Blogging the democratic revolution
Rather unexpectedly, Schafik Handal, 75, El Salvador’s top communist guerrilla, and the leader of the FMLN has died of a heart attack, just as he got back from Evo Morales’ presidential inauguration in Bolivia. A Palestinian-Salvadoran, same as Conservative President Tony Saca, Handal brought years of war to El Salvador in the 1980s. However, he took part in the peace process at the end of it and today, Salvador is a nation on its feet, with Handal’s FMLN part of the picture, many of its denizens now local mayors in and around El Salvador. This should raise some questions about…
I spent some time at Globovision in Caracas. It is a fearless television station that insists it will defy the newly declared censorship from the Venezuelan government. This is all fully in character. During the coup attempt of 2002, when Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez tried to break into all the television stations with a speech in order to suppress news of the unrest in the streets, Globovision, being full of real journalists, defiantly created a split screen so that the people of Venezuela could see what was happening at that critical moment in their country. The split screen showed Chavez…
Venezuela is literally breaking off in chunks under the Hugo Chavez dictatorship. The Viaducto 1 bridge to the airport is tottering on its last legs, and unusable, leaving anyone flying in from the Maiquetia airport on the coastline the wretched specter of mountain donkey trails to cross in order to get to homes or hotels in inland Caracas. But that’s not all. El Universal is reporting that a critical bridge to the hinterland has just collapsed, this one linking Yaracuy state, where Daniel of Yaracuy lives, to the outside world. He is now cut off. There are more donkey trails…
Following last week’s crackdown by royalist security forces preceding planned pro-democracy protests, in which hundreds of pro-democracy politicians and activists were detained and communications were cut across the whole country, the situation in Nepal has deteriorated even further. Protests have been ongoing for the past four days, with standoffs between the demonstrators and police resulting in tear gas being shot from one side and stones being thrown from the other. With the Maoists ending their ceasefire and stepping up attacks, Nepal is perhaps at one of its most unstable points in a really long time. KATHMANDU (Reuters) – Nepali riot…
In the Bucharest Daily News, a little item pops up: the Hungarians want the Romanians to pass a minority status law. Yawn. What else is new? Oh. Yes. That EU thing. Speaking in Targu-Mures on Saturday during a two-day visit to Transylvania, Szili Katalin also spoke about cooperation between Hungary and Romania in view of the latter’s upcoming EU accession. Ms. Szili sounds very much as if she’s trying to play hardball, or as hardball as Hungary, with its ridiculously weak international position, can play.(FN1) One can see that Hungary would be interested in the position of Hungarian minorities involved……
A few months ago, a 70s-leftist at Columbia Journalism Review, John Dinges, smugly assured us all was well with Venezuela’s press freedom and the only problem in that country was the ‘irresponsibility’ of the private media. For, you know, printing unfounded rumors and stuff. And not liking it (due to their being hopelessly middle class!) when the government Propaganda Minister read off their names publicly in his daily criticism lists. As if they were 4-year-olds. And as if there were no problem with that! In Dinges mind, that, and not anything Chavez did, was the problem! To hear it from…
There’ve been numerous ‘acts of repudiation’ against peaceful freedom fighters across Cuba in the last few days. On last Saturday, Tania Nicol????s Bernardo , member of the Femenine Movement “Martha Abreu” was savagely beaten by a terrorist mob made up with plainclothes agents of the Castroite militias. It occurred in a public street in Santa Clara, following a peaceful march of Tania alongside other activists, who were distributing copies of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, brochures with the word “Change” and other dissident material, to the people. Yesterday, other activists of such movement marched peacefully in Villa Clara in…
Mexico’s governor of Sonora state makes an impassioned declaration about how free trade works awesomely in his state and in neighboring Arizona. He explains how free trade lifts businesses across the board. How great it is to look on Mexico as an equal neighbor instead of a problem issue. That’s the beauty of free trade and I commend this governor for standing up for his experience with the matter and trying to get it through the heads of the ignorant on both sides of the border that free trade works! Hat tip: Real Clear Politics
The liveblogging will be somewhat quiet, but please continue to post results, updates and opinions in the comments section. ÄThe blogging does in fact pick up below.Å ÄWith Canada’s absolutely ridiculous laws, there really won’t be much to discuss until a few hours later, so I think I probably won’t post much, but later on there will no doubt be insightful comments at Captain’s Quarters and around the Canadian blogosphere. Enjoy the Maple Revolution!Å Will conservatives be upset if/when the CPC only brings home a powerless minority? So far the Atlantic provinces are voting pretty much according to expectations, perhaps…
Yesterday, the ex-Polish Solidarity Leader Lech Walesa addressed Cuban dissidents via video conference at the residence of the U.S. Interest Section chief Michael Parmly in Havana. Walesa said that Cuba will be free very soon: “The system will fall because nobody believes in communism.You are close to your goal”. Meanwhile, Castroite fascist mobs continue to attack peaceful dissidents. Paramilitary mobs led by plainclothes agents of the state security and officials of the Interior Ministry attacked 3 peaceful freedom fighters members of the Cuban Democratic Alliance, the Foundation for Human Rights, the Democratic Oriental Alliance and independent agency ‘Youth Without Censorship’.…
It looks like Code Pink forgot to tell Common Dreams News Center that their logo is bunk and a forgery. In a recent article written by our all-time favorite mental patient Cindy Sheheen, Common Dreams proudly displays the logo that exploits a brave Iranian woman. You know, the one that Code Pink tried to swiftly remove without any notice. Looks like someone forgot to cover their tracks.
