Thursday, June 30, 2011

Chavez has cancer! Is it showtime?

Authors:
José Alberto López Rafaschieri and Luis Alberto López Rafaschieri
www.morochos.net

Chavez's disappearance is a mystery. Speculations fly: he has cancer, he's dead, he is wounded, he is planning something with Fidel, a medical source said this, a newspaper in Miami said that, Nelson Bocaranda said such a thing in his "runrunes", etc., keeping the Venezuelan people and the world in a state of suspense. Something strange happens, there's no doubt, however, we could be looking another of Chavez's circus acts.

The dramatic removal of a key figure of the plot, and its return after a while, is nothing new, it has been part of Hollywood scripts since the early days of cinema. It is one of those tricks that entertainment producers use to refresh the stories and raise the public's interest.

Snow White was poisoned by an evil witch and then resurrected by the kiss of a prince; in Superman, Lois Lane dies and is brought back to life by the "man of steel" when he makes the time go back; in Pirates of the Caribbean, Captain Jack Sparrow is eaten by a mythical monster, and returned from the dead through the superhuman efforts of his crew; in The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf falls into an abyss during a fight with a demon and is given up for dead, returning later as a most powerful wizard; in the Twilight series, Edward Cullen decides to say goodbye to his beloved (and to the audience) for her protection, provoking suspense, to then return and continue the vampire story; and there are still many more examples...

But why would Chavez resort to such trickery? The Venezuelan president has already twelve years in power, without having concrete answers to the problems of insecurity, housing scarcity and food supply of Venezuelans. Perhaps "El Comandante" could be hoping to use this as an excuse for the lack of results of his recently announced Mission House (Misión Vivienda), which would have to have thousands of houses built until this date, or maybe he is trying to alleviate a bit of the tension that Venezuelans have been experiencing for years due to his authoritarian style of government, softening his image before the 2012 presidential elections by arousing feelings of compassion and longing.

We can't forget that Chavez's leadership is still based more on his charisma and media skills than in his ability to repress dissent. Before being a strong man, Chavez is a charming entertainer. For now, Chavistas can organize religious ceremonies to pray for Chavez's health, share alleged intelligence reports with the press or give speeches calling for an armed revolution, as Chavez's brother did recently, but if you ask us, all the mystery that has been created with the "disappearance" of the current Venezuelan president seems more an electoral circus than anything else.


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Tuesday, June 21, 2011

"La Gran Recesión y la Izquierda" on Amazon.com

Authors:
José Alberto López Rafaschieri and Luis Alberto López Rafaschieri
www.morochos.net



You can now buy our book "La Gran Recesión y la Izquierda" on Amazon.com, the leading bookstore in the cyberspace, and one of the largest in the world. You can make the purchase through this site and this company will send a copy of our book to virtually anywhere in the world, usually without customs or import taxes. Once you complete the transaction, you will get the book in about five days if you live in Latin America, less than half that time if you live in the U.S., and if you are located elsewhere, Amazon.com will tell you the approximate time of your order delivery.

By clicking on the image above you will be transferred directly to the page of "La Gran Recesión y la Izquierda" on Amazon.com, there, in addition to the purchase, you can browse images and details of the book.

Friday, June 10, 2011

Cuba: Tobacco dollars over public health

Authors:
Luis Alberto López Rafaschieri and José Alberto López Rafaschieri
www.morochos.net

In a section of the documentary "An Inconvenient Truth", Al Gore talks on the topic of smoking and its harmful effects on human life, but this piece of the film seems to be ignored by Fidel Castro and the Cuban communists, although they are apparently anti-global-warming activists.

Much of the civilized world has begun to pass laws to ban smoking in places that affect other people, as recommended by the World Health Organization; however, as if it were not enough to be one of the only countries still governed by a socialist dictatorship, Cuba also prefers to be one of the few nations to avoid anti-tobacco regulations in order to not harm the earnings of its state tobacco industry.

According to WHO, about 6 million people will die this year because of smoking, not including passive smoking, but in the socialist paradise of the Castro brothers, the "problem" to choose between health and dollars is defined in the style of Wall Street investment bankers, what makes more profit?, where tobacco capitalism wins easily.

While Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia, Guatemala, Panama, Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay and other Latin American countries continue to move to offer its citizens smoke-free spaces, Cuba continues to hold the annual "Habano's Festival", tobacco is still among the top three Cuban export products, and the pictures of Fidel Castro and Che Guevara with cigars in their mouths are part of Latin American communist culture.

A few years ago, the government of Cuba sought to promote anti-tobacco regulations, but they were nullified with the excuse of being intolerable for the people, which sounds highly implausible because we are talking about one of the most repressive dictatorships on the planet.

And in this we have another of the contradictions of Cuban socialism. Fidel prefers to write about the growth of deserts in Africa and toxic emissions in the northern hemisphere, but where he can do something real for life, in Cuba, where the Castro family has dominated for the past 52 years, he chooses to discuss the problems in foreign countries.


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Wednesday, June 8, 2011

"The Latin American left is leaning to the center"

Authors:
José Alberto López Rafaschieri and Luis Alberto López Rafaschieri
www.morochos.net

The prestigious publication "The Christian Science Monitor" published an interview in which the journalist Sara Miller spoke with us about the Peruvian elections (click here to read it in full). Luis Alberto said to this news agency that since the arrival of Ortega to Nicaragua's presidency in 2007, no other wannabe Chavez has appeared in the region because the leftists are now betting on centrist positions. We had already expressed this idea on other occasions, implying that Humala will most likely follow the footsteps of leaders like Mauricio Funes, in El Salvador.

Luis also told "The Christian Science Monitor" that this was because, although Chavez's speech is attractive to some people, the failure of the XXI Century Socialism in matters such as inflation, insecurity and power generation had shown to the neighboring countries that chavism is not a good example to follow, which, coupled with falling oil revenues -less money to buy foreign loyalties-, had reduced his regional influence.

Click in the image to enlarge it


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Saturday, June 4, 2011

Kidnapping, the face of the Chavista security policy failure

Authors:
José Alberto López Rafaschieri and Luis Alberto López Rafaschieri
www.morochos.net

The Chavez government has failed miserably in public security policies, to the point that the authorities no longer give official figures on the exact number of crimes being committed daily in Venezuela, hoping that, in this way, the population will not be aware of the government's inability on the subject. All crimes have flourished under the administration of Lt. Col. Chavez, from drug trafficking to counterfeiting of documents, but is kidnapping the illegal activity that has grown more in these 12 years of XXI Century Socialism.

According to figures from the National Institute of Statistics of Venezuela, about 17 000 kidnappings occur each year in Venezuela, indicating that 47 citizens of this country are victims of this crime every day.

In 1998, the Venezuelan electorate believed that a military would solve the escalation of crime that took place in Venezuela during the nineties. The reality shattered ​​that expectation. Before Chavez came to power, kidnapping seemed to occur only on the Venezuelan western border, but now that Chavez has twelve years applying his policies, Venezuela has surpassed Colombia in kidnapping cases per year.

While Lt. Col. speaks of socialism and expropriation, Venezuelans suffer the kidnapping of a family member or a loved one. Worst of all, the police is involved in eight out of ten of these crimes, as some experts say, and courts have become, under the Chavez government, ineffective institutions that do not punish those who commit such acts.


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