And They Should Know!

'To the streets to fight, to the ballot boxes to protest. Vote empty.'

They're telling you so themselves: Leave your ballot blank! And they are the Socialist Party, who should know very well what happens when people don't vote, or the vote is made irrelevent: Stalin, Mao, Castro and, maybe soon, Ecuador and Venezuela.

Bogotá is in the full swing of mayoral campaigning, and, as always, the options could be better: There's Clara Lopez, seen as a continuation of the current, unpopular Petro administration; Enrique Peñalosa, an ex-mayor with a personality problem, but who's remembered as a good administrator; and Rafael Pardo, a career politician with an erratic political history. And then there are others with no chance.

Do the Socialists have a better option? Probably not. But they do have a plan: Revolution! And while that may feel good, we know where it's taken us.

'Enough already! Vote blank.'

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Venezuela Goes Off the Deep End

Hugo Chávez reaches for godliness.

Can a man be God?

Are the victims the aggressors?

Are economic laws really suspended by the Bolivarian Revolution?

Commenting on the progressive disaster in Colombia's neighbor Venezuela means struggling between pathos and laughter. And last week brought laughter.

Venezuela's socialists have long regarded their deceased ex-president Hugo Chavez with a near-religious reverence. And, Venezuela's chavistas have had a long-running clash with the Catholic Church. But Venezuela remains a deeply Catholic nation.

So, how to shift the people's allegiance to the 'socialist revolution'?

Well, how about making the deceased Chávez god? A group of Venezuelan revolutionaries took the first step toward that this week by replacing the traditional Padre Nuestro (Our Father) with Chávez Nuestro (Our Chávez). The Catholic Church, naturally, criticized the replacement of Christianity's founder and greatest prophet with a failed coup leader and authoritarian president.

Venezuelan Pres. Nicolas Maduro told the 'inquisition' to mind its own business. But, with its sagging economy and soaring inflation and crime rates, Venezuela had better pray to somebody.

With a huge government deficit, the Bolivarian Revolutión has to turn somewhere to fill its fiscal gap. And what better source of financing than a fellow authoritarian petrostate like Russia? And how to stay in Russia's good graces? Try reinterpreting the conflict in eastern Ukraine, which almost all the rest of the world sees as a calculated, violent territorial grab by Russia against its smaller neighbor.

According to the Venezuelanalysis website: Maduro criticized the "threats" made by the United States and Europe, insisting that "Russia defends itself, and is then accused of employing aggressive politics against the West." 

"We in Venezuela demand in a clear voice … that those who accuse and accost Russia desist the attack, desist from seeking war with Russia. Peace!"

Yes, why won't those darn war-mongering Westerners quit provoking those peaceful Russian soldiers, tanks and missiles now invading eastern Ukraine?

And Venezuela's Bolivarian Revolution long ago declared normal economic laws, such as supply and demand, suspended in revolutionary territory. That's produced the world's highest inflation rate, widespread shortages and huge smuggling economies along the Venezuelan-Colombian border.

Recently, however, the government hinted that it would actually reduce its disastrous gasoline subsidy, which costs Venezuela billions of dollars per year and enriches smugglers. But this week Pes. Maduro seemed to make clear that his government is too afraid of protests to actually charge for gasoline. Instead, it'll continue blaming 'conspirators and coup mongers' for the fact that the country's an economic basket case.

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours

Who's Behind this Sad Syria Campaign?

These posters have appeared in Bogotá's university neighborhoods over the last few days. They celebrate Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, who spent the last year massacring his own people for protesting against his tyrranical government.

The posters, which someone spent a good bit of money to print and distribute, frame Syria's tragedy as an issue of 'imperialism' and 'Zionism' - handy catchwords for the dogmatic left.

There are many legitimate observations to be made about Syria and the Middle East (none of which have been made by Mitt Romney), but praising a man who lives in luxury while massacring his own people, including the reported killing of more than 100 people today at a gas station, is way beyond the rational.

It's also a real shame and injustice to see the name of the late Colombian sociologist and defender of the peasantry Orlando Fals Borda associated with this distorted campaign. Orlando Fals Borda's links to the M-19 guerrillas suggest he wasn't wholly dedicated to non-violence. But he fought his whole life for the underdog and to open Colombia's governing system to the voices of the most humble - values completely opposite to those of Syria's dictator.

Yet another distortion here is associating a justification for a murderous dictator with 'socialism'. It's a real pity that some Latin American groups (read Hugo Chavez, for example) have hijacked the 'socialist' label and used it to mean 'anti-American.' And that evidently includes al-Assad, a tyrant whose ire against the U.S. has nothing to do with socialism - if his and his wife's habits of giving interviews to slick American fashion magazines and ordering luxuries over the Internet while bombing their own people are any indication.

Finally, I'm left with a curiosity about who is paying for this sad campaign. It's certainly not the students, and hopefully not a public university. My suspicions fall on the Iranian, Russian or Venezuelan embassies, three of the dictator's few remaining allies.

Graffiti in the National University says 'A people is disgraceful when its youth doesn't make the world tremble and its students are submissive before the tyrant.' Have al-Assad's supporters read this?

By Mike Ceaser, of Bogotá Bike Tours