Miguel has the story here, the background here, and the new freedom-babe photos here. UPDATE: I grossly underestimated the size of the crowd in my original headline, it was 120,000, not 10,000. I have since updated it. El Universal has story here.
A prominent Iranian feminist activist and freedom fighter passed away yesterday in Tehran. The maverick and combatant woman never abdicated from her principles and humanistic believes, despite all pressures exerted by the Islamic republic regime, and she was always supportive of Iranian students and freedom fighters. Despite her age and physical conditions, she actively participated in the “July 9, 1999 Students’ Uprising”, beside her courageous daughter “Maloos Radnia known also as Mariam Shansy”. “Vajiheh Cheguini” raised the anger of the brutal “Ali Falhahian” (an Islamist Cleric known for his involvement in the killing of dissidents and a former Ministry of…
Earlier A.M. Mora y Leon had a post detailing a badly-done and horribly misguided photoshop of brave Iranian women into mindless shells of the Code Pink cult. It appears that they quietly took down that image after Mora drew attention to it. Now, most people aren’t dumb enough (or wicked enough) to pull off a stunt like that. But, having done so and having been publicly shamed, one would think the very last thing such a person would do — even an extremely dumb and wicked person — is to replace that fraud with another similar fraud. Here’s the new…
About 100,000 leftwing activists will arrive in Caracas for the World Social Forum next week. With numbers that great, there will be sane, thinking people among them, even if they are on the far left. And maybe, some will be in moderate and democratic left, it’s pretty sure. That’s why Venezuelan bloggers are doing their utmost to communicate with the attendees about the militarism they will see on the streets, some of which has given some of the WSF attendees cause for concern. As Iria explained to me on Global Voices the other day: I really don????????t know whether or…
Miguel Buitrago at the excellent MABB blog has a list of all the attendees and a map of how the procession will go. It’s everything you need to know about the Morales inaugural, which I am watching closely. Read it here. One of our posters, Jonathan, provided an excellent link to show that Cuban dictator Fidel Castro will not be coming. I find that interesting as heck because Morales, practically the day after he was elected, got on a PDVSA jet and jetted off to see the bearded bastard. Does this mean Castro’s in bad health? Or could it be…
Eduardo Avila at Barrio Flores has discovered something a bit different for Global Voices this week, with unusual blogs showing growing readership in Bolivia – yes, soccer blogs. Don’t laugh – of course this is revolutionary – this is a hemisphere that has had ‘soccer wars!’ Check it out here.
Excellent stuff from Boz, the Mexican and Peruvian presidential campaign polls in particular are important as far-leftists are among the contenders, the horse races are close, and elections are coming up soon. Also, check out the latest polls on existing presidents in Latin America, at the end of his post. It is all worth reading here.
At least in principle. He will enrage the left by this statement. Strike up the band and play, “the world turned upside down.” Good sense has come to the mind of Evo Morales! As long as he continues on this path, he’s gonna make it to the finish line. Keep going, Evo! And boy is this going to make Hugo Chavez mad!!! The story is here.
Sorry everyone, but the large traffic influx due to the post about Code Pink has led my web host to temporarily block access to the site for several hours because it literally crashed the entire server. Sorry for the inconvenience everyone! I think they may be communist sympathizers. The downtime is unacceptable when it comes to issues of the blogosphere, where news moves quickly, so I’m in the process of moving the site to a new host. Hopefully this can happen over the weekend and we won’t ever have any downtime again.
Hillary Clinton, on her latest rumble and tumble of speeches aimed at the Bush administration, has accused it of downplaying Iran as a threat to national security and has subsequently called for sanctions against the regime. But in the wake of so many lobbying and corruption scandals in Washington, is Hillary playing a game of double standards? According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Clinton has received $5000 in campaign contributions from a PAC called the American Iranian Council, which is known to be against sanctions and in favor of restoring diplomatic and trade relations between America and Iran —…
If you’re already going to rest for the weekend, think again: there’re some op/eds you might want to read and I thought I had to post them here. Michael Ledeen wrote an interesting piece in the National Review urging the Bush administration to do the right thing with respect to Iran. Below are some excerpts : You want to bomb the nuclear facilities? Do you really believe that our intelligence community is capable of identifying them? The same crowd that did all that yeoman work on Saddam’s Iraq? The CIA that once received accurate information on Iranian schemes in Afghanistan,…
After the jailing of opposition leader Ayman Nour, the United States has decided to halt free trade talks with Egypt for the meantime. It is a sign of growing American willingness to make the distinctive link between the economic benefits it can bestow and the nature of the governments we do business with. The decision highlighted a growing rift with an important Middle Eastern ally after it held an election for president last September that the United States described as highly flawed. Egypt had been eager to work out an agreement that would reduce or eliminate tariffs and increase trade…
Unbelievable. Code Pink, an anti-American, anti-Iraqi-freedom, anti-Iranian-democracy full-Sandalista nuisance group, has taken to photoshopping photographs of Iranian freedom babes brave enough to protest against the monstrous mullahs of Iran, and used their beautiful images as recruiting tools for their own odious, anaphrodisiac cause. This cause just happens to be cut-and-run from Iraq, so that mullahs will be free to oppress women in ‘peace.’ That’s Code Pink’s cause! It is so disgusting! They can’t even tell the difference between Iranians and Iraqis, among other things, and just don’t care. But that’s not nearly as bad as changing the message the women…
Iraq the Model has a new banner; also a number of good posts, including a discussion of the recent investigation into allegations of electoral fraud in Iraq, a new security arrangement, and a whole lot more Iraqi democratic politics — check it out! While I’m writing, Academic Elephant has a pretty good blonde joke.