Blogging the democratic revolution
The Primero Justice party has pulled out of the coming Venezuelan election Sunday, leaving just Hugo Chavez’s MVR party all by its lonesome to run for Congress. This news comes from Marta Colomina, a well-known journalist in Venezuela. This pullout represents the full unification of the Venezuelan opposition, something never seen in Venezuelan history. They have all decided together to refuse to acquiesce to electoral fraud through a rigged election. All of the parties who can make a statement by pulling out have done so now. They are demanding free and fair elections or they won’t participate at all. This…
This past Sunday, Egypt completed the run-off to the second of three rounds of parliamentary elections. The system is set up such that roughly a third of the 444 seats are up for contest in each round. Because the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is legally banned, they run candidates as independents and so ascertaining their strength, as well as that of President Hosni Mubarak’s ruling National Democratic Party (NDP), lies partially in how many independents end up aligning with them. The results now available are that the NDP won 75 seats bringing its total to 195, while the MB won 29…
Alvaro Vargas Llosa has a brilliant – and I mean a most brilliant – essay, both in original thought and in exquisite writing – on Bolivia and the dangerous role of Evo Morales. He points out that Morales’ problem is not globalization, as Morales so drearily claims, but something most people don’t realize: U.S. subsidies and dictator-coddling, something that propped up Bolivian tinpots for years and encouraged them to nationalize their countries instead of listen to reason, pay their way, and engage markets. These sad layers of U.S. policy have ended all possibility of economic growth. He’s right. It beautifully…
Agencia EFE has the first reports on a clash over bus fares. Alek Boyd has more preliminary reports of riots in three cities over the stacked, rigged, fraudulent election here. GATEWAYPUNDIT has a major roundup, with photos of the week’s multiple events here. UPDATE: Miguel has riot photos here. UPDATE: Scott has a terrific roundup of choice quotes here.
Speaking from Mexico, Mario Vargas Llosa really gave it to Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez. The short news account is here. It follows recent condemnations of the Venezuelan dictator by former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, here.
…except Hugo Chavez’s MVR party, exiting because the electoral setup is utterly tainted. It lacks transparency, it lacks secrecy and it lacks integrity. By doing this, the opposition is saying: No more participating in fraud. It’s amazing that whole political machines can operate in unity like this. It is the first time I’ve ever seen the Venezuelan political opposition ever agree on anything. Now they have, and now they finally have power. The move comes five days before the scheduled Dec. 4 election day for congressional seats. The only remaining opposition party now is called Nuevo Tiempo, and it’s running…
A Saudi national studying at Arizona State University, a party school by all counts and from my own recollection, thinks that the school should sanction the possibility of expelling students for wearing any clothing with the ASU logo when posing for dirty, dirty magazines. The ASU Web Devil reports! If one student leader has his way, ASU students will no longer be able to grace the covers of Playboy and other sexually explicit magazines without consequences. Undergraduate Student Government President Yaser Alamoodi is hoping to pass a rule that would prohibit males and females from posing in magazines he believes…
Carlos Alberto Montaner always gets it right, but he’s done it this week with special brilliance. He warns that Bolivia is on a suicide path with the likely election of Evo Morales, but also notes that the failure of the current ruling class over so many decades is to blame, something I believe too. It’s certainly how Hugo Chavez got a foothold. He is hearing the same things I am hearing: that Bolivia will become a drug haven under Morales, that Brazil will be the first victim, that a breakup of the state is likely, and that a war with…
On Dec. 4, Venezuela will hold Congressional elections. They are expected to be the final nail in the coffin of the Venezuelan opposition as dictator Hugo Chavez consolidates power and installs a Marxist regime. There are pretenses of them being legitimate as a vote however and therein lies the farce. A test of the Smartmatic voting machines and the Cogent Systems fingerprint machines showed that not one ballot had ever been secret when the matter was put before European Union election observers, who indeed were not fooled. That led to a threatened boycott of the election and this morning, the…
In keeping with Argentina’s dangerous direction leftward, President Nestor Kirchner fired several members of his somewhat moderate cabinet, including his economy minister, Roberto Lavagna, and replaced them with far-left extremists who are deep in the Hugo Chavez camp of Argentine politics. They are also economic morons, set to take power in what is South America’s third-biggest economy, accounting for about two or three percent of the hemisphere’s GDP. Analysts speculate that since Argentina’s October regional elections are over with Kirchner comfortably in the lead, this may be his time to make changes. I also suspect that President Bush’s refusal to…
Falsifying elections is a tough job, so you need just the right authoritarian government to do it. Armenia was another country on the list to do so this weekend, with a constitutional referendum that, despite polling places being nearly empty all day, reported a relatively high turnout. But given that the opposition simply boycotted the referendum, it wouldn’t be all that surprising if a “yes” vote actually did occur, from what I can tell, and the specific amendments — like giving more power to the parliament, granted the judiciary more independence, and giving diasporans citizenship — sound like the first…
Hey, why is only President Putin and his entourage of ass-kissers dancing? That’s because the first parliamentary elections in Chechnya since 1997 were held on Sunday, in what the dear leaders over in Moscow are hailing as the last legal step toward restoring the region. It’s all a flash-by cinematic sequence for those watching in the West, while on the ground the situation continues to deteriorate with democracy nowhere in sight. Officials are inflating turnout by the double-digits, the winning candidates were all hand-picked by the Kremlin, and it seems like the majority of voters were Russian soldiers. Doesn’t seem…
I managed to watch some of Al-Jazeera’s coverage of the trial of Saddam Hussein. While he was in power, it was known that he was a semi-literate thug, albeit an exceptionally cunning one. He was reportedly frustrated by his inability to converse with other members of the Iraqi elite on equal terms because he couldn’t speak grammatically. This was certainly on full display today. It is hard to say how it would have sounded to a native speaker, but I thought that he came across as mentally dishevelled, using lots of non-standard Arabic vocabulary. This would be highly abnormal for…
