Blogging the democratic revolution
In Hugo Chavez’s 21st Century Socialist Venezuela. El Universal has a superb roundup of the year, documenting the continuous stream of expropriations defacing Venezuela as its democracy slides into tyranny. Read it here and here.
From Venezuela’s government propaganda, a news organ called Venezuelan Global News reports meat shortages in Caracas, calling attention to a problem that obviously is being discussed in the streets by Venezuela’s poor, a topic Venezuela’s private-sector media, or at least the mainstream English-language media, may have missed. This is the first I have heard of this shortage. The meat reportedly in short supply is pork legs, used in the making of Venezuelan Christmas hallacas (we’d recognize that as a tamale over here), a traditional Christmas food. Although I had not seen any reports of pork shortages in the press, the…
Instead of letting them phase in following the New Year, President Yushchenko wants to hold a popular referendum on the constitutional changes that were agreed upon during the Orange Revolution last year. I smell a — dun dun dun — political ploy! KIEV (Reuters) – President Viktor Yushchenko said on Friday constitutional changes reducing his powers from the New Year could destabilise Ukraine and suggested he might call for a referendum on the matter. The changes, approved by parliament a year ago at the height of Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution”, were part of a deal to win broad agreement on restaging…
I see problems with this on multiple levels. CAIRO, Dec. 30 – Egyptian riot police officers rushed into a crowd of unarmed Sudanese migrants early Friday morning, killing at least 23 people, including small children, after the group refused to leave a public park it had occupied for three months hoping to press United Nations officials to relocate them. The Sudanese – thousands of men, women and children – were packed into what amounted to a traffic island in an upscale neighborhood. They had fled war-torn Sudan, but the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees office in Cairo – across…
These guys have the right idea. In a rare protest against an official media crackdown, about 100 journalists from one of China’s most aggressive daily newspapers have gone on strike after the paper’s editor and two of his deputies were fired, local journalists said Friday. The editor of The Beijing News, Yang Bin, and deputy editors, Sun Xuedong and Li Duoyu, were dismissed Wednesday as part of what media watchdog groups describe as a sweeping government campaign to tighten control over the media and the Internet. The striking journalists, about a third of the staff, stopped work on Thursday after…
On January 1st, CAFTA is ready for implementation. The nations of Central America have just a few things to do to get it all in place but on a rolling basis, they will be set to get involved with the opportunities of free trade and with it, all the prosperity that follows. After NAFTA was implemented, Mexico’s stock exchange rose 200% in the years that followed. So it shall be with CAFTA. Central America should prepare to be a big global player, a known name, a symbol of excellence, and a rich, prosperous region that has broken all ties to…
Is it me, or did Publius‘ first birthday just pass yesterday?
Now that I’ve fully recovered — it was so bad that it must have been bird flu — I can finally get back to what’s going on with the Iraqi election results. Only it’s already beginning to wind down. The political groups are criss-crossing with dozens of talks all over the country to work out a compromise. New elections are certainly out of the question, but it looks like some of the demands of the Sunnis and seculars will be fulfilled and the Shia-Kurdish alliance will evolve into more of a national unity government. Final results will be released in…
VCrisis has several good pieces tonight on Argentina but one that caught my eye an event I knew about – that Argentina’s largely leftist press is on the take, with a few isolated exceptions. Now many of those exceptions are under attack as the Nestor “Anti–Summit of the Americas” Kirchner regime strengthens and consolidates its power a la Hugo Chavez. Press freedom is beginning to wither there for those who are not on the take. The story is here.
Cuban exiles at Killcastro.com (the name comes from Havana street graffiti) went over, point by point, U.S. proposed reforms for a post-Castro Cuba. They focused exclusively on how effective each individual measure would likely be to dislodge “The Beast” from power and enable the blossoming of freedom in Cuba, the coming Havana Spring all hope to follow in the wake of Castro’s unmournable death. The fascinating item from these real Cubans is here.
I Believe Only In The Power Of The People by Evo Morales December 24, 2005 Thank you for the invitation to this great meeting of intellectuals “In Defense of Humanity.” Thank you for your applause for the Bolivian people, who have mobilized in these recent days of struggle, drawing on our consciousness and our regarding how to reclaim our natural resources. What happened these past days in Bolivia was a great revolt by those who have been oppressed for more than 500 years. The will of the people was imposed this September and October, and has begun to overcome the…
I woke up yesterday morning to a conference being broadcasted on C-SPAN called “The Future of the Middle East,” and since I was still sick, I sat up and watched through the whole thing in between shots of Tylenol. There were a couple of people on the panel fielding questions, but the most interesting comments tended to come from the Turkish ambassador to the United States, Faruk Logoglu, with regards to Islam and building democracy in the region. Here are three of the remarks he made that I think are worth remembering: 1) We should not be asking whether democracy…
…that have implications for revolutionary change in 2005. From Latin America, here’s my personal list of the most revolutionary stories in the hemisphere: 1. CAFTA – Toughest legislative battle of the year in the U.S. and the most important one. Free trade with the tiny nations of Central America has become a reality. And free trade lifts businesses across the board. Even Contra Cafe! No more will Hugo Chavez be free to subvert the hemisphere with his pork-barrel spending programs that create dependency. Instead, every nation will stand up for itself and all of its earnings will be purely their…
Daniel at Venezuela News has scrolled through the year’s news and come up with a great list of awards for the year on topics ranging from man of the year to ‘analyst’ of the year, to assorted female categories. It’s great fun to look at – read the whole thing here.
