Blogging the democratic revolution
Tulio Alavarez, the respected Venezuelan attorney who conclusively proved that there was fraud in Hugo Chavez’s recall referendum, was set upon by Hugo Chavez’s thugs as payback for his democracy work. The goons stopped him as he was preparing to get on an airplane. They tried to call his car stolen. They tried to plant weapons on him. Alvarez was released but he attributed it only to the swift response of the Venezuelan bloggers, who rapidly publicized the travesty. Now, Chavista goons are pretending nothing happened. These thugs, along with their fellow thugs in Havana, have clearly begun an assault…
Tick tick tick – CAFTA’s victory is expected in three hours, according to my sources, and to the Washington Post, but cross your fingers, it’s not over until it’s over… This trade treaty is the most important measure of support we can give to the entire hemisphere. Central Americans don’t want our troops. They don’t want our money. They just want a chance. They want CAFTA. Political death to anyone who votes against it. No forgiveness and no forgetting. FREE TRADE THROUGH THE AMERICAS NOW!!!!
Only a few days after the United Nations issued its “damning” report about the genocide in Zimbabwe, Mugabe figured it might be a good idea continue demolishing homes. Shows how much he takes the dreaded UN seriously, huh? The United States and Britain, however, have been stepping up the pressure on South Africa to do something about the problem; namely, to force Zimbabwe to undergo reform as a condition to any financial aid. But why would Mbeki do that when he is ideologically sympathetic, and why would Mugabe accept such an offer when China is dishing out bargain basement prices?…
A few weeks ago when the Shanghai Cooperation Organization met in Kazakhstan, it called for the quick pullout of U.S. forces from its bases in Central Asia. The U.S. has bases in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, with special flight rights in Tajikistan, which are members of the SCO. Even Kyrgyzstan at the time was making statements about a timely deadline for U.S. withdrawal. It has to be remembered, however, that this was most likely due to a large amount of pressure exerted from the SCO’s larger members, China and Russia. For a little while it looked like they would succeed in…
I kid you not. As corrupt, thuggish and stupid as they are ugly. Miguel has much more here. As an antidote, feel free to compare and contrast.
First views of Hugo Chavez’s new Marxist TV station reveals the grand unveiling of another Chavez failure – this is a real dog. The programs following the inauguration were sad and gray: verses of Eduardo Galeano, a sugary documentary on the life of Che Guevara and news totally biased in favor of the Ch????vez revolution. The commercials featured the former Colombian guerrilla leader Marulanda and the singing of a woman taking a bath and apparently calling for Al-Qaeda. Gustavo Coronel has the rest of the story here. Pathetic.
The G8 summit is over, aging hipsters have finished playing concerts the nostalgic world over, and experience as old as their songs has been cast out the window in favor of some feel-good debt relief lovin’. Dictators from the Middle East to Asia are outraged and harping on endlessly; not because they’re being forced into reform by democratic crusaders, but because they aren’t getting it as good as their brethren in the sub-Sahara. You see, for twenty years the West has made the disastrous mistake of attempting to correct the genocides, famines, and poverty of Africa by fueling unchecked billions…
It looks like a couple of things are going down in Iran. Jim Hoft is rounding up news on a protest in front of Tehran University calling for the release of Akbar Ganji. But there is other unrest throughout the country. I’ve reported over the past week about the state of emergency and mass unrest in the Kurdish Iranian city of Mahabad among others. Here is an update on that.
Foreign ministers from an arc of ten Asian countries of various degrees of political openness are meeting in Laos to drink wine, joke, and maybe sign a few important cooperative agreements at the annual ASEAN summit. Underscoring the whole event, however, is that Burma is next in line to take over the leadership position in 2006. And western governments aren’t happy about it, so after a a lot of discussion, the ASEAN countries asked Burma to step down next year. Under pressure from both its neighbors and its critics in the West, the military regime in Myanmar agreed with obvious…
Well, this almost totally slipped under the radar! If it weren’t for certain services that focus specifically on this kind of stuff, the world may never know that Bush was following up on his promise to support the democratic opposition in Belarus. They met at the White House. George W. Bush declared support to Belarusian democratic forces President of the United States of America George W. Bush supports process of uniting Belarusian democratic forces. American President told it in informal meeting with vice-chairman of BNF party Aliaksey Yanukevich in the White House. ???????It was a meeting of party leaders of…
Marvellous, prosperous, democratic, revolutionary Chile, which has already signed free trade pacts with the U.S. and other nations, has signed three more free trade pacts with Brunei, New Zealand and Singapore. While Hugo Chavez up north and his Master in Havana scream about how bad they are. And the U.S. thrashes about trying to decide CAFTA, as special interests howl like jackals in the desert. Chile’s citizens have three more bright lights on their horizon while Chavez’s Venezuela slips further into economic darkness, blaming the U.S. all the way down. And while the U.S. tries to decide between Big Sugar,…
Earlier today A.M. Mora y Leon posted an entry on the necessity of passing CAFTA, and I wanted to add to that. Today the Wall Street Journal published an article which described the kind of negotiating going on in the House of Representatives over this trade pact, and in doing so illustrated the short-sightedness which seems to perpetually dominate that august institution (see “White House Barters for Trade Pact Votes;” A4, subscription required): As the House moves toward a vote this week on President Bush’s Central American trade pact, the White House is trying to cut deals to shore up…
Miguel Octavio, in a vintage Miguel presentation, outlines the latest illogicalities of the Chavista revolution. My god they are stupid. Don’t have a government television station anyone wants to watch? Fine then, build a new international one. And so it goes with several more examples. Well worth reading, read it here.
