Blogging the democratic revolution
Do it! You can almost hear Gilbert and Whitey egging on The Beav to do something stupid. And so it seems with this new spectacle of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez announcing he intends to replace the IMF with his own self-financed IMF, to be called ‘Bank of the South.’ This bank wouldn’t really be a bank however, but more like a candy store. Chavez says he’ll make loans on no terms whatsoever, and I suppose, not expect to be paid back, which is the Argentine way. In return, he’ll expect political loyalty, which, as the Caribbean states at the OAS…
This Sunday, Chile will undertake a great expression of democracy in its relatively new republic through its presidential elections. Gone are the days of dictators and caudillos and tinpots. Having totally renounced them and their lack of democracy, what’s left are two good candidates, one leaning left and one leaning right, heading down to the wire on Sunday’s elections. This whole election will serve as a benchmark to the rest of Latin America of what a good election should be. All countries should try to measure up to this excellent Chilean standard. Agencia EFE has a great profile of one…
Boz has all kinds of interesting and different kinds of political, social and economic polls from around the hemisphere this week, from norte to sur, check it out here.
Ten thousand angry middle class Thais rallied to demand Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra’s resignation. They are accusing him of corruption and abuse of power. They’ve had it up to here with Thaksin, a billionaire businessman and once-enormously popular prime minister who has amassed power in the wake of the 1997 Asia Crisis, which began in Thailand, and has since eroded civic freedoms. The Thais are rallying around around Songla Limthongkul, a former business partner and former political ally of Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. Songla is a media mogul who’s appalled at the his former partner’s business deals (a rumored $2…
You have to have real guts to scrap your country’s currency and just start using the U.S. dollar. It’s hard. You might not be a gringo but every time you buy or sell something, you have to look at U.S. heroes on the face of the money you are using. But the benefits of doing it — to you — are absolutely amazing. Never again can your government confiscate your savings account by devaluing the money in it. You will never again wake up and find your life savings worth nothing because the government wanted to please some inefficient banana…
Nathan Hamm is noting some interesting political developments in the most democratic country of Central Asia, which has culminated in several thousand people protesting.
The topic of the week is Bolivian president-elect’s understated style of dressing. Leftwing Evo Morales doesn’t actually own a suit, but only street clothes, something that’s creating a bit of a sensation around the world. On Morales’ first unofficial World Tour to meet assorted leaders in places like Spain, Belgium, Netherlands, South Africa and China, riding there on a Venezuelan PDVSA state oil company jet, he encountered baleful looks in ultra-formal Spain, and phony expressions of sympathetic support from the nominally communist Chinese for his dressed-down look. I don’t have a problem with him being who is he and in…
Longtime contributor Kirk H. Sowell over at Window on the Arab World, and More! sent the following to me via email with regards to my post, “Dealing with the rise of Islamist politics.” It furthers the discussion by pointing out a key flaw in the article I linked to; that, while elections would certainly lead to Islamists gaining power in the Middle East, the article makes several wrongful assumptions and mistakes because it doesn’t go into specific detail on the countries he talks about — or even goes into wrong detail. Here’s what he had to say. I’ve never had…
Brazil announced today that its state oil company, Petrobras, would spend $18 billion to develop its Santos Basin offshore natural gas reserves in a bid to reduce its dependence on imported natural gas, explicitly, from nationalization-minded leftwing Bolivia. Eighteen billion. That’s big money. A whole Iraq-War trove of cash. A massive, history-changing investment. Why the hell doesn’t the U.S. get a clue from Brazil! The U.S. is a veritable soup of regulations and special interests that prohibits development of its own abundant natural gas and oil reserves. That’s why U.S. upsteam energy companies can find almost nowhere to drill –…
The Movement for Democratic Change, the battered opposition party in Zimbabwe, has officially split into two groups amid a dispute on who the leader should be. A certain Gibson Sibanda, once vice president of the party, has been declared the leader despite calls to the contrary from Morgan Tsvangirai, the (ex?)leader of the party. It’s an interesting development, and one long seen coming. Leaders of Zimbabwe????????s splintered Movement for Democratic Change found a new bone of contention this week as it emerged that the Bulawayo-based faction led by secretary general Welshman Ncube sought to elevate vice president Gibson Sibanda to…
Remember that whole deal between Russia and Ukraine that ended the gas crisis that the press and diplomats all over the place were cheering over like a teenage boy getting his first lap dance? Well, if you’ve been reading Publius then you’d know that there was some pretty shady behind-the-scenes dealing going on. Ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the fireband corruption fighter of the Orange Revolution, revealed the true details of the plan several days ago and — uh oh! — it looks like the Yushchenko government was conveniently hiding a couple of details from the public; details that ultimately expose…
There’s an article by Carnegie senior associate Amr Hamzawy that I think you all will find very interesting. It contends that the slow opening of political systems in the Middle East is allowing for progressively better representation of what the population actually wants, which is why Islamists are beginning to take seats. Since the majority of people in Middle Eastern countries are actually quite conservative, these forces need to be engaged appropriately so that they will learn how to govern pragmatically and provide a valuable democratic alternative to the current secular authoritarian regimes. Here are his main conclusions: The electoral…
I’m currently reading The Oligarchs, a truly fascinating book about the six everyday Soviet citizens who bought up Russia during the period of privatization and came to rule the country from behind the scenes. It’s very good, very detailed, and told smoothly like a story. The most fascinating part about it is not so much what these men did, but how they did it — and the author starts from the beginning, going from the mid-’80s through the late-’90s — involving exactly how they built their empires in a legally deficit environment where everything goes. Check it out.
