Blogging the democratic revolution
Boz has a fascinating collection of polls from around the Americas in several countries signalling the political temperatures in assorted hot spots like Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru and others, all put together in a clean roundup of news. Don’t miss the weird Argentine soccer poll at the bottom. Well worth a click here.
The U.S. needs to get its act together on certain things. Like this, that Glenn Reynolds has noticed here.
Francisco Toro has an interesting item about the growth of the ‘ni-ni’s in Venezuela’s political system. These are the people who are neither for Chavez nor for the opposition to Chavez. They are sort of fence-sitters, or, as Francisco suggests, the political center. As a group, they are growing, and new parties like Venezuela de…
Yesterday’s The Messenger (an english-language Georgian daily) covers the formation of a new political party out of smaller opposition groups, primarily the Conservatives and the Republicans. This new party shares in the heritage of the Rose Revolution, although it now finds enough room for disagreement with the ruling National Movement: Several leading members of both…
When your country becomes a totalitarian regime, you often preserve your identity through exile. This is largely because all institutions have been shattered in your country and there is virtually no possibility of democratic resistance to tyranny. Every institution is politicized in a communist regime. It’s shocking to think about this matter of exile in…
One of the rarest things on the blogosphere is a non-Sandalista, non-foreigner-financed, non-foreigner opinioned, non-angry-Latin-intelligentsia Colombia blog that’s by a Colombian about marvelous Colombia. I have had yet to find one – until now. Unfortunately, you bring up Colombia – even to a Latino audience in the states – and the first thought they have…
The day of solidarity with Belarus on Oct. 16 that I talk about was an outstanding success, even moreso than I thought it would be. Over 100,000 people lit candles in their windows all around Belarus on Sunday in a form of protest yet unseen in this country, where protestors are roundly beaten and arrested….
Miguel Octavio has some utterly repulsive photos of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe in the throes of love. Look at those two embrace! What’s hard to believe is that Mugabe, one of the world’s foremost creators of famine and hunger today, was so much as allowed in at this United Nations conference in…
Jailed Abimael Guzman, the Pol-Pot-ian Marxist terrorist leader of Peru’s Shining Path, which terrorized Peru for 20 years, gave Peru corrosive, confidence-killing hyperinflation, and murdered no less than 35,000 to 70,000 people, mostly from among the poorest of Peru … was a bigtime writer of fuzzy love poetry. The story is here. You know how…
Transparency International’s famous corruption perceptions index for 70 countries of the world was released this morning. Notice those nice Estonia and Barbados ratings! Notice those hideous Burma and Belarus ratings! The press release and the list of rankings is here. UPDATE: Veneuzela’s Aleksander Boyd has some additional commentary here.
Val Prieto at Babalu blog has an excellent news roundup – called ‘a link ajiaco‘ in ‘Cuban,’ with all the significant news and events happening in and around Cuba in the blogosphere. He’s done it up bien. Read it here.
Alvaro Vargas Llosa has a great discussion about Argentine-Cuban poseur revolutionary Che Guevara on NPR. Hispanicon has the link to the audiotape, and it can all be found here.
Venezuela’s bloggers have found a call from the BBC World Services to submit questions to Venezuela’s dictator Hugo Chavez online. This event probably is part of a coordinated propaganda effort from the Western hemisphere’s communist tyrants to reach out to the outside world through the Internet. Fidel Castro did almost the very same thing last…
…in Hungary, where the memories of bleak, gray communism and the tanks and massacres of 1956 are not entirely forgotten. I wrote up the whole unexpected turn of events, with the rightful blog links on Babalu here.
You may have all noticed that I haven’t posted a nice, long entry on Iraq since the referendum. Well, that’s because I’ve been holding my breath. I don’t want to get too ahead of myself, so there will be something much much bigger when some more indicative preliminary figures come in. One thing is for…
Today is the anniversary of the day when President Lukashenko held an illegal referendum to secure his limitless rule in Belarus. With parliamentary elections scheduled within the year, it is more important than ever for the people of Belarus to stand with each other and to know that others stand with them. This is why…
Students for Global Democracy has more of the photos from the worldwide Walk For Democracy In Belarus. Here is the press release, accompanied by a sampling of the pictures. Remember, here are the pictures from our own walk in Boston. ******* October 17, 2005 – Ann Arbor, MI; Bloomington, IN; Istanbul, Turkey; London, Canada; London,…
In less time than it takes for a new baby to reach U.S. voting age, the nation of Estonia has transformed itself from a cold, gray, stagnant outpost of the Soviet Empire to one of the world’s most impressive dynamic democracies. Its banks are pristine, its one of the most wired countries in the world,…
This doesn’t look very good. Baku, 17 October 2005 (RFE/RL) — Azeri opposition leader Rasul Quliyev has been stopped by Ukrainian police in the Crimean capital of Simferopol en route to Baku, where he was returning after nearly 10 years in exile, RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service reported. Former parliamentary speaker and Democratic Party of Azerbaijan Chairman…
John Hinderaker at Power Line asks whether the information to date demonstrates that large numbers of Sunnis did, in fact, vote for the new Iraqi constitution. RTWT. UPDATE: On the other hand, in the alternate reality-based community, the Sunnis are being subjugated — because, I suppose, the position held by the majority of Sunnis didn’t…
It was cold and rainy. People were tired and hung over from Friday night festivities. Some cancelled at the last minute and some just kept sleeping. However, despite all that, we still came through and marched out with our signs, deteriorating and wet as they were. There were about a dozen of us total, a…
I have just published the last in a three-part series the global implications of the attacks in London of July 7, 2005. This last post, After London – The Infrastructure of Terrorism in Pakistan, is the one most relevant to democracy issues because it deals with both the socio-political and the military networks of militant…
Well, we can already count one victory: the Iraqis, mired in a Vietquagmire and facing constant (real) terrorism, can be trusted to vote on their constitution in 2005 — just a couple of years removed from living under one of the world’s brutal tyrants — which says a lot about Iraq’s present status and how…
Iraqis voted today on whether to accept the constitution, which Publius has covered extensively. Terrorism was minimal, with only three relatively unsuccessful attacks wounding two police officers and one civilian — which, out of 6,000 polling stations, is a highly ineffective 0.05% success rate. It does indeed look as though the Iraqi and coalition security…
I’m preparing for the Walk for Democracy in Belarus all day today. Posters, people, all that. Should be pretty cool, and we’ll have pictures and video up for viewing. If you’d like to get involved, just go to the link. I hope to see you all there!