I have now posted my Middle East Week in Review news bulletin. News briefs for the week deal with issues in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Iran and Chechnya. Lots of election news this week, although some of it is “election” news. Democracy watchers may want to focus on the news on Qatar, for they are now announcing elections to parliament for the first time, pursuant to their 2003 constitution. The democracy news was less appealing from Palestine, where convicted terrorist Marwan Barghouti won a landslide victory in an internal Fatah primary; from…
Reuters has the first report here. The lock-em-up-and-throw-away-the-key candidate won over the bring-back-the-death-penalty candidate from the incumbent party. This is considered a suprise upset for the challenger who is said to be slightly more left-leaning, though I am curious about the name of his party ‘Liberal’ – which, internationally, means Libertarian. More to follow… UPDATE: A bit more from Boz here. UPDATE: Boz has a good roundup of the event here. And this interesting commentary here: After independence in the 19th century, most Latin American countries ended up with a two party political system. The two parties were nearly always…
This article will discuss the recently concluded Cairo conference of “national reconciliation” mostly as it was seen through the Arab media. The result is perhaps best summed up by Al-Hayat‘s headline on Nov. 22: “Cairo Conference: A Pass on American Withdrawal and Agreement on the ‘Legitimacy of Resistance’ and Rejection of ‘Terrorism’.” According to the same article, the final statement provided that Iraq sought “the withdrawal of foreign forces according to a fixed timetable, and the immediate establishment of a national program to rebuild the national security forces with regard to training, weapons and numbers on a peaceful basis, empowering…
– 15,000 people protesting incredible election results in Azerbaijan tried to set up a permanent demonstration, but we quickly beaten down. – Police in Egypt are arresting hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members and preventing people who would vote for them from entering polling stations. Knife and gun fights are ensuing.
The big but unsurprising news out of China is that — golly gee! — the government tried to cover up the huge chemical spill in the Songhua River that has closed down water supplies for nearly four million people in the city of Harbin. The International Herald Tribune reports on the timeline of events and how the government was finally forced to act. Similarly, the Washington Post describes the political fallout caused by the coverup. Environmental destruction due to the fast pace of industrialization and lack of regulation has been a big issue on the minds of the Chinese people…
This Sunday, Nov. 27, Honduras holds its presidential election. This is an important election because it’s seen by some analysts as the bellwether of how the all-important next 13 months of elections go in Latin America. Will Latam swing further left or move right with these elections? Honduras is expected to give some sort of indication. But to read Boz’s writeup – and he’s the only one I know covering it (and doing a nice job) – along with all his links – suggests that this isn’t some great argument about Left and Right, it’s more a conglomeration of local…
Costa Rica is the one nation that has yet to ratify the CAFTA free trade pact with its Central American neighbors and the U.S. Six other nations have, including Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and – after a bruising domestic battle – the U.S. But Costa Rica has not. The fact that Costa Rica’s a more advanced economy, like the U.S., might have something to do with it. The three weakest economies of the CAFTA alliance – Dominican Republic, Guatemala, and Nicaragua – passed the pact with the highest margins of victory, signalling their knowledge that free trade…
Hugo Chavez is meddling in more than just Bolivia. He’s got a northern front and that’s the U.S. Using the good offices of willing dupes like Congressman Bill Delahunt and Congressman Jose Serrano, he’s delivering cheap oil through their offices in return for their support in U.S. Congress. Next time Hugo Chavez invades a small country or throws a dissident in jail, he won’t have a thing to worry about in Congress because he’s got his own U.S. Congressmen in the bag with cheap oil. It’s a truly disgusting subversion of democracy and democratic revolution, both in the U.S. and…
Christian Science Monitor has some hagiography on Hugo Chavez’s own house organ, Telesur, insisting that it’s — no, really — full of professional journalists. It cites as proof the Telesur chief, the creepy, rat-like former Chavez shill and spokesman, Andres Izarra, a man who was suddenly forced to leave CNN a few years ago, and on very murky grounds. The one who, when he was Chavez’s shill, used to read off journalists’ names at Caracas press conferences to say just how much he didn’t like their reporting. That one. Extolling Telesur’s questionable leadership is something Telesur tried to do when…
It looks like the courts in Chile may finally be getting their man once and for all. General Pinochet, who overthrew the Soviet-funded communist government and served as president until he stepped down in 1990, has been charged by the court for abused of human rights during his rule in which more than 3000 people were killed. SANTIAGO, Chile (Reuters) – One day before his 90th birthday, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was under house arrest on Thursday and facing tax fraud and human rights charges in his toughest legal situation yet. On Wednesday, Pinochet was placed under house arrest…
The rift between Poland and Belarus continues, with the leading Polish newspapers blacking out their front pages to protest censorship in its less democratic neighbor. Could you imagine the papers here in the U.S. taking such a stand? WARSAW, Poland – Poland’s two leading newspapers blacked out large sections of their front pages Wednesday in an eye-catching protest against media repression in neighboring Belarus. The main pages of Gazeta Wyborcza and Rzeczpospolita looked as if a censor had taken a black marker to them, with most text and photographs crossed out. Amnesty International, which led the protest, wrote at the…
Pajamas Media hosted another one of its blogjams, where in this case the editorial board members discussed ways that the company could be more “bloggy” and overall revolutionary in its approach to media. Well, after reading the whole thing, I have one big suggestion that I think the editorial board should take into account when revising how it provides content. Since I wasn’t part of the blogjam, it’s going here. Don’t takes news from Xinhua, which you may or may not know, is the official state news and propaganda agency of the Chinese government. Google News does it, and it…