Free Republic

When Hugo Chavez was running for President, he emphasized that he did not believe in representative democracy, but in participatory democracy. So much so, that Chavez refused to sign the declaration after the Quebec Summit, because it used representative rather than participatory. I had to wonder what happened to that when the Venezuelan National assembly named this week a committee to choose a replacement for Central Bank Director Manuel Lago. Despite the fact that the National assembly is split almost 50/50 between pro-Chavez and anti-Chavez Deputies (there is a difference of only three Deputies out of 160), there is not...

ADLAI STEVENSON once argued that a politician is a statesman who “approaches every question with an open mouth”. If the performance of Jan Egeland, of the UN’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, is an indication, the same is true of those paid by the United Nations. A week ago, despite just one day having passed since the Asian tsunami, with the reported death toll one tenth of what it is now believed to be, and ignoring the fact that public holidays are never the easiest times to start organising an aid effort, Mr Egeland saw fit to dismiss...

I only have access to a few English language television stations while I am visiting Israel: BBC News and CNN International. Every quarter hour they recap the top stories. Today’s big story (after the non-stop images of a tidal wave taking out resorts frequented by Europeans and few Americans) is the comment of U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland who said that western nations, particularly the United States, were being stingy with their aid packages offered for victims of the disaster. Without putting into context the fact that the United States provides more funding to the UN than any...