Blogging the democratic revolution
The delegation of the United States, along with those of many other countries, were not present as Iran’s terrorist president was delivering a speech at the United Nations summit. Meanwhile, over 2000 people outside protested his visit to America. Ouch. In other mainstream news, Iranian president blasts US in first United Nations speech.
A string of well-connected men are re-entering Russia’s political fray by directly entering as election candidates. These are household names, the men who made up and binded the country’s oligarchy during the ’90s. The big news today is that Mikhail Kasyanov, prime minister under Putin until 2004 and a man with big ties to the Yeltsin family of political and economic giants, has thrown in his hat for the presidency when Putin’s term expires in 2008. Mikhail Kasyanov, former Russian Prime Minister who was sacked by President Putin in 2004, said in a radio interview on Wednesday that he planned…
Driving Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is his animosity directed at the U.S. He loathes the U.S. not only because it’s what he really feels (he is said to stiffen in the presence of U.S. citizens) but almost as importantly, because it is politically useful. In Chavez’s logic, if all the blame about the poverty and oppression in the world can be focused on just the detested U.S., the rest of the world will unite behind Chavista ideas and he can then build an alliance to eventually challenge the hated “hegemon.” It’s not working the way he planned though. There are…
After the bombings in London, President Musharraf promised to wage a “holy war against extremism,” as many terrorists are coming from his country. Madrasahs are basically religious schools in the Islamic world, and some of them implant militant Islamic ideology into their students. So the plan is to oversee what they’re doing and keep track of them to make sure that they aren’t doing this anymore. Well, they don’t like that idea. As part of its effort to crackdown on religious extremism, the Pakistani government has ordered Islamic schools, known as madrasahs, to register by the end of the year…
In the email is another fascinating and huge article by Tammy Lynch, which goes into great detail about the current political crisis in Ukraine. Read it in its entirety. Ukraine-based journalist Peter Byrne doesn’t end on an optimist note, however. former sbu chief olekandr turchynov has tentatively scheduled a press conference for sept. 15. he is expected to describe yushchenkos reaction to “facts” presented to him by the sbu in july suggesting criminal activities involving russian natural gas traders and yushchenko’s closest advisor, former gas attendant oleksandr tretyakov. the information was ignored. so was another report detailing alleged criminal activities…
One of the most difficult things for outsiders to understand about Venezuela is the passion with which both sides argue about the April 2002 political mess that shook Venezuela. Chavez calls it a coup attempt. Opponents say it was pre-planned violence. Tiny details are bickered over and held up as proof. To an outsider, it’s bewildering. Chavez stayed in power, after all, didn’t he? Why the debate? Analyst James Sweeney points out some new and compelling facts about this incident. Chavez is desperate to convict his opponents as coupsters in court. But even though he controls the courts, he has…
The Weekly Standard published its 10th anniversary edition this past week, and as part of that had a series of articles from its writers on what they changed their thinking about given the passing of events. You have to have a subscription to read the articles, but there was one that stood out enough that I thought it worth excerpting. The excerpt is from Reuel Marc Gerecht, a specialist in international affairs and intelligence reform. I focus on this one because I have gone through a similar transformation myself. In both his case and mine, the 9/11 attacks were a…
Qando.net blog has a point-by-point comparison of the land confiscations going on simultaneously in both Venezuela and Zimbabwe. Other than his hint that Hugo Chavez, unlike Robert Mugabe, is actually a reasonable man who doesn’t quite realize what he is doing, it is a very valuable list of comparisons whose facts speak for themselves. Read it here.
The Maldives is a small archipelago country located just 500 miles south of India. To European tourists, it is a quaint, charming breath of fresh air that conjures up fantasies of sandy beaches, crystal clear waters, sun-filled days and moon-lit nights. The four star hotels are exquisite, the food likewise, and the locals sweeter than grandma’s homemade pie. But travel guides leave out one essential detail that fails to stand out amid the romanticism: an island dictator that compares much better to Fidel Castro than to Tony Blair. President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom, who many natives conspicuously refer to as “the…
Singapore arrested two bloggers for making offensive-to-Islam remarks on their blogs, with charges of contributing to religious hatred. The de-facto state-controlled Singapore tabloid, The Electric New Paper, breathily noted that this pair also even was ‘said to contain vulgarities.’ In Singapore they have laws against that kind of thing. I am an ex-Singapore resident who first learned how to use the Internet in Singapore. Prior to that, I had no idea what it was. I was a denizen of Singapore’s first Internet cafes, (since I didn’t have a very good home computer) and often I consider Singapore and cyber-Singapore my…
And now, Harry Hutton has come up with something totally different – teaching Colombia’s repulsive guerrillas – yeah, real ones – how to blog. No, I’m not making it up. He’s actually described how he’s taught these (update: ex-)contact killers and kidnappers how to go to www.blogger.com, set up a blogspot blog, and blog away. It’s quite a change from what they are used to doing, which, as Harry explains: At an age when I would ring on people????????s doorbells and run away sniggering, he was in the jungle picking off FARC guerrillas with a pistol. There’s one small problem,…
Ever since the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri earlier this year, there has been a strong suspicion that Syria was behind it, although proof was lacking. The UN-led investigation of the murder seems to be turning up some clues, however. Meanwhile, U.S. and Iraqi officials turn up the heat on Damascus over its role in supporting the terrorist insurgency in Iraq. The Wall Street Journal (subscription required) commented on both issues today: …In Lebanon, a U.N. investigation led by German prosecutor Detlev Mehlis (and assisted by the FBI) is making arrests and turning up leads in the…
Peter Lavelle hits this nail on the head, with a really good article knocking all sides of the post-orange order. It takes him just a few paragraphs to dish it all out, but make sure to read the whole thing. Viktor Yushchenko’s decision to fire the government of Yuliya Tymoshenko puts to an end Ukraine’s “post-orange” order. The coalition of revolutionaries who stirred the imagination of millions of Ukrainians in the name of fair elections and transparent government has shown itself to consist of inept and selfish civil servants. Their failure to deal with what plagues Ukraine most – an…
Considering rallies just a few month ago could barely top a tenth of that, it just goes to show how the government’s allowing of protest rallies has swelled the ranks and notoriety of the united opposition. In the largest rally I have yet to cover for this country, 20,000 opposition activists clad in the color orange took the the streets of Baku to demand a fair vote and the resignation of President Aliyev. Some 20,000 anti government protestors called for reforms in Azerbaijan on Saturday in their first gathering since the election campaign officially opened in the former Soviet republic.…
For a complete roundup of the past week’s developments in democracy, check out the latest carnival of revolutions!
