Chavez, the next t-shirt icon.
The paleoliberal establishment has its heroes. fidel. Che. And now Hugo. Fresh from this morning's El Herald, Chavistas cautivan a académicos de Estados Unidos (Chavez's followers charm American academics):

Académicos, científicos sociales, estudiantes universitarios, religiosos católicos y protestantes, activistas sociales y luchadores antiglobalización, integran el más prestigioso conglomerado de apoyo con que cuenta la llamada revolución bolivariana en los Estados Unidos en la actualidad, una red que ha significado para los grupos prochavistas el acceso a tribunas prestigiosas de la intelectualidad y la izquierda tradicional estadounidense.
(my translation:) Academics, social scientists, college students, Catholic and Protestant clergy, social activists and anti-globalists, are currently members of the most prestigious group of supporters of the so-called Bolivaran revolution in the United States, a network that conveys access to podiums of the most prestigious American intellectual and traditionally leftist forums.

That Chavez has been looking for a confrontation with the USA only adds to the excitement of being "cool".

El Herald has been writing a four-part series on Venezuela, from which is the above quote. Another article of the series shows that Venezuelan Minister of Information Andrés Izarra (formerly a reporter for CBS news) has been publicly bragging that

Venezuela mantiene una red de inteligencia en territorio estadounidense que ha penetrado hasta los cuerpos de inteligencia de Estados Unidos.

''Inclusive, dentro del servicio de inteligencia de Estados Unidos tenemos gente que nos habla y que nos dice. Tenemos más amigos de lo que se cree'', afirmó Izarra durante una conferencia de prensa esta semana.
Venezuela maintains an intelligence network in the United States that has even penetrated American intelligence agencies.

"Inclusively, even with the US intelligence service, we have people that talks to us and tells us things. We have more friends than people believe", Izarra state during a press conference this week.

The article states that the Fort-Lauderdale based Venezuelan Information Office keeps track of what's mentioned against the Chavez administration in the American media and in Congress. According the the Department of Justice, the VIO keeps track of reporters writing on Venezuela for The Washington Post, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune and The Miami Herald. In addition, the VIO has contacted some thirty senators and canvassed at least four Democrat representatives, among them Raúl Grijalva (Arizona), Dennis Kucinich (Ohio), Barbara Lee (California) y Jan Schakowsky (Illinois), for support against the referendum against Chavez, plus it counts on the support of Jack Kemp and former Attorney General Ramsey Clarke.

According to the article, the VIO has reached out to other areas, including Utah, Chicago (where the Armada Libertad - Armed Freedom - group's slogan is ``Defendiendo a Venezuela desde las entrañas del monstruo'' "Defending Venezuela from within the entrails of the monster"), and Canada. This post at Venezuela News And Views talks about how much money the Chavez administration is spending on hired pens to promote its cause outside, and gives you an idea of the actual sums involved.

Chavez has adopted Castro's old motto, "Patria o muerte" (Homeland or death). That's not his only stride towards becoming Fidel's Mini-Me. As this article in The Economist explains, Chavez has

• "recently declared himself to be a Fidelista, a follower, that is, of Cuba's communist president, Fidel Castro, his closest ally. He has ordered Venezuela's armed forces to draw up a new Cuban-style strategy in which the top priority has become preparing to fight a war of resistance against a hypothetical invasion by the United States, now seen as the principal adversary."
• "At the same time, the president is shopping for arms. In recent months, he has bought from Russia 40 Mi35 helicopters and 100,000 Kalashnikov rifles. He is negotiating for up to 24 Brazilian Super-Tucano ground-attack planes and four Spanish naval corvettes."
• "Now Mr Chávez is negotiating trade and investment deals with Russia, Brazil, Iran and China. The next step, some in Washington worry, will be that Venezuela will start diverting its oil from the United States to China."
• "A third controversy is Mr Chávez's tightening grip at home. Since the referendum, the opposition has all but disappeared as a coherent force. The chavista majority in the legislature has appointed an expanded—and avowedly “revolutionary”—supreme court, which in turn has named a new electoral authority, with a 4-1 pro-government majority."

Property rights in Venezuela are becoming a thing of the past. Much of the private sector's facing extinction, and, while thousands of Venezuelan professionals are unemployed, Castro's sending hundreds of teachers, doctors and sports instructors of questionable credentials to Venezuela as part of an oil deal. Instead of Oil-for-food, is it Oil-for-crews? I ask -- after all, Fidel's Hugo's mentor, and where there's oil, there's money.

Chavez's appropriation of lands for collective farms, which practice slash-and-burn agriculture, will lead to ecological disaster. But all is forgiven. Hugo will soon be featured on a t-shirt near you, because, as The American Thinker states, Venezuela is now like a house on fire in the name of Marxist revolution. And nothing pleases a paleoliberal more than that.

This post also published in Blogger News Network.
Update Welcome, Babalu readers. Please visit often. Many thanks to Babalu commenter MIguel-O-Matic for the link to this site.

Follow-up post here