When I said this post would be “the last post” on the matter, I meant posts written by myself. 🙂 Alexander Mercouris’ was too good to pass up, so it is reprinted here: Any discussion of Chavez must explain why he was (to his detractors) such a terrible man. He was a terrible man because
Okay, I promise this will be the last post on the matter. But some of the tropes that come up time and time again in coverage of Chavez’s legacy, from neocons and faux-leftists alike, just have to be addressed for me to rest easy. Note that this is NOT meant to be comprehensive; just some
Not sure you can say that of many national ambassadors! This is what I wrote to this email for expressing condolences on Chavez’s passing: After a heroic battle with cancer, Hugo Rafael Chávez FrĂas has shuffled off this mortal coil, but his dream will endure forever and continue giving hope unto the hearts of men and women all
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08cD7-MYaJo We all suspected this would come sooner or later. As it happens, Chavez struggled heroically against his cancer, confounding the intensive Schadenfreude and concerted death wishes of his loathsome detractors month after arduous month. But this is what you can expect to get when you look out for your own countrymen and stand up to
Chavez won. The comprador candidate got sent packing. As, indeed, 80% of the pre-elections polls predicted. I fully expect the usual democratist presstitutes to cry foul in the coming days. Not because the Venezuelan elections were unfair – though they will doubtless be claimed to be so by the organs of imperialist propaganda like the
Caracas, Venezuela. January 2019: I have just reread an essay I wrote – a short history of Venezuela from c.1800-1950 – for an economic development class during my Berkeley days. It’s not entirely irrelevant given current events, so I am posting it for perusal. The beginning of Venezuela’s integration into the world economy can be dated
A collection of news stories and my take on them from the past month or so. 1. Bribes are growing quickly in Russia. Their average sizes, that is. It was reported by the MVD that they increased by 5x from a year earlier to $10,000. The usual Russophobe suspects wasted no time declaring this to
At the recent Summit of the Americas in Trinidad, two great leaders, Obama and Chavez, shook hands in what could be the symbolic first gesture of reconciliation. Treasonous neocons will no doubt rush to condemn this as yet another limp-wristed and unilateral concession to “America’s enemies”, reminding their listeners that Chavez closed down opposition media,
Much like Putin’s Russia, Venezuela has been unfairly victimized by Washington’s foreign policy elite and savaged by the Western MSM, which have caricatured Chávez as a run of the mill Latin American populist strongman. In a previous post on this matter, I drew attention to the work of Mark Weisbrot at the CEPR, who has
Chavez is frequently shafted in the Western media, who allege that the only reason the Venezuelan economy is doing well is because of record oil prices. This is not to mention all the invective hurled against the Chavez administration for its supposed disrespect for democracy, from refusing to renew the licenses of TV stations support