WHERE ARE THE SUPPORTERS OF THE CHAVEZ REGIME NOW?

7 famous supporters of the leftist dictator of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. Most of his supporters were (are?) the Hollywood elite.

THE PERSONALITY CULT OF CHE GUEVERA

What Michael Totten observed in Cuba regarding the glorifcation of Che Guervara in Cuba. . .and how at least one American is brain dead regarding the horrible atrocities committed by Che in the name of his communist revolution.  There are more posters of him in Cuba than of Fidel and Raul Castro!

“Just as Jacobin Paris had Louis Antoine de Saint-Just,” wrote French historian Pascal Fontaine, “revolutionary Havana had Che Guevara, a Latin American version of Nechaev, the nineteenth century nihilist terrorist who inspired Dostoevsky’s The Devils. As Guevara wrote to a friend in 1957, ‘My ideological training means that I am one of those people who believe that the solution to the world’s problems is to be found behind the Iron Curtain.’…He was a great admirer of the Cultural Revolution [in China]. According to Regis Debray, ‘It was he and not Fidel who in 1960 invented Cuba’s first corrective work camp,’ or what the Americans would call a slave labor camp and the Russians called the gulag.”

NSA SPYING ON "FRIENDS"

The NSA has been spying on Brazil and Mexico.  Brazil has been particularly upset with the Obama administration for allowing this to occur.  If you spy on friends, don't get caught. . .but historically this is not something new in espionage.

"I feel a mixture of amazement and indignation. It seems like there are no limits. When the phone of the president of the republic is monitored, it's hard to imagine what else might be happening," Ferraco told reporters in Brasilia. "It's unacceptable that in a country like ours, where there is absolutely no climate of terrorism, that there is this type of spying."

Brazilian Justice Minister Eduardo Cardozo told the newspaper O Globo that "if the facts of the report are confirmed, they would be considered very serious and would constitute a clear violation of Brazil's sovereignty."

"This is completely outside the standard of confidence expected of a strategic partnership, as the U.S. and Brazil have," he added.

The BBC report on the spying. 

IRAN PENETRATING VENEZUELA

Iran is laundering billions of dollars through Venezuela and Hezbollah is setting  up bases to expand its operations into the western hemisphere.  Terrorism is growing closer to home.  I haven't seen this covered in the media, but it is from an "off-the-record" State Department official. 

VENZUELA'S HUGO CHAVEZ

Hugo Chavez was supposedly a man of the little guy in Venzuela.  But the pictures I have seen with his daughters show expensive jewelry and watches on his daughters.  I am not an expert on the cost of jewelry, but I don't think the average person in Venzuela is able to wear such expensive jewelry.

MEXICAN ILLEGALS

According to the WSJ illegal immigration from Mexico is drying up.  Everything from the struggling Obama economy which has dried up jobs to the improving economy in Mexico is reversing the flow of Mexican workers.  There may be more opportunity in Mexico than in the US.

Between 2005 and 2010, 1.4 million Mexicans migrated north of the border, fewer than half as many as in the previous five-year period. Meanwhile, the number of Mexicans and their children who returned to Mexico between 2005 and 2010 rose to 1.4 million, about double the number who went home between 1995 and 2000, the report said. These trends suggest the return flow to Mexico surpassed arrivals to the U.S. in 2010 and 2011, the report adds.

GREECE DISINTEGRATES

Fascists may be taking over in Greece--blog post by Alan Johnson.

Quotes Paul Mason at the BBC:  Last month, the Greek prime minister, Antonis Samaras, warned Europe that his country was on the edge of a Weimar Germany-style social collapse. What I have seen on the streets of Athens convinces me this is not rhetoric. There is a violent far-right party, its MPs committing and inciting violence with impunity; a police force that cannot or will not prevent Golden Dawn from projecting uniformed force on the streets. And a middle class that feels increasingly powerless to turn the situation round.

In addition:  The neo-fascist party Golden Dawn won 6 to 7 percent of the vote in the Greek elections of May and June 2012 and is polling at twice that today, as anger rises against the economic austerity measures of the coalition government of Conservatives, Socialists and the Democratic Left.

Increasing lawlessness may be on the horizon.

CHINA BUILDING CANAL IN NICARAGUA

China has signed an agreement to build a canal in Nicaragua.  Where is US investment?  This will be a signifant entry of Chinese economic power into the Westerm Hemisphere.

According to spokespeople, the canal will take an approximate 10 years to be built, and will cost $30 billion US dollars. According to the agreement, the Nicaraguan canal will be partially built by 2019, by which time it will have the capacity to transport 416 million metric tons, which would represent 3.9% of the world’s maritime load.