Blogging the democratic revolution
I was bothered by Indonesia’s Abu Bakar Bashir verdict and realized it was going to amount to a political struggle in Indonesia’s six-year-old democracy, because voters there had just elected a new president who ran for office on an anti-terror platform. That sham verdict is going to pose some problems for Indonesia’s new president as terrorists grow emboldened there.
Publius Pundit isn’t the only one thinking about democratic revolutions – it’s a idea that’s caught fire in the minds of people all over the world. Val Prieto at Babal???? reports that there’s a young man at Columbia University, Loren Crowe, who’s studied in Cuba and now made it his mission to get documentary word out, in a non-ideological way, about that closed society. He’s seen the place up close and he’s doing it to counter all the tired Che-tee-shirt romanticism he sees around campus. What Loren’s doing is a revolution, too. I had a look at his site and…
Like Fidel Castro before him, Hugo Chavez for a long time has insisted he was lots of things, but definitely not a communist. We see this a lot at the beginnings of communist regimes, and it’s done mostly for domestic reasons. However, another reason is that it’s easier for internationalistas to champion the dictator as he quietly consolidates power. Pol Pot, after all, for years was just an agrarian reformer. Ho Chi Minh was just an aggrieved nationalist and never mind what followed. Communism cannot be sold on its own merits but only through deception. Now that Chavez has fully…
And if anyone asks, that’s what the opposition has dubbed the revolution they are hoping for, due to Moldova’s vineyards. Elections are being held in Moldova today. In a nutshell, the parliament will be elected, and then the parliament will elect the president. Background But this election is much more complicated than meets the eye. The current president, Vladimir Voronin, is a communist. This is not so rare, except that he is leaning toward the EU and away from Moscow. Prague, 4 March 2005 (RFE/RL) — The Communist Party of president Vladimir Voronin is heavily favored to retain its strong…
Blogger Miguel Octavio, who’s an expert on markets, has come up with a startling new idea about how to make Venezuela’s pathetically money-losing state oil company profitable enough to benefit from current high oil prices. Sell shares of Citgo. An idea way too revolutionary for a leftist backwash like Hugo Chavez. This is an especially well written and informative read.
Three thousand protestors in Jalalabad have seized a government building and are demanding next week’s parliamentary election runoffs be free and transparent. More than half of the seats in parliament were forced into the runoffs, so this is big.
Venezuelan blogger Daniel reports that Miguel’s powerful exclusive on photoshopping is now having a big impact in Caracas through a Venezuelan newspaper pickup. This is a great victory for the blogosphere, and very sweet for Publius Pundit which was first to link Miguel’s scoop on the fake photos. After that, Miguel’s post was linked to huge effect on Little Green Footballs. And soon after that it made its way into the important Venezuelan Spanish-language blogosphere. Following Miguel’s high hit count, a local newspaper got wind of its impact, and ran with it as a news story. That’s no small thing.…
Cuban refugees risking it all to flee communism arrive at the gates of Guantanamo and are ordered by US troops back to communism – through a field of landmines. One of the troops who had to carry out these illegal orders tells the terrible story here and I blanch at the inhumanity. Where is the outrage? Update: The serviceman who describes the account says this happened ten years ago and from what he understands, US policy has changed. Who says Cuban-Americans’ raised eyebrows at Clinton were confined only to Elian? Clinton was capable of incredible inhumanity to the helpless.
Taef Accord and WMD — The Bekaa Valley? Quite a bit has happened since Thursday. The international pressure, for one, has certainly stepped up. President Bush is even talking about it during his social security runs in New Jersey! But now even Saudi Arabia is getting in on the game. Syrian troops have been fortifying their positions east of Beirut as pressure mounts on Damascus to pull out of Lebanon without delay. Syrian troops were digging in at Hammana, part of the mountain range 26km (16 miles) east of Beirut, and at three other positions along the ridge yesterday. “They’re…
Robin Koerner has informed me about a website that she has been working on called Watching America. Now, you all know how much I like to link out to interesting material, but I found this website in particular to be quite different from anything else. It is a news site that translates what the foreign press is saying about America. Make sure to check it out, I know it will probably make my job easier in many cases.
Iraq, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon – each in its own way has taken steps lately, some large, some small, toward joining the free world. But now Libya? Today’s Al-Hayat reports that Libya’s ruler, Mu’amar Qadafi, seems to have charted a new path in some ways, and reframed old predilictions on other issues. Coming off Libya’s renunciation of nuclear weapons and semi-normalization with the U.S. and Britain, this is potentially encouraging. The article, Qadafi Declares Reforms and Ends Hostility Between ‘African Libya’ and Israel, made the following points: The main point which was new was that normalization with Israel seems…
Why does the Venezuela’s thuggish dictatorship cringe at the cold spotlight of one of Aleksander Boyd’s meticulous investigations? Find out here.
