Long time readers know that I occassionally blow a gasket when lazy Opposition talking heads describe the government as "totalitarian....

We've now seen every team in the World Cup. Here's what I make of them.

...so, hell, we've practically earned the right to make some authoritarian moves... (This Bloomberg piece no tiene pérdida, so I...

Katy says: These daily news summaries that I get can be eye-opening. Notice how different media outlets treat the same news item: Globovisió...

Well, Daniel's favorites, France, embarrassed themselves yesterday. Today it's my favorite team's turn. Will Spain play a decent...

...on yesterday's Aló, delincuente, Chavez announced plans for his Axis of Evil World Tour '06, with the obligatory stops in Iran ...

Hey everybody...Daniel and I started a World Cup Blog... Check it out...

You've heard about the arroz-con-pollo-sin-pollo...today, we get to see a team that represents a country that no longer exists. Though t...

Well, LVA was a no-show at his National Assembly hearing. Guy was promptly, unanimously sacked and the rumor going around over at Noticiero ...

Three games today, including two good ones. England-Paraguay: England is my pick to win the tournament, so I'm eager to see them playin...

Thinking about the way Venezuela is perceived abroad, perhaps what's hardest to convey is the way gangland tactics have colonized the re...

It's a challenge that every reporter assigned to cover the economy has to face: how to write about an irreducibly complex topic without ...

Picking up where I left off yesterday, I wanted to comment on this bit from Teodoro's interview in El Mundo on Tuesday: Q: At first, ...

My unbridled enthusiasm for Teodoro Petkoff's politics is matched only by my dismay at the guy's abysmal electioneering skills. A li...

Delicious tidbit on North American Opinion Research Big Cheese Julio Makarem: according to the Diccionario de la Corrupción en Venezuela, Vo...

Heh...sorry, couldn't help the headline. Not a week ago, chavista briefcase-pollster North American Opinion Research was saying Humala ...

The more folks look into it, the longer Julio Makarem's "rabo'e'paja" looks. You know who I'm talking about...Mr....

A couple of months ago, Harvard's Center for International Development hosted the second conference on Venezuelan Economic Growth 1970-...

Thanks to Katy, I got my hands on a copy of Falke, Federico Vegas's remarkable novel about the ill-fated "invasion" of Venezu...

Katy says: Once again, the rain season is upon us, and lemna has returned in full force to Lake Maracaibo. A year after an environmental dis...

Come to watch this roundtable on Wednesday (day after tomorrow) at 4:00 pm: Latin America in the Spotlight & 40th Anniversary of IDS Rou...

In this seven minute podcast, I try to explain how the Velásquez Alvaray scandal fits in with the Anderson Case, and North American Opinion...

I start looking through the opposition press this morning thinking, "hmmmmm, I wonder what else they have on the LVA meta-scandal?...

Wow. Just wow. In the time it takes to give a single, nitro-charged press conference, the Luis Velásquez Alvaray Affaire has morphed into ...

Katy says: Supreme Tribunal justice and former chavista congressman Luis Velásquez Alvaray (LVA), who was one of the main architects of last...

The "Republican" (ha!) "Moral" (guffaw!) Council has suspended Luis Velásquez Alvaray from the Supreme Tribunal...incrim...

After years and years of broadly sympathetic coverage, the New York Times' Juan Forero writes a mildly critical piece on Chavez amaz...

The other day, when Chavez announced Oliver Stone would direct a film about the 2002 April Crisis, my first reaction "well, the guy is...

In London, Chávez told assorted PSFs that he intended the Bolivarian Revolution to "save the world." Yesterday, on his return, he ...

Criticisms of Chávez's amazing, morphing strategic association contracts just got a whole lot harder to sustain: Oil producers fume at ‘...

Caldera Infante and The Incredible, Vanishing Luis Velasquez Alvaray Scandal (This one's a direct link - just one click should get the a...

Right, well - having worked out (I think) the technical bits - here's the first Caracas Chronicles Podcast...

Here's one to turn your stomach: Jesús Caldera Infante, the former head of Fogade who was so corrupt his own staff rebelled rather tha...

Over the last year or so, something new has happened in Latin America. For the first time since the heyday of Fidelista aggitation in the 19...

Katy says: With all due respect to Weil, this cartoon by El Universal cartoonist Rayma Suprani is rather brilliant. How best to sum up the p...

Ian Buruma, a prolific Anglo-Dutch intellectual, nails Chavez in yesterday's Sunday Times. His little screed must be one of the most...

Behold Google Trends - the net toy that tells you how many people are searching Google for what. Fun fact number one: more people are searc...

Nothing is quite so obnoxious as seeing the Opposition confirm, through its behavior, bits of overheated chavista rhetorical vilification. T...

The more you think about the revolution's trade policy, the less sense it makes. On the one hand, we hear Chavez attack any country that...

Well, thanks to Virginia I now have the text of the People's Trade Agreement Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia signed last month, and the thi...

Can someone find me a text of the Tratado de Libre Comercio de los Pueblos? Google isn't helping me here...

It's a shameless rip-off, but just for those of you who haven't seen it, I'm reproducing this graph of Venezuelan imports from a...

Just a few weeks ago, it looked like the Castro-Chavez left was on a roll in its struggle for hemispheric supremacy against the Lula-Bachele...

Just to prove that there's nothing creepier than a delusional paranoid with a long track-record of being right, here's Alberto Garri...

Con un subsidito de la capital... One last go at the WTO, and then I promise to get back to, um, writing things you all want to read about. ...

One obvious feature of the Multilateral Trade Regime is its mind-numbing, technocratic, outsider-baffling complexity. It's ironic, actua...

Nothing in the world of WTO negotiations is quite the way you'd expect. One startling example is the sprawling controversy over the US F...

Well, I've just finished my week-long WTO Negotiation Simulation (so be prepared to be bored silly with the details.) I have to say it ...