Venezuela

SURPRISE, SURPRISE: A press group says Hugo Chavez is ignoring the defeat of his referendum and imposing new restrictions on the media.

DISPLACED UGANDANS: Displaced persons in Uganda want a voter referendum on a land issue because they don't trust the government to decide the question.

PUTIN CRACKS DOWN ON REFERENDUM RIGHT: The Russian Duma has passed legislation that would reduce the number of issues that can be put to a vote of the people in national referenda.

IRELAND SETS JUNE 12 FOR EU REFERENDUM VOTE: Ireland, the only EU country allowing its citizens to vote on the Lisbon Treaty, sets a date for the election.

Everyone's trying to forecast how Americans will react to oil at $104 a barrel. Yeah, yeah, cutting back on gas use, worried financial markets... But the overall mood is a defiant shrug, typified by the president, who told a renewable energy conference today that Americans have to “get off oil,” right after mentioning that he’d shown up in a motorcade of twenty cars. It’s fair to say that with neither a plan nor collective will to change, Americans will stay in oil’s motorcade.

However, while we’re watching ourselves, another possibly very significant conflict is forming in two of the most important oil-producing countries. After years of rising oil prices and escalating nationalist rhetoric, the poor in Venezuela and Iran are not getting what they were promised -- according to two separate but strikingly similar reports. Their reaction to rising prices, and increasing sense of disenfranchisement and disappointment, may ultimately force Americans out of the motorcade.

In Foreign Affairs, Francisco Rodriguez writes a fascinating and thoughtful article about Chavez’s failure to deliver oil money to the poor, despite years of talking and spending.

Rodriguez writes:

Writing in Canada's National Post, New America Senior Fellow Andres Martinez reports on his recent travels in Hugo Chavez's Venezuela.

CARACAS -- I don't like arriving in a new city early in the morning. You and the city are both still groggy, exposed; the pulse-racing anticipation of discovery is deadened by the overnight flight. It's like agreeing to go on a first date at 6 a.m. No, I'd rather make my first landing at night, when the shimmering lights only hint at what is soon to be unveiled.