The Cold War never ended. The collapse of communism in Europe was widely seen as the end of the Cold War between the USSR and the USA. However, Cuba did not surrender. Castro stayed in there, found a new ally in China, shifted strategy, and together they quietly started conquering Latin America. With the death …
On January 10, the previous presidential period ended, and the new started. However, no president was sworn in. The previous president, Hugo Chávez, who is also the president-elect, went to Cuba for surgery on December 10, and has not been heard from since. The Cuban regime claims that he is alive but in such a …
A recently published book is focusing on an important subject. In ”The Dictator’s Learning Curve – inside the global battle for democracy,” William Dobson writes about the Arab Spring, but also about Venezuela, Russia, Iran and others. We have got used to dictatorships being totalitarian, controlling the inhabitants through brutality. The standard image of a …
When following the ongoing presidential election in Venezuela, one comes across so many layers of propaganda that I feel obligated to start structuring it a bit. The traditional division is between white, grey, and black propaganda, but there seems to be some confusion in Wikipedia about how to define them: Sometimes the source is referred …
Many attempts have been made to “fix the problems” with electronic voting, but rather than trying to go through issue after issue, I’ll try to address it from the other end: Is it logically possible to make it work? To answer that question one has to boil down the essential requirements first, and then see …
Den 10 juni har oppositionen organiserat en marsch från ett flertal punkter i Caracas till den plats där oppositionens kandidat till att efterträda Hugo Chávez, guvernör Henrique Capriles Radonski, officiellt skall skriva in sin kandidatur. Huvudstadens uppslutning kompletteras enligt min källa med 100.000 som bussas in från andra delstater, och bland dessa återfinns 30.000 indianer. …
October 7, 2012, a presidential election will be held in Venezuela. Or will it? There is a lot that suggests that the process will be interrupted by a military coup. Hugo Chávez is dying in cancer (although he has claims to be recovering), and the politicians are preparing for what happens next. The opposition in …
It is hard to predict, especially the future. Nevertheless, there are some developments that seem to follow a pattern, so when a significant part of the pattern has played out, it is possible to predict that the rest will follow. One such pattern is that empires that rise also will fall. The only ones denying …
The chavistas have claimed that it was a coup d’état in Honduras in 2009, and that the new elected president, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, is a “golpista,” a coupster. However, a recent Venezuelan diplomatic cable reveals that the democrats in Honduras were right all along in being suspicious against Lobo, whose name means Wolf. It turns …
El presidente de Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, ha tomado algunas posiciones abiertas y encubiertas últimamente que puede haber sorprendido a muchos, como el apoyo a Gaddafi en Libia, y reiniciar la insurrección en Honduras. Sin embargo, pensando un poco más adelante en este juego de ajedrez, su estrategia se hace evidente. Él simplemente está tratando de …