Gateway Pundit has been following elections in Kyrgyzstan as well, and note unrest in the south over fraud, along with violations of people being bought off. Make sure to read it over. In addition to that, a grenade was aimed at an opposition leader, but it did not succeed. But read this: BISHKEK, March 3 (Reuters) – Assailants threw a grenade into the empty apartment of a prominent Kyrgyz opposition leader on Thursday, causing no casualties, in an attack both opposition and authorities accused each other of staging. The blast occurred days after the first of two rounds of a…
Elmar Huseynov, the editor of the outspoken anti-government weekly publication, Monitor, was shot dead by an unknown assailant on March 2. The first thing that jumped to my mind when hearing about this was the murder of Gongadze in Ukraine, who was the anti-government editor of Ukrainska Pravda. HRW, New York, 04.03.2005 — The Azerbaijani government must fully investigate the killing of the editor of the independent weekly magazine Monitor, Human Rights Watch said today. The murder of the editor, Elmar Huseynov, is a frightening reminder of the danger of outspoken criticism in Azerbaijan. On the evening of Wednesday, March…
A lot of stuff is going on in the world. We’ve got a Lebanon roundup coming up for you as the day gets started there, with a focus on the role of Hizb’allah and an opposition group called Lebanese Forces. The Moldovan elections are on Sunday, and I’ll prepare a primer to those for you along with my personal stance. A prominent anti-government journalist was murdered in Azerbaijan, and it has triggered a wave of protests right now and into next week. In between these focuses I will link you out to other interesting reading as well. Should be a…
That’s the title of a new report by Amnesty International concerning Nepal. The government of Nepal should restore fundamental human rights, open a peace process based on justice and respect for human rights, protect human rights defenders and end the impunity of the security forces. The Maoists should commit themselves to respect international human rights and humanitarian law. The US, UK and India play a critical role as major allies of Nepal and key providers of military aid. AI calls on them to suspend all military assistance to the government of Nepal as a means of pressurising it to change…
In a truly alarming development, Miguel Octavio reports that Venezuela’s dictatorship is handing over the job of issuing identity cards for every Venezuelan to a Cuban “company.” With this measure, every Venezuelan’s fingerprints, photograph and identity particulars will be in on file with Castro’s secret police. Every one. Given that the Chavez dictatorship enacted a recent law to allow Castro’s secret agents to question, arrest and spirit back to Cuba for Castro’s “justice” any Venezuelan they like, this complete citizen database in the hands of Cuba’s secret police has got to be the most damning dangerous thing Hugo Chavez has…
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I missed yesterday but today I am back on track. Daily Burma is up. It’s short and sweet but there are some interesting developments to watch out for.
Arthur Chrenkoff is doing just that. Check it out, it makes interesting reading. I’ve got some work to get done and a nap to take, so the Lebanon update will come in the wee hours of the morning (which is cool, because the time zone difference will give me more to collect). Look forward to it!
The Reuters headline says it all: Oil Rich Venezuela Devalues Currency. Just as the IMF always recommends to developing (but not donor) countries. ‘It will raise your exports!’ they lie. Chavez didn’t need the IMF to order him to do this, he was happy to commit economic suicide on his own. What’s confounding is that Venezuela is an oil-exporting country with a huge stream of dollar revenue, quite unlike the usual IMF-bait basket case. The net result will be theft of savings, soaring inflation, and reduced purchasing power, impoverishing the poor most of all. Venezuelan is a high importer of…
Senator John McCain, my senator in Arizona, issued a statement on the recent elections in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. And it was the right oneto make.
Blogger Randy Paul from Beautiful Horizons has a welcome perspective on Uruguay and its new president, Tabare Vazquez, a leftist, whose party is unpromisingly identified on the radio here as a collection of ‘communists, socialists and tupamaro guerrillas.’ Understandably, Vazquez is a cause for alarm to some – even some Uruguayans. But Randy checked around, and so did I, and the most likely outcome is Vazquez will be a pragmatist – more Lula than Chavez. Randy outlines several interesting reasons why. Randy’s Uruguay analysis isn’t firsthand but he’s got a good feel for much of the region and his take…
Alek Boyd has located a disturbing new story out of Rome about a member of Chavez’s trusted inner circle – a presidential guardsman charged with protecting Chavez’s life, who’s now charged with drug trafficking among Europe’s dangerous syndicates. In light of recent stories about Chavez’s permitting FARC Marxist drug lords like Rodrigo Granda to walk freely in Venezuela with a cheaply bestowed passport, this could signal Chavez’s growing involvement in narcotrafficking on world markets. We should all be concerned.
One of the best Venezuelan bloggers has today’s pickings from Hugo Chavez’s latest lunatic ravings. The unpopular Venezuelan dictator’s going off the deep end.