Japan’s politics, like its economics, has been sclerotic for ages. Bureaucrats, comfy pork barrel politicians and socialism have kept that economy on ice for a long long time. Until now. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, an authentic revolutionary who is taking untold radical steps to shake Japan from top to bottom, reforming the giant postal savings program, getting rid of bureaucrats, setting the markets free … has just won a MASSIVE unexpected electoral victory in Japan, way bigger than he thought he could get … after a ballsy move to call new elections, effectively telling Japan’s voters and legislative creatures that…
Four years after the day that the world changed forever. A lot of people are using pictures of the burning buildings, but I always liked this one better.
There is a new periodical out now dealing with U.S. foreign policy and America’s place in the world, The American Interest. Vol. 1, No. 1 is out this week; I purchased my first copy today. It is led by such intellectual luminaries as Francis Fukuyama, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Samuel Huntington, among others. Up until now I have mainly relied on Foreign Affairs and The National Interest for in-depth analysis of international issues (along with papers printed out from various think tanks’ websites and books). Given my backlog of purchased but mostly unread periodicals within this genre, I’ll now have to…
Have a good weekend everyone. I’ve done quite a bit on Ukraine and Egypt of late, so get reading if you haven’t already. Posting resumes on Monday!
I’ve received a lot of emails about this. They go something like, “Robert! I know how much of a fan of Yulia you are. What do you think about all this?” I wrote a post yesterday, but it was mostly in the context of the scandal and the sacking of the government. Now would be a good time to focus on Yulia, her side of the story, and what she plans on doing after being fired by Yushchenko. Yulia’s appeal stems from the fact that she is not only beautiful, but bold and incorruptible. Revolutionary. The story being reported by…
Have you ever heard of anything more macabre? Dozens of life-size , lovingly constructed cardboard skeletons have appeared all over Caracas, on overpasses, on lampposts, on bridges, over highways. Miguel has a photo of the freakish spectre here. The dozens of hanging skeletons are a protest, something from a mysterious youth group called Cambio, which says it is protesting Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s casual murders of young people without punishment across the country. It’s also a legacy of Chavez’s willingness to shoot demonstrators, something that has damped protest rallies, this knowledge that one execution by Chavez goons will be carried…
Here is a superb Bolivia update by someone who knows the real score going on in Bolivia. The short story is this: Evo Morales is winning as December’s election approaches but he can’t win except through Congress. If he does, he’s going to nationalize the energy and make Bolivia the third member of the Axis of Marxism, destabilizing every country in the region and giving the FARC a new home. If he doesn’t, he’s going to destabilize the country through street protests, same as he’s been doing, toppling presidente after presidente. This is clearly scary stuff. This guy needs to…
In Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s army, there is something called ‘military doctine’ and within that doctrine, is a weird fascination with ‘asymmetrical warfare.’ That asymmetrical warfare, of course, is block committees and ragtag guerrillas, all keeping their eyes on the barrios amid revolutionary vigilance in a strong bid to repress spontaneous groupings. It’s a real clown show. Alek Boyd has a scintillatingly detailed and interesting account of the strange innards of Chavez’s military here.
The period after a democratic revolution is generally the most volatile, so there isn????????t time to lose. Yushchenko needs to step up, whip his party into line, and take control of his job for the betterment of the country. He may also have a tough decision ahead of him with the upcoming parliamentary election. Will he keep or drop Yulia? At this point, the latter may be the sad but needed necessity. I wrote that back in July, but seriously, who thought that it would actually happen? The scandal started a couple of days ago, when Chief of Staff Zinchenko…
Cuban dictator Fidel Castro has loudly volunteered the services of 1,600 doctors to New Orleans, making a bet that if the U.S. doen’t take them, it’s his propaganda victory as the U.S. looks heartless on the world stage. But today’s Investor’s Business Daily makes an argument against it. Castro’s record on medical aid is a bad one. Wherever Castro’s Cuban doctors go, political havoc follows. This isn’t revolution, this is the weakening of political institutions and the damaging of free markets. There are a whole string of incidents from these Cuban “doctors.” It’s happening right now in Honduras and a…