After being released on bail in March for the presidential campaign, Ayman Nour, the liberal opposition leader who got second place in this year’s presidential election, has been convicted of “forging signatures” for his candidacy registration papers. He has been given five years of prison time. The charges are false. The judiciary is corrupt. And this is certainly not the way to build a liberal democratic society. It has completely called into question Mubarak’s dedication to reform; not that anyone truly believed in it anyhow. The U.S. government is not taking kindly to the news. An Egyptian court sentenced a…
My gift this year was the flu from my family. I wish they could have included some Tylenol with that! Anyhow, loyal readers, what are you all doing today?
The animals are at it again. They got caught trying to kill President Uribe of Colombia. The story is here. COLOMBIA-PRESIDENT Explosive found near ranch of Colombia President Uribe Bogota, Dec 24 (EFE).- A bomb made up of some 46 kilos (101 lbs.) of explosives and shrapnel was found near the ranch of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, in the northern province of Cordoba, presidential bodyguards reported. The device was found shortly before Uribe was scheduled to arrive at his rural retreat, located some five minutes from the regional capital, Monteria, and 902 kilometers (560 miles) northwest of Bogota. Military personnel…
Sounds insane, but it’s true. Venezuela has the world’s finest coffee, but when I looked around in the shops of Caracas for some bagfuls to take home for Christmas presents, there were none to be found. (I had trouble finding the Hugo Chavez Action Figure for Christmas, too. Not even the buhoneros had it in stock.) These shortages, like the various meat shortages seen around Caracas in past months, are glints of the shortages to come as the communist revolution of Hugo Chavez consolidates. They are a sign of something, the first shooting pains, and they don’t just occur in…
With the recent magazine photos of the sexy young bin Laden niece – tell me THAT girl isn’t, in her own way, a revolutionary – I thought it would be worth it to note that Cuban dictator Fidel Castro has wealthy young offspring who like to party it up in Havana, too. But unlike the bin Laden girl, who’s doing her cheesecake pictures to stick it into bin Laden’s face, these young Castros have no idea that their sybaritic lifestyle is actually on film. The Real Cuba has found some authentic news photos showing the sons and daughters of the…
Christmas is barely legal in Fidel Castro’s monstrous dictatorship in Cuba, and this year more than most. There is a sullen, sad atmosphere in Havana these days, partly from want, and partly from the sour, tired nature of the regime on its last legs. That’s why Val Prieto at Babalu blog came up with the idea of asking Cuban Americans from all over to describe their best Cuban Christmas memories, from childhoods either in Miami or in Havana. The rich tapestry of customs and relationships is completely unique and, given Castro’s tyranny, distinctly revolutionary. The whole fascinating thing can be…
David Sasaki and Juliana Rincon Parra at Global Voices have something very special in their Bolivian blog roundup – a slew of translations from the original Spanish. If you had always wanted to be able to read the Spanish blogs but couldn’t do it, they’ve opened that window and have a long, beautifully done roundup from the Spanish-language Bolivian bloggers. Well worth a click here.
Daniel in Yaracuy has another elegantly done post comparing and contrasting two court verdicts in two highly politicized cases, one for the opposition, and one for the ruling party. As may be imagined in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, the reality shows that Chavistas get about three times as much ‘justice’ as Venezuela’s battered opposition. I’ll add one more editorial note that Daniel didn’t: I don’t believe any of these verdicts reflects the truth of what happened and none of the people going to jail on either side had anything to do with the murders. It’s all politics, jumping from the pockets…
In one of his finest posts, Daniel in Yaracuy province describes the curious reverse phenomenon now seen in Venezuela under the Hugo Chavez regime: the effort to eradicate all symbols of secularism and holiday cheer in Venezuela, in favor of a highly politicized, chavista-cized more ancient Christian model. It’s a strike against globalization and the U.S. in particular. That’s why Daniel’s seeing some weird things around Yaracuy, and he’s posted all the photos, well worth a click here. While we are on the topic of Christmas, take a look at Alek Boyd’s ‘Merry Christmas Venezuela’ post and photo, showing Santa…
They grossly undercounted the amount of support shown by Evo Morales in that strikingly well-executed election this past Sunday. Boz goes into several reasons why in an extremely interesting post here.
The Sunni lists, along with ex-PM Iyad Allawi’s multi-confessional secular list and others, have joined together to contest the results of the December 15 election in order, at the least, to have the results reviewed and their complaints addressed. At the most, some members of this new coalition have called for new elections altogether. BAGHDAD, Iraq Dec 22, 2005 ???????? Dozens of Sunni Arab and secular Shiite groups threatened to boycott Iraq’s new legislature Thursday if complaints about tainted voting are not reviewed by an international body. A representative for former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi described the Dec. 15 vote…