Maybe now, we can jail Internet surfers:
Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, who is criticized by media freedom groups, called on Saturday for regulation of the Internet and singled out a website that he said falsely reported the murder of one of his ministers.
“The Internet cannot be something open where anything is said and done. Every country has to apply its own rules and norms,” Chavez said. He cited German Chancellor Angel Merkel as having expressed a similar sentiment recently.
But an incompetent dictator, too:
Homicides in Venezuela have quadrupled during President Hugo Chavez’s 11 years in power, with two people murdered every hour, according to new figures from a non-governmental organization.
The Venezuelan Observatory of Violence (OVV), whose data is widely followed in the absence of official statistics, said the South American nation has one of the highest crime rates on the continent, with 54 homicides per 100,000 citizens in 2009.
That rate is only surpassed in Latin America by El Salvador where 70 in every 100,000 citizens were murdered last year, the OVV said, citing official statistics from that country.
As long as I live, I shall never understand why there was ever any controversy about calling Hugo Chavez a dictator:
It is bad enough, of course, that the Islamic regime in Iran is brutally crushing any attempt to protest its theft of the presidential election this past June. But in addition to the repression it is engaging in, the regime is also showing just how cheap and petty it can be:
But they appear to be leaving a sinking ship:
So, the longtime controversial director seems to think that Hugo Chavez is “a democrat,” eh?
It’s pretty impressive when protests against Venezuela’s dictator–I trust that we are allowed to call him a dictator now–reach the transnational stage:
Yes. And voters should find as much if Kennedy decides to run for his uncle’s seat.
I’ve said it before, and I will say it again: I cannot believe that we actually had an argument over whether Chavez possessed any democratic instincts whatsoever.
No? Well, let me mention it now: Hugo Chavez is a dictator. And a brutal one, to boot: