Blogging the democratic revolution
Miguel Buitrago has done a very valuable translation of an interview with Felipe Quispe, a Bolivian romantic indigenous leader running for president whose views are even more extremist than those of Evo Morales. It’s positively surreal but an absolute must-read for perspective on what an out-of-it space case this guy is in this election year. He discusses the coming bloodshed he sees as inevitable, his study of Machiavelli, his burning desire for power, his priority of employing all the unemployed intellectuals and his inability to compromise politically on anything. Quispe reminds of Grenada’s Eric Gairy. Read the whole thing here.
Aleksander Boyd has posted a long and extensive report on the state of democracy in Venezuela from its leading democracy advocate, Sumate. The report shows in precise terms the parlous state of Venezuelan democracy and the news is not good. But it is a very important and historic report and Alek read all of it and urges the rest of it to do the same. He writes: Sumate has produced the most comprehensive report about the state of democracy in Venezuela. I highly recommend to read through and analyse the facts presented. By far the best resource for information on…
El Universal has its weekly Venezuelan land-expropriations roundup, illustrating how the increasingly Marxist government is taking ever greater numbers of rights from the people. The disturbing string of ongoing confiscations is here.
Argentina is rapidly hurtling toward the front of the news with the upcoming Summit of the Americas and President Bush’s visit to the beautiful but sinking-economically-to-the-bottom country. All this will be front page by the end of the week. David Sasaki at Global Voices has an excellent blog roundup on all that’s being written in the blogosphere on events in Argentina. It’s a good baseline for news you can’t get anywhere else. Read it here.
Following the approval of the new Iraqi constitution despite opposition by the majority of Sunnis, Sunni Iraqi leaders are getting serious about the political process and their own stakes in the new Iraq. This past week a new Sunni coalition party was formed from three parties – the Iraqi People’s Conference, the Iraqi Islamic Party, and the National Dialogue Council. According to the Iraqi newspaper Al-Bawaba, which emphasized not once, but twice, that these were the Sunnis who benefited from Saddam Hussein’s rule, the new party would be called “The Iraqi Consensus Party.” It program is to encourage Sunnis to…
Zanzibar held presidential and parliamentary elections over the weekend. As with many elections in Africa that we have covered here at Publius the aftermath has been a violent one with protestors clashing with state police forces. The opposition is claiming victory although, as is suspected, fraud is likely to be committed on a wide scale. Results are starting to trickle in from semi-autonomous Zanzibar’s elections on Sunday. The islands’ main opposition group is alleging that serious irregularities have taken place, while the ruling party dismissed those allegations. As the vote-counting was under way, the two key contenders in the elections,…
Speaking at the “World Without Zionism” conference, the president of Iran said that he wanted Israel to be “wiped off the map.” Here is a picture of him at the conference: But that’s not the whole thing. Gary Metz over at Regime Change Iran has the exclusive picture that the media isn’t showing you. That’s the United States broken at the bottom of the glass, just before Israel falls down as well. Make sure to read the rest of Gary’s post, as he outlines the Islamic Republic’s war plans from its own mouth.
It is true that the investigation just about completed by Special Counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald is not related to the Iraq war, but the incident giving rise to the investigation does relate to one of the reasons why the liberation of that country was necessary. For background you probably aren’t getting from the MSM, see my post, Background to the Plame Investigation: Iraq was Seeking Uranium from Niger for its Nuclear Ambitions. In the unlikely case that you missed the details of the investigation and the indictment of Scooter Libby and need to catch up, check out my post Mr.…
Felipe Calderon’s entry into the Mexican presidential race for 2006 creates a whole new dynamic in the election. It’s something I’ve believed since the beginning. Calderon is from the right-leaning PAN party, same as incumbent President Vicente Fox, but he comes across as a different player because he wasn’t Fox’s choice as successor. Fox himself is viewed as a disappointment by many Mexicans for his failure to really reform the country. He’s not an utter disaster but there’s nothing worse than soured hopes from a man who was brought to office as Mexico’s first opposition candidate in over 70 years…
Now this is something you have to see! Venezuela’s Francisco Toro has challenged Venezuela’s Gustavo Coronel to an ‘Opinion duel’ on a special blog they set up for just that purpose. They are arguing about the nature of the ‘ni-ni’‘s, those people in Venezuela who have not made up their minds about whether they support Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez or not. The ground rules are posted, with each post limited to 750 words and no more than four posts allowed. Naturally, both parties will argue like Adams and Jefferson, rather than Chavez and his latest Barbie doll, so reason will…
Breaking news – and likely trouble. An electoral board has ruled that the Dec. 4 presidential election will not go through, due to a redistricting dispute. Now, the possibility of roadblocks and using food as a weapon looms. The current caretaker president – who’s in office only because the last two presidents were thrown out by roadblockers – said he would resign if elections were not held by Dec. 4. Well, they’re not being held. I have a blogosphere reaction roundup to follow. But first, here is the news: Agencia EFE has the story here: Electoral court suspends Bolivia’s December…
I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the weather here in Boston. But anyway, I’m sick again and have been for the past three days. It seems to be climaxing today so that’s why I haven’t blogged. You know it’s bad when you can’t even swallow your own saliva! So have a nice weekend everyone.
One of the world’s most important under-reported stories is the ongoing struggle for political influence and commercial advantage in Central Asia – mainly Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyryzstan and Tajikistan – between Russia, China and the United States. Security Watchtower has an important post, The Battle for Central Asia, which is worth reading and which links to a series from Radio Liberty on the subject. Although the security of petroleum supply and counter-terrorism are important themes in the struggle, there is also an ideological struggle based around democratization. A couple of points to highlight: “China will feel that if Central Asia…
The bloggers have come up with a real big one on voter fraud in Venezuela. Miguel explains it out very well here. Venezuelan congressional elections are being held on Dec. 4 and a court has ruled in favor of stacking the vote today. See my post here. But that’s not the only problem. Now Javier at Notiven has found thousands of Gonzalezes all born on the same day and the same state, 95% of them in Zulia. He’s got the documents to go see. Here is a translation below from the original on Notiven: Can Venezuelan Electorate Authority explain this?…
On Academic Elephant’s superb blog, I found a small post that resonated with me: The tendency of the mainstream media to belittle U.S. officials when they visit small countries. There are all kinds of valid reasons to criticize them, and from many angles. But to savage Donald Rumsfeld because he paid a visit to distant Mongolia or distant Paraguay is absolutely despicable. The news media has mocked such visits, written them off as proof that Rumsfeld can’t get any other friends, and insulted the countries themselves and their customs. Elephant notes that the media focused almost exclusively on a horse…
Charles Krauthammer really gives it to Brent Scowcroft today – as the world’s foremost anti-revolutionary. Scowcroft has spent his entire life obstructing democratic revolution. If you believe in democratic revolution, you will never look at that man the same way again. He pretends to be oh so safe and sane. But he’s set democracy back decades in many places and still hasn’t paid a cent for it. Read it here.
In a significant defeat for Venezuela’s democracy, a new voting system installed by the Chavista government, called ‘los morochas’, which disproportionately benefits Chavista incumbents, was affirmed by Venezuela’s Supreme Court, an appointed body stacked with Chavista loyalists. It is expected to raise Hugo Chavez’s representation in the Congress – where he already has a majority – to Kim Il Sung levels of popular ‘support.’ The bell tolls for Venezuelan democracy with this ruling. Non-government organizations like Sumate have stated that this is a blow for democracy and there is no chance of fair elections being held now. This is a…
…on poverty figures. It’s one of the most disgusting things he’s ever done. Andres Oppenheimer of the Miami Herald, in one of his best columns, uncovered what bloggers have been saying all along: poverty has risen, not fallen, in Hugo Chavez’s ’21st-century-socialist’ Venezuela, supposedly a champion of the poor. They of course meant: creating more poor during a time of record high oil prices. The item is here. Miguel Octavio had the original item on the re-cooked statistics on poverty, probably as a result of Oppenheimer’s column. In all, it amounts to the Cubanization of Venezuela’s once-reliable statistics, a corruption…
Boz has an excellent roundup of all the polls being taken around the hemisphere, with at least one for each country. The polls are invaluable tools for sensing which way the winds of change are blowing in this coming fateful election year in the Americas. He also has a link to a very valuable poll from The Economist that shows how the attitudes of the public from different countries stack up against each other. In this particular poll, note the powerful pro-market sentiment expressed by the stars of Colombia, who rate number one in our hemisphere for faith in free…
The United Nations has issued another report regarding the situation between Lebanon and Syria, which takes notice of Syrian actions above and beyond that of the assassination of ex-PM Hariri as laid out in the Mehlis Report. The Larsen report, prepared by UN envoy Terje Roed-Larsen for the purpose of measuring the success of implementing resolution 1559, warns about an increase of arms flow from Syria to Palestinian camps, as well as the continued presence of Syria-backed Hizb’allah and the economic pressures that Syria is trying to exert on Lebanon. The full text is here, and here are the relevant…
With the media headlining the anti-war camp’s bullet points and trumpeting the fact that 2,000 U.S. troops have now died in Iraq, it is time for some perspective. While we always hope to keep our own casualties to a minimum, war is part of the routine of life, and the reality of war is that casualties are inevitable. The idea that 2,000 fatalities is a high number for a war of any significance is not defensible. Below I have listed the total number of American military fatalities for the two world wars, the Korean war and the Vietnamese war (non-combat…
The big news in Azerbaijan is that, less than two weeks away from parliamentary elections scheduled for November 6, President Aliyev has ordered that NGOs be allowed to monitor the election and that indelible ink must be used to prevent double voting. All of these are measures requested by the OSCE in order to hold transparent elections. So I’ve titled my post to mock the headline used by ABC News, as you’ll come to find out, for good reason. Oct 25, 2005 ???????? BAKU (Reuters) – Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev on Tuesday ordered steps to ensure a November 6 parliamentary…
Venezuela’s main newspaper, El Universal, in a true blog style, is now putting out a weekly roundup of all the Zimbabwe-style land confiscations engulfing Venezuela under the far-left Chavez regime. The list of all the farmers who have had their ranches taken away ‘in the name of the people’ is long and horrible, given the fact that all of these productive farms will soon fall fallow. It’s also revolutionary tinder. No society can build itself on a foundation of stealing from others. It’s an important roadmap for the coming news and there is enough of it going on now that…
As we noted here, Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez has offered to take questions from the public through the BBC. It’s about what you’d imagine, with readers asking some fairly tough questions, along with plenty of softballs, and Chavez replying glibly and smoothly. If you ask me, it looked coached, due to the suaveness of Chavez’s answers, quite unlike the rougher impromptu ones he gave to Ted Koppel and the Washington Post. Contentwise, it sounds as though Chavez intended to be a crowd-pleaser in the West, because his BBC words not matching his words at home. If that’s so, it’s a…
Stefania in Sardinia reminds us to think of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi who is marking her tenth year of house arrest under the thugs who run Burma. Suu Kyi is the rightful leader of Burma. She also is a brave woman who has stood up to the gross tinpot military thugs in her struggle to bring democracy to her beautiful country. She is a revolutionary democrat who ranks with Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel in the annals of revolution. But her struggle is long and hard and she is still under house arrest by these unsavory, illegitimate rulers who…