Don’t miss it, soapgun is hosting this week’s carnival of revolutions! And might I say, he did a very good job. Regime Change Iran has up it’s Iran week in review, filled with very important news and information. The second edition of Azerbaijan election monitor is up. Very in-depth. The Eurasia Daily Monitor also has up a bunch of stuff, as does Eurasianet. Transitions Online, an e-zine covering the progress of democracy in the former USSR, has up a new articles as well. Mark Steyn, lastly but not leastly, has his column up about the London tube tragedy here. Check…
It’s time for another hard hitting report by Amnesty International, and this time the Iraqi “insurgents” have found themselves in their, er, verbal crosshairs. They’re still recovering from the whole “Guantanamo = Gulag” controversy, so this is the perfect time to wise up and release a real report on real human rights abuses. It’s the perfect way to both get their credibility back and do the work they were started to do. The press release starts off really well too; with a real bang, if you’ll excuse the pun. Armed groups opposed to the US-led multinational force and Iraq’s government…
All stops must be pulled out to pass CAFTA. Not doing it will destroy our country. And we can kiss the hemisphere goodbye. The showdown is this week. We cannot fail. I repeat, cannot. Andres Oppenheimer, in the most powerful argument yet, explains why here. Update: The Washington Post, in its bluntest argument yet, warns that a vote against CAFTA is a vote for Hugo Chavez. It’s as simple as that.
Nicaragua’s Contras, the original freedom fighters in our lifetime, who during the Reagan Era, took on the name and tradition of the original Hungarian freedom fighters who resisted Soviet tanks in 1956, have turned their swords into plowshares and begun the extraordinary task of growing some of the world’s best coffee. Freedom-fighting Contra Cafe! Being Nicaraguan, it’s going to be good – it would be good even if sandalistas grew it – but so much the better that it’s a project of those who truly know what freedom is. Boli-Nica first discovered the phenomenon, and Instapundit has some good and…
Earlier in the week I wrote about martial law being declared in Mahabad, a city in the north-western Kurdish area of Iran. According to Kurdish Media, protestors are defying the crackdown. And now, the protests are spreading throughout Kurdish cities in Iran. Since the killing of Shuana Kardi, a Kurdish activist, on Saturday July the 13th by the Pastaram in the city of Mahabad, Iranian Kurdistan, the people of this city have come every day to the streets in order to protest against the Iranian state????????s oppressive policy towards the Kurds. They expressed their demands for democracy, their national and…
Greenpeace recently told Venezuelan activist Alek Boyd it had better things to do than defend endangered species in Hugo Chavez’s slash-and-burn Venezuela. So, rare-songbird soup is back on the menu in Chavistaville. A private nature conservancy full of rare animals and plants unique to Venezuela, Hato Pinero, is under the machete by Chavez’s Marxist-Leninist land-confiscators as never before. The Los Angeles Times has the full horrible story on Hato Pinero that Greenpeace doesn’t care about here. Here are the desperate pleas from Hato Pinero’s owners about this ensuing maelstrom of environmental waste ahead: Andres Branger made pleas to save his…
After suffering through terrible years under a populist madman who suspended the national legislature when free parliamentary threatened his rule, and following three years of a bloodless military coup, the people of Guinea-Bissau are ready to return to multi-party democracy. Indications are showing that, indeed, today will be a good day for the otherwise turbulent nation.
Two editorials about today’s launch of Telesur, Hugo Chavez’s grand new television network designed to put the region’s free press out of business, are in today’s Chicago Tribune and Monday’s Investor’s Business Daily. (A third, here, from El Semanal Digital, is in Spanish.) The Tribune points out that Castro is deeply involved in this “news” project, a bad sign given his abysmal record on the free press, and argues that if it’s as bad as it looks, no one’s going to watch it. True. IBD warns that this is an effort to replace Venezuela’s authentic free press and give Colombia’s…
OK, so it’s a bit of a stretch to put this under babes of politics, but I think you’ll let this one go: Pounding a beat, pistol in hand, an Iraqi woman soldier is a novelty in Baghdad: Pounding her Baghdad beat, wrapped in a bulletproof vest and brandishing a pistol, Sgt. Bushra Jabar definitely stands out in the new Iraq. She’s the only woman in the Iraqi Army unit patrolling the Kharkh district in the heart of the capital. … Her day starts with a ride to her base in the back of a military pickup truck. She’s wearing…
Protestors demonstrated for the Prime Minister of Nepal who was removed from office following the King’s constitutional coup nearly half a year ago. When to police rushed in to break it up with batons, the protestors fought back with bricks. Not what I’d call a healthy situation. KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) – Police used batons to break up a protest by supporters of this Himalayan country’s detained former prime minister on Sunday, leaving about 15 demonstrators and 10 police injured. About 400 supporters of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba were rallying outside the Royal Commission for Corruption Control, waving flags and…
Gateway Pundit rounds up the news on pro-democracy dissidents imprisoned in Cuba for protesting the regime. One of these dissidents is a woman named Martha Beatriz Roque, an organizer of the first ever Assembly for Civil Society in May. Now, at least five of the 20 dissidents have been freed. Cuban authorities have released some of the group of 20 dissidents detained shortly before a planned protest in Havana on Friday. According to the independent Cuban Commission for Human Rights, at least five people have been released. Among those who have been allowed home after being questioned overnight, is a…
Soapgun is hosting this week’s carnival of revolutions. Please submit your democracy-related posts to him by sometime on Sunday: soapgun99Éyahoo.com. Thanks!