venezuela. Alan Garcia, the President of Peru was grateful, even to his bitter political enemy, [...]
Joshua Foust on Jul 21 2007 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, Military Matters, Notes on the war
Cross-posted at The Conjecturer
Defense
Doug Bandow has a pair of great pieces up, on how the GWoT and Iraq are actually opposed to a free society, and more precisely just how badly the Iraq War has distorted us as a society—like, perhaps, the newly self-granted power to seize the property of anyone who “interferes” with the [...]
Joshua Foust on Jun 06 2007 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, Media, Military Matters, Notes on the war
Cross-posted at The Conjecturer.
Defense
I suppose it goes without saying that the Nintendo DS is already basically an “advanced sensor platform,” since it is natively wireless, adaptive, touch-sensitive (and easily modded for tilt), and has a microphone. But don’t tell that to DARPA, which seems more intent on the 1989 Gameboy, which was low-rez and black [...]
Joshua Foust on Jun 04 2007 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, Media, Military Matters, Notes on the war, social science
Cross-posted at The Conjecturer.
Defense
Is al-Hurra, the Arabic-language Voice of America satellite channel, nothing more than an al-Jazeera clone? Hardly. One of the reasons Voice of America is as respected as it is was its willingness to broadcast news damaging to the U.S. (same with the “Radio Free” stations). It was this self-criticism that generated sympathy [...]
Joshua Foust on Jun 01 2007 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Election 2008, Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, Media, Military Matters, Notes on the war, Technology
Cross-posted on The Conjecturer.
Defense
The IDF is generally thought of as one of the world’s top armies—though it lacks expeditionary capability (which is usually a function of solid logistics), its warfighting is top notch. Not so, according to the Winograd Commission, which examined IDF policies in the wake of the Hezbollah war last year. Why [...]
Lance on May 04 2007 | Filed under: Developmental economics, Economics, Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, Lance's Page
Chavez has railed against the rising cost of health care and set up free clinics. Combined with other factors this has resulted in Health care getting far more expensive. His threats to seize the health care sector completely won’t stop this spiral:
Keith_Indy on May 01 2007 | Filed under: Developmental economics, Domestic Politics, Economics, Environment, Hugo Chavez, Keith's Page, Technology
Get ready for higher gas prices, as inexperienced bureaucrats take over the operations of 4 major refineries.
Venezuela stripped the world’s biggest oil companies of operational control over massive Orinoco Belt crude projects on Tuesday, a vital move in President Hugo Chavez’s nationalization drive.
The May Day takeover came exactly a year after Bolivian President Evo Morales, [...]
Lance on Apr 30 2007 | Filed under: Hugo Chavez, Lance's Page, Media
Manny Lopez has written a nice editorial at The Detroit News about his experience entering the world of blogging and my and Lee Garnett’s interview of him discussing Hugo Chavez and developments in Venezuela. Our first time to get mentioned in the dead tree edition of a major paper. The online editorial can be found [...]
Joshua Foust on Apr 25 2007 | Filed under: Developmental economics, Domestic Politics, Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, Libertarianism, Military Matters, Technology, social science
Cross-posted at The Conjecturer. I’m going go try to shorten these and better group them thematically at some point, but I just find too much during the day to really limit things. Should I give up the pretense of exhaustiveness? I might.
The Pentagon
More on the brave testimony of Jessica Lynch and Kevin Tillman, brother of [...]
Lance on Apr 21 2007 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, Lance's Page
Given our little debate in the comments section of our interview with Manny Lopez about the direction Hugo Chavez is heading with his little dictatorship, here is one more tidbit to digest:
Venezuela’s government will require workers to spend four hours a week in “socialist formation” classes, and is mandating employers form “Bolivarian Work Councils” to [...]
Lance on Apr 18 2007 | Filed under: Developmental economics, Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, Interviews, Lance's Page, Lee's Page
Manny Lopez, editorial columnist for The Detroit News, recently returned to Venezuela after a nine year absence. He filed a striking piece from Caracas which caught my and a lot of people’s attention. It illustrated better than most reporting I’ve read on the subject, just how substantially the country had changed under president Hugo Chavez’s [...]
