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:
To say the least, all is not well:
Evo Morales may be the poor man’s Hugo Chavez, but this article helps demonstrate why he is so bad for the people and prospects of Bolivia:
I mean, who but an intellectual mastermind could have brought about this?
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:
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.