My dog, callin' Dubya el Diablo, getting laughs from the crowd. It's inflammatory rhetoric, but that's politics. On substance, his critique of Bush's "Freedom is on the March" rhetoric and foreign policy is actually dead-on.

For those of you who are new to this, understand that 95% of what you read about Hugo Chavez in the english-language press is propaganda. He's won solid majorities thrice in internationally certified elections, which is more than I can say for most leaders these days, including our new boy down there in Mexico.

Meistro? A little history, please.

So why the propaganda? Well he's a socialist who uses his country's natural resources to provide infrastructure, medicine and education to the poor, and he's building stronger regional economic ties outside of any of our fancy funds like the IMF or World Bank.

Apparently we're still so afraid of communism that we can't handle this. He's showing us up, so fuck 'em, he's a dictator! Coup d'etat his as, or get someone down there with a poison cigar or something...

Chavez is up for re-election this year, which he does seem likely to win, but it also looks like his opposition won't boycott the political process (as they did in the 2005 parlimentary elections, to ill effect for them). That's good. Instead, they've adopted Chavez's rhetoric of helping the poor, and are critiquing his foreign-aid and military-acquisition programs as unnecessary diversions.

On the downside for them, the Un Nuevo Tiempo (A New Era) party doesn't have much credibility -- still closely tied to the economic elite -- so in spite of the fact that Chavez is vulnerable on just about every issue except education, they probably won't be able to capitalize, this time. But if they keep at it...

The point is, you can hardly call the man a dictator. He may be inheriting Castro's place as the regional champion of socialism, and setting him self up in opposition to US Hegemony, but he's not running a police state or anything, and frankly it's a little embarassing that our media and political elites can only see a Red Menace.

Keep on rockin' in the free world.

I'm still figuring things out. I hope to spend some more hours and really "launch" this weekend. In the mean time I don't see anything wrong with giving y'all a sneak peek.

My goals here:

• Get my own thing back on track: gonzo blogging of a life less ordinary.
• Restoring the old-style book-like pages that I started with back in 2001: "Josh's take on such-and-such"
• The Rebel Unicorn platform: my blogging empire, no tribute required.

Slowly but surely.

A practical example.

Right now in Hungary, there's serious civil unrest because of a bad economy and a president who admitted lying about it. Who cares, right?

Well, as I'm working on this site (and getting my job done for a client) I had to ask a Drupal security question, so of course I had to ask chx, the undisputed heavyweight champion on such issues.

He's Hungarian, and in and around answering my question he mentioned how glad he is to get away from mounted police beating the shit out of people and off to Antwerp for the Drupal conference (where, incidentally, my business partner Zack will be, along with some other friends).

Global projects shrink the globe.

I've been sort of sleepwalking through life lately, my soul sort of elsewhere. I'm feeling my energy down at a low ebb, little interest in trying to make good connections with people, little interest in trying to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

In practical terms everything is great. I've been having a wonderful summer seeing lots of friends and living a kind of life I find deeply appealing. I've been carrying on a somewhat successful trans-continental romance. I've found my way back into free agency on the work front. All this is good, and yet it's also somehow not enough -- perhaps I'm not enough: insufficiently present, decisive, focused, etc.

There's no easy explanation for any of this. I'll think sometimes it's the pabst or the hash or all the rich food, and then I'll live clean and feel about the same only maybe a little more bored. I do know that exercise helps, and that I've felt this way before, and that this too shall pass, and so I'm not really worried... just trying to explain where I am.

It feels difficult to maintain a conscience in this modern world, to reconcile this with ambition. I want my sparky vigor back, my sense of what's true. I'm tired of getting old.

So the site is going dark for a bit. This'll be the last wordpress post. In addition to not writing anything here, I'll also not be reading any of my usual political blogs or any news online. It's a bad habit of mine. Being informed is great, but there's a kind of compulsiveness to my informational multitasking. I've been practicing this today and I can feel the moments where I think "hmmm, maybe I'll check Atrios" and I can feel the energy that can be re-channeled there.

It's fun to feel like I'm a part of this big online politlcal conversation, and it's an important conversation that's really happening, but the truth is that at this point I'm mostly spectating, and I think there might be better uses of my time. So media-wise I'll probably be out there with the rest of you, catching up via NPR and scanning the headlines at the grocery store.

I'm also going to be back in NYC for Aug 22-29, staying with the transatlantic romance. Should be interesting and certainly will be fun.

Look for something new in early September, maybe some video hits before then if the spirit moves me.

I'm heading back down to Westhaven today.

Tomorrow I'm going to take my website offline and stop reading the news for a couple of weeks. It's an experiment in dicipline. The site archive will stay around, but the frontpage will become something really blank and simple, and if I truly feel the need to post something it will have to be in video form.

These are the rules.

Also, I'm probably going to have a thinger to sign up for a mailing list. The point of this will be for people who want to know when I go back "on the air" with whatever comes out next. I hope all my regular readers will sign up.

Seymour has a new piece in the NYer. Below is some Blitzer video.

The gist is that this business between Israel and Hezbollah was something that our military has been viewing as a trial run for how to take on Iran, and that in spite of the fact that it didn't seem to work out very well for Israel, the Bush/Cheney administration will find a way to view it as a success. Dark business.

Fucking cool. Swedish Pirate Party Launches Massive Darknet:

Today, the Swedish Pirate Party launched a new Internet service that lets anybody send and receive files and information over the Internet without fear of being monitored or logged. In technical terms, such a network is called a “darknet”. The service allows people to use an untraceable address in the darknet, where they cannot be personally identified.

“There are many legitimate reasons to want to be completely anonymous on the Internet,” says Rickard Falkvinge, chairman of the Pirate Party. “If the government can check everything each citizen does, nobody can keep the government in check. The right to exchange information in private is fundamental to the democratic society. Without a safe and convenient way of accessing the Internet anonymously, this right is rendered null and void.”

Emphasis mine, because I fully aggree.

The service is called Relakks. I dunno if it's open to international participation (looks like it is), but a $7/mo fee for truly anonymous internet connectivity sounds like a winner to me.

"Confessions" is by far the most interesting category for me to read on my own blog. I don't usually re-read this stuff to be honest, but I just dug the first two pages of posts there (looking for a link to send to a girl, natch) and I really liked some of it.

I re-read my paper journal quite often. Maybe I should review my own blog too. Like, posts from 18 months ago that are still right on...

The Cuban Communist Party newspaper headlines it An Unforgettable Afternoon Among Brothers and a "Three Hour Emotional Exchange." Spanish is a more passionate languate, I realize, but still... the object Fidel and Hugo are clutching here is apparently "Bolivar's Dagger."

With the recent busting up of a Qaeda cell plot in Britan -- thanks to some nice'n'legal police work and cooperation with Pakistan -- there's a fresh round of fearmongering and the expectation that Bush's poll numbers will bounce.

The latter isn't happening, and perhaps taking a cue from Holy Joe, left-leaning bloggers have begun to push back against the terror scare by pointing out that we survived the cold war without spending our lives hiding under the bed.

But good grief, when did the Republican Party become infested with what sound like so many loud, whining cowardly pundits? One second Reagan is up there standing toe-to-toe with the Rooskis, negotiating cool as a cucumber with 20,000 nukes pointed at him, and the next thing I know, the likes of Limbaugh or the crew at Powerwhine and Freeperland, are all shrieking like a class full of tweaked-out, neurotic fifth-graders having a panic attack every time OBL pops up in a grainy video with a rusty AK in the background.

Fear is over if you want it. And once Fear is over, war can be next.