Lance on Apr 15 2007 | Filed under: Developmental economics, Economics, Hugo Chavez, Lance's Page
Via Lawrence White I discover today a Sri Lankan columnist who goes by the wonderful and apt nomme de plume Fuss-Budget. He wags his tongue at governments need to control inflation, or at least our ability to know about it. He sets his sights on Argentina here:
Argentina is a typical badly managed Latin American country [...]
Lance on Apr 14 2007 | Filed under: Developmental economics, Economics, Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, Lance's Page
Chavez seems to have learned little from history. My last excerpt is one he should read, but will not. You can of course read the this and more here.
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Lance on Apr 14 2007 | Filed under: Developmental economics, Economics, Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, Lance's Page
The discouraging course of nations dependent upon mineral extraction for their wealth has been oft remarked upon. Unfortunately we see the same trends playing out in Venezuela:
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Lance on Apr 14 2007 | Filed under: Developmental economics, Economics, Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, Lance's Page
Alexandra Storr has an interesting essay in the American Scholar on Venezuela entitled Living Large on Oil. (Hat tip: Megan McCardle.) Here is part one and it is a different perspective than what I will be discussing in the coming week, but sobering nonetheless:
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addthis_title = [...]
Lance on Mar 24 2007 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, Lance's Page
One of the steps in turning countries into a totalitarian state is the placing of power in local committees selected for “Revolutionary commitment.” Cuba has used the local committees as the states eyes and ears, enforcers and purveyors of terror. The local gangs have been a key part of Mugabe’s assault on his opponents.
Chavez is [...]
Lance on Mar 21 2007 | Filed under: Economics, Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, Lance's Page, Uncategorized
Lee over at postpolitical takes my theme from the other day and fleshes it out with regard to events in Venezuela. Well worth reading in gaining an understanding of the dynamic that inevitably occurs.
Technorati Tags: Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, socialism
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Lance on Mar 15 2007 | Filed under: Developmental economics, Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, Lance's Page
Lee Garnett makes a point that often eludes most Americans, whose view of South America is of vast poverty and squalor as the norm. Most people who would travel to much of the developing world would be surprised at how far from their preconceptions these societies lie:
Venezuela before Chavez would have been recognizable to any [...]
MichaelW on Feb 22 2007 | Filed under: Domestic Politics, Foreign affairs, Hugo Chavez, MichaelW's Page
I wonder what “pas d’ennemi a gauche” sounds like with a Texas drawal? Here’s what it looks like in congressional speak:
A U.S. congresswoman called on the Bush administration Wednesday to reconsider its ban on selling parts for U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets to Venezuela, urging improved ties between the two nations.
U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, [...]
MichaelW on Jan 31 2007 | Filed under: Economics, Foreign affairs, History, Hugo Chavez, Libertarianism, MichaelW's Page
Hugo Chavez travels a bit further down the road to his ultimate destination - Supreme Dictator of Venezuela - with the help of his wholly-owned subsidiary,the “National Assembly”:
Venezuela’s Congress on Wednesday granted President Hugo Chavez powers to rule by decree for 18 months as he tries to force through nationalizations key to his self-styled leftist [...]
MichaelW on Jan 11 2007 | Filed under: Foreign affairs, History, Hugo Chavez, Libertarianism, MichaelW's Page
Putative Ãœbermensch, Hugo Chavez, waxed poetic at his inaugaration Wednesday:
His right hand raised Wednesday, Chavez declared in words reminiscent of Fidel Castro’s famous call-to-arms: “Fatherland, socialism or death — I swear it.”
Do you think he realizes that there’s no difference? Yeah, me neither.
Technorati Tags: socialism, communism, collectivism, deaths, mass [...]
MichaelW on Jan 09 2007 | Filed under: Developmental economics, Economics, Foreign affairs, History, Hugo Chavez, Libertarianism, MichaelW's Page, Technology
Is Hugo Chavez a gift to mankind?
Man’s greatest accomplishment is his ability to adapt. Whether through technological development, increased efficiency, innovation of skill, or just good old fashioned hard work, mankind always finds a way to meet its needs and to advance civilization. There may be stumbles and outright failures along the way, [...]
