Next month, Venezuela will hold elections, and despite the dramatic failures of anti-Western leftist president Hugo Chavez, the opposition candidate is campaigning as a more extreme version of Chavez. Venezuelan governor Henrique Capriles will represent an alternative to Chavez. Citing increased violence, poor infrastructure, and a flailing economy, Capriles is making a populist proposition to…
Argentina and Venezuela are in the unenviable position of rounding out the bottom of this year’s Index of Economic Freedom, produced by The Heritage Foundation. Out of 179 nations ranked on a variety of criteria defining economic freedoms, Argentina and Venezuela find themselves in a category labeled “repressed.” Argentina sits at 158 on the list,…
Chile now ranks higher than the United States, and all of Central and South America according to the annual Index of Economic Freedom, produced by The Heritage Foundation, which has tracked economic freedom around the world for over a decade. According to the data compiled for this year’s rankings, Chile moved to number 7 on the…
Mercosur is a full customs union encompassing Argentina, Brasil, Paraguay y Uruguay. On Tuesday, the 31st of July, Venezuela joined that group making it one of the largest economies in the world at an estimated $3.3 trillion dollars. Recently, a similar economic agreement made up of largely western countries (Mexico, Chile, Peru and Colombia) named…
Since completion in 1914, the Panama canal has been vital for maritime trade between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans by cutting through the Isthmus of Panama to eliminate the lengthy and dangerous Cap Horn route looping around the southern tip of South America. As far back as 1825, the newly established Federal Republic of Central…
Initiated in 2004 as a pet project of Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, the Alianza Bolivariana para los Pueblos de Nuestra América started as a pact between the impoverished nation of Cuba, and Venezuela. The pact started as a simple partnership between communist Cuba, and fascist Venezuela. Under the initial agreement, Venezuela basically exchanged about 96,000…
Bolivia, Ecuador Nicaragua, and Venezuela are no strangers to anti-Western posturing. Recently, the nations have been cozying up to the Islamic nation Iran while simultaneously touting increasingly populist rhetoric, and implementing draconian policies such as disarming law abiding citizens in Venezuela, flouting national laws in Nicaragua, or attacks on the press in Ecuador. Last Tuesday,…
The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government. – Thomas Jefferson During his 13 years of rule in Venezuela, Hugo Chavez has presided over a dramatic increase in violence in Venezuela. In 1999, the year Chavez…
With 3,266,199 square miles of terrestrial territory, Brazil is the 5th largest country by landmass behind Russia, China, and the US of A. While Russia is in a league of its own with two and a half million square miles more than the second largest country in the world, with just 428,761 additional square miles…
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