Blogging the democratic revolution
To read some of the news, one might think the U.S. is the only place affected by the rise in world energy prices. After all, we are the world’s largest energy consumer (no value judgment, I add) and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez often makes anti-U.S. statements expressly for the purpose of driving up prices, something…
The news announced over the weekend that Venezuela was seeking to acquire nuclear technology from Argentina, just happened to coincide with Pat Robertson’s claims (which were in the news months ago) that Venezuela is cozying up to Iran for nuclear purposes. (We know, Pat.) Francisco Toro has some very interesting thoughts about this baffling trend…
I’ll be in New York City this weekend. If you feel so inclined, maybe shoot me off an email and we can meet up for coffee while I’m there.
I’ve been re-reading a few passages from Alvaro Vargas Llosa, Carlos Alberto Montaner and Plinio Apuleyo Mendoza’s excellent book about the debilitating myths frequently found in Latin America that harm its development. The book is called ‘The Guide to the Perfect Latin American Idiot.’ It has whole chapters on entitlement, Castro worship, liberation theology, nationalism,…
I think property rights is rapidly emerging as a central revolution of our time in many areas. It touches even the United States, as the Kelo case demonstrates. Private property is the one thing communist regimes oppose. It’s also the key to freedom and the only basis for rule of law. And what a coincidence,…
Singapore threw into jail a couple of ethnic Chinese Internet posters who wrote derogatory remarks about their Malay countrymen. As I wrote here, this kind of thing goes on all the time, and I’ve seen it myself. But this time, the Singaporean government cracked down, swiftly and surely laying down its brand of justice, something…
Via Real Clear Politics, the Washington Post has an astounding article about a young rock band in Indonesia that is defying the vicious local Islamofascists by singing innovative songs against Jihad terrorism. Every time the terrorists threaten to blow them up, the youthful band comes up with a new song, calling it their next new…
Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty has several long pieces regarding the war on terror following President Bush’s speech. Read them: – Four years later, no clear winners in the war on terror – Who is the enemy, and how is it changing? – Can West fight terror and still maintain civil liberties? – Global…
Thousands of people are being arrested, demolotions continue, inflation is skyrocketing, and there are even rumors of a military coup as even the army isn’t receiving food and pay crucial to their loyalty to Mugabe. This is Zimbabwe today. D.B. Light rounds it up.
I knew of the hunger strike of two Cuban ’75’ dissidents in Fidel Castro’s prisons but had very little information about Castro’s actual GULag at Guantanamo, and the conditions of which that led to the drastic hunger strike. Today, Wall Street Journal‘s Mary Anastasia O’Grady has done a great public service by publicizing this terrifying…
Andy Young has a good post on Russia’s closed cities, in which over 2 million people are sealed off from the world.
Miguel Buitrago of the excellent MABB blog has a fascinating post on the different political party programs of the candidates for Bolivia’s elections. He lines them all up side by side, helpfully laid out in bullet points. Read the whole thing here. My own analysis on one detail: Take a good look at the hard-left…
Why does Chavez remain popular? Here’s a frank and intelligent discussion of the matter in terms even I can relate to here.
It seems that some other countries are worried about American imperialist hegemony with regards to the internet. So, morally speaking, other countries should be able to have joint control over it to make sure that nothing bad happens. It sounds all so wonderful. Well, until you look at who wants it, and when you realize…
So much for George Bush being intimidated by the bitter union- and leftist-bankrolled struggle this past summer to ratify CAFTA. In less than four weeks, negotiators say a free trade pact with Panama could be signed. Negotiators are rushing to polish up the accord in the last weeks before President George Bush visits the wonderful…
Besides the end of property rights, Venezuela also is turning into a financial madhouse. Almost every blogger I can find on Venezuela is commenting about it how Venezuela’s central bank, the guardian of its very currency, is under attack by the Chavista dictatorship. The Financial Times reported here that Venezuela’s central bank shifted up to…
I was going nuts, there was no Boli-Nica for weeks, and the whole world seemed … gray. At long last he is BACK and he’s got a funny new post up on Hugo Chavez’s latest scheme to build a ‘national computer.’ Boli, we want more! Boli describes Hugo Chavez’s latest schemes with state-financed computers, how…
Via our friend Harry Hutton, we learn that Colombia has a young policewoman who singlehandedly has destroyed vast money-counterfeiting networks in Colombia, knocking Colombia down from the rank of number one in U.S.-dollar counterfeiting to number three. Just one person’s individual work and initiative in a country long believed to have insurmountable problems. Not any…
Tuesday’s essay on property rights by the great Carlos Alberto Montaner, has awesome intellectual firepower. He is the best writer I know of anywhere in the world, and this is his most luminous essay. Montaner writes about how the destruction of property rights, as is happening in Venezuela, makes democratic revolution nearly impossible. He carefully…
Both Venezuela and Bolivia will hold watershed elections this December 4. Political pictures, and the outlook for democracy, could change as a result. Venezuela will elect National Assembly members ahead of dictator Hugo Chavez’s planned “changes” to the constitution. Bolivia will hold long-anticipated presidential elections after the leftist street-mob toppling of their second president in…
France is desperately in need of a democratic revolution. Socialism has failed, as it has failed everywhere else, and the French people face a bleak future. Instead, they’re getting a non-democratic revolt. Unions desperate to preserve their privileges are protesting in the streets, trying to shut the country down. Incubating revolution is complicated. The French…
Obviously fearing defeat and a loss of power in the upcoming elections, the religious Shiite parties in collaboration with the Kurds made a really dumb move by reinterpreting the electoral law for the October referendum. It has raised a fury with the Sunnis, prompting the UN and U.S. to step up and ask the parties…
The democratic opposition to the government of Belarus has formally united, with the selection a single candidate to represent its broad interests in the 2006 presidential election. The choice is Alyaksandr Milinkevich, a civil society advocate who is relatively unknown and untarnished by regime propaganda. They also chose as their symbol a red tree on…
I have just posted my Middle East Week in Review news bulletin to my blog.
It doesn’t get much better than this. I’m translating an excerpt from an article in the Iraqi newspaper Al Bawaba, “Parliament Reviews the Constitution Issue and Jabar Renews His Attacks on Saudi Arabia“: The Iraqi interior minister renewed his attacks on Saudi Arabia during an interview broadcast on Tuesday focusing on how Saudi Arabia treats…