Chavez's 11 Year Itch - Still Threatening Freedom in Latin America

The latest temper tantrum from Venezuela's Chavez is a shot across the bow of Colombian president-elect Juan Manuel Santos ahead of the peaceful handover of power on August 7 from Alvaro Uribe.

The break in relations with Colombia is also a distraction from Chavez's misrule resulting in economic destruction and social polarization at home.

Obviously Chavez was not amused by Colombia's evidence of FARC training camps in Venezuela.

Venezuela is lorded over by a former army colonel whose policies are deliberately zapping its democratic traditions and oil and gas wealth.

Chavez's bankrupt statist-Castrista policies have caused acute food shortages, and an electricity crisis.

 The ''Cubanization'' of Venezuela unsurprisingly has brought the same miserable results Castro,Inc. wrought on its prison paradise island.

The free press hangs by a hair as the last opposition redoubt, Globovision, feels increased hostility as a Chavista is installed on its board and the Venezuelan despot becomes a majority owner of the media giant, a move roundly criticized.

Venezuela's embrace of Iran, serving as a FARC-drug link, and coziness to international terrorists make it a pariah regime.

Indeed, as long as the Chavista regime remains in power, freedom hangs in the balance in Latin America. Colombia, a democracy, is an obstacle to Castrista Chavism, and thus draws Caracas' ire.

Chavez is so desperate to rally his countrymen he recently ordered national hero Simon Bolivar's body to be exhumed.

The former army colonel debases Bolivar's legacy of freedom in South American history by tapping it to describe his totalitarian revolución bolivariana. But Bolivar liberated, not enslaved, his followers.

Chavez's eleven-year itch as a complete failure presiding over Venezuela is to threaten his democratic and market-oriented neighbor and try to deflect scrutiny from the indisputable fact that statism is an unmitigated disaster every time and everywhere it is tried.
***
If you need research from open sources in Spanish, French, or Portuguese and presented in a stylish English language report or a translation of documents in said languages to English, please contact Professor Winn at by sending an email to mrenglish101@gmail.com for a prompt evaluation.

Pressure to Lift US Embargo on Cuba Grows

As GSM posited in its first comments after the release into freedom of Cuban political prisoners, the pressure is on for the United States to lift its economic embargo on La Habana: Cuba release 'could lead to US lifting embargo'.

Cuba trades with the rest of the world. Castro, Inc. has been very profitable in the years following la revolución.  Does the US embargo really matter as a practicality?

US President Barak Obama has shown leniency toward leftist gains in Latin America at the expense of freedom.

Will he seek more plaudits from the International Left and reward Castro,Inc.?

Or will he ignore the clamor for a change in Washington's 50-plus year policy toward Havana?

***
If you need research from open sources in Spanish, French, or Portuguese and presented in a stylish English language report or a translation of documents in said languages to English, please contact Professor Winn at by sending an email to mrenglish101@gmail.com for a prompt evaluation.

Brussels Journal Is Good Reading

GSM has linked to the Brussels Journal blog whose tagline is the "voice of conservatism in Europe."

Its bold and spot-on commentary is a rare breath of fresh air among opinion leaders on European political-economic-social affairs.

In reviewing its past commentary, we particulary liked The Rise and Fall of Spanish “Super-Judge” Baltasar Garzón and its blunt opinion like "Collectivism and its record: consistently downward" in a recent post, Duly Noted: Inconvenient Realities.

Check it out today!

***If you need research from open sources in Spanish, French, or Portuguese and presented in a stylish English language report or a translation of documents in said languages to English, please contact Professor Winn at by sending an email to mrenglish101@gmail.com for a prompt evaluation.

75 Freed Political Prisoners = End of US embargo on Cuba?

Castro´s Cuba, in its very sad and too long history, has never shied away from theatrics.

With another hunger-striker near death, El Máximo Castro reappears in public (again, only still-shots), and in an apparent breakthrough on the release of a block of unjustly jailed political opponents, some observers believe it is a win-win for the rogue regime in La Habana. If not, it would not have happened.

Madrid´s El País has led the coverage of Cuba´s biggest release to date of  75 presos políticos (political prisoners) in a deal evidently brokered by Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Ángel Moratinos Cuyabué.

The move drew jeers from influential Cuban-American blogger,Alberto de la Cruz, accusing Spain of "scheming behind closed doors with a murderous regime and the compromised and immoral leadership of the Catholic church in Cuba."

Undeniably, Spain under the unsteady leadership of socialist President José Luiz Zapatero, has been manipulated by the regime to gain coveted favorability by the European Union.

Moreover, the influential daily El Nuevo Herald in Miami reports the prisoner release is "...sólo una concesión táctica de un gobierno que enfrenta una fulminante crisis económica y es improbable que a largo plazo suavice medio siglo de autoritarismo y mano dura.(only a tactical concession by a regime facing a worsening economic crisis and it is unlikely to ease its half-century of authoritarian control in the long term).

Alas, is the door finally open for the left-leaning US President Barak Obama to ease, if not end the embargo, on the repressive prison paradise island?

Such a bold policy change would hand Castro, Inc. its long-sought moral victory and mark a total defeat in the US´s Cuba policy.

The Democrat-run House Agriculture Committee voted last week to ease the tough travel restrictions which allows more dollars to flow into Castro, Inc.´s coffers, moving the US closer to hollowing out the embargo.

Unfortunately, the trend is toward a "bailout" of Castro, Inc., not preparing for its burial as GSM mulled in its Top 6 Strategic Questions for 2010.
***
If you need research from open sources in Spanish, French, or Portuguese and presented in a stylish English language report or a translation of documents in said languages to English, please contact Professor Winn at by sending an email to wtglobalanalytics@gmail.com for a prompt evaluation.