Credibility Gap ...or: the broken record defense December 5th Inter-Press Service In a nationally broadcast message Thursday, Chve...

A plausible defense of the lunatic's legacy... As I talk about Venezuela with people abroad, some variation on it always comes up ...

Extra! Extra! Nothing happens! Today, the streets of Caracas are witnessing a totally unprecedented development: calm. For the first tim...

First casualty: everyday life... Last night, my sister Cristina asked whether I'd go visit her today, relieve some of the tedium of ...

The President Must Be Crazy Last week, VenEconomy outlined three scenarios for the brewing crisis here: the government, it was argued,...

Cold Civil War (...or is it Civil Cold War? Which do you think sounds better?) Another march in Caracas today, a really bloody b...

Crisis? What crisis? The BBC News write-up is hysterical. José Vicente Rangel's story is, of course, an incredible howler, and this...

Three scenarios For years, it’s been the proverbial “nuclear option” for the opponents of successive Venezuelan governments. Protests an...

Lies, damn lies, and channel 8 Turn on the television in Venezuela, any channel, any time, and you're in the thick of it. Every day,...

A good long one (blatantly ripped off from the not-yet-published December issue of VenEconomy:) The December Crisis The National Work S...

Now we're cooking without gas! Well, I've been really delinquent about blogging, but for the love of christ this country has g...

Anglophone escuálido bloggers of the world, unite! ...you have only your crappy low hit-counts to lose... My friend Tony Guzmán Blanc...

We’re all radicals now Yeah, yeah, so four days ago I wrote a long, rambling blog entry explaining why the general strike was going to f...

There’s nonsense, there’s hard-core nonsense, and then there’s chavista nonsense. The government’s public statements over the last few day...

This strike doesn’t have a chance… The big news these days is that, last week, the coordinadora democrática (the big umbrella group t...

The juiciest scandal nobody is writing about… Ask people in Caracas what or where Las Cristinas is, and mostly you’ll get blank stares b...

Powergrab What a difference seven days make. A week ago, the political scene was dominated by talk of parliamentary procedures, after ...

Shit + Fan = Right now Well, I'd been forecasting it for weeks, but still I was a little shocked when it happened. The government ha...

They keep getting caught… It happened again yesterday. For the Nth time. A small but bellicose pro-government mob showed up at the Met...

The Half-assed Totalitarian I’m reading Christopher Hitchins’ new book on George Orwell at the moment, and enjoying it immensely. As I r...

Referendum or bust The game now is quite clear. The latest polls suggest the government would lose the consultative referendum 60-40 at ...

I wasn't that excited about this week's VenEconomy editorial, but my boss insists that primaries are absolutely crucial and that w...