…and not just in Caracas. But what’s happening in Caracas is bad enough. Here is a Guardian account, straight out of the history of the Soviet Union with ‘Venezuela’ pasted over the ‘Russia’ part. It is a real escalation of the shortages that are engulfing Venezuela – and soon it will be made worse by the closure of the bridge from the airport and port where 70% of Venezuela’s imported food comes: Venezuela’s coffee industry in chaos as price of beans doubles ???? Shortages in shops after producers hoard stocks National Guard (!) told to “find every last kilogram” Greg…
It’s the weekend everyone — and you know what that means. No more blogging until Monday. Consider this an open comment thread. UPDATE: Hey, it looks like my prediction that the Ukraine-Russia gas crisis would fuel Ukrainian nationalism and drive it further toward the West turned out to be true. “KIEV, Ukraine Jan 7, 2006 ???????? At the height of a gas dispute this week, anonymous text messages zipped across Ukrainians’ cell phones calling for a boycott of all things Russian. ‘Remember the Great Famine, Stalin terror ??????? If you are a Ukrainian, forward this to friends,’ one message read.”
Iraq the Model is talking about the death, shortages, corruption, and scandals that are taking a huge toll on public opinion in the country. Omar, known pretty well for his optimism, says that, “it is a fact that it hasn????????t been this bad in Iraq ever since the 9th of April 2003.” While I’m not one to disparage what we’re doing to build a healthy democracy in the country, it’s not easy to take a romanticized view of what’s going on and what it takes to solve these problems. I wrote many times, with much alarm, about the electoral violations…
Asharq al-Awsat has run an interview with ex-Syrian vice president Khaddam, who recently accused Assad of being involved in the Hariri assassination, and is now facing charges of treason and corruption by the Syrian government. In this interview, he counters what his detractors are saying by coming up with multi-million dollar accusations of corruption against Assad and his main men. And, most interestingly, he has a plan for reform in the country. Q: What are you current priorities? Do you want to reform the regime, reform it, or topple it? A: This regime cannot be reformed so there is nothing…
Here are some articles about RosUkrEnergo, the middle-man company being used in the gas deal between Russia and the Ukraine, and the particularly shady way it’s involved. – RFE/RL goes into the history of the company and why it was created. Let’s just say it involved a certain ex-president of Ukraine, a certain current president of Russia, some “unnamed Ukrainian investors,” and millions of dollars shuffled under the table at the top of both governments. – David McDuff posts several articles dealing with the scandal. – Abdymok notes that after Tymoshenko’s cabinet was dissolved, and former SBU head Oleksandr Turchynov’s…
It’s only lately with all this free time on my hands that I’ve been able to regularly read over Publius’ blogroll, so I stopped over at Tim Russo’s Democracy Guy blog to see if he was talking at all about his time working for NDI in Armenia. More than ever, it seems. He’s self-publishing a book online about his time doing democracy activism, providing slice-of-life details and funny anecdotes from the ground. The latest is about trying co-exist with scorpions, and failign. You’ll like it. He’s put up six chapters so far. Check them out here: 1, 2, 3, 4,…
Somewhat predictably, after the united opposition failed in its attempt to enact a colored revolution in Azerbaijan — or at least prevent voter fraud at the municipal level — it completely fell apart. This Eurasia Daily Monitor article goes into detail about how the Azadliq “Freedom” coalition has split up on the national level following two months of disputes about strategy, and how other parties have found themselves dissolving internally as well. It’s a must read article for understanding the nature of the post-election opposition movement. This is what we could consider a classic case of what happens to a…
Just the kind of revolutionary competition that really should be going on in the world – not of arms, not of plunder, but of which country can demonstrate it’s the most pro-free-trade? Ian Vazquez at the Cato Institute, who just got back from the Arab countries, launched this intriguing new yardstick that will be sure to incentivize free trade measures in the new emerging economies of the dynamic Middle East. It can be read here.
Leftwing Uruguay, supposedly fully in bed with Hugo Chavez, now seeking a free trade pact with the hated Colossus of the North, none other than the U.S. And you were told it was all going so bad down there. Uruguay is practically the vortex of supposedly anti-American sentiment, its president fully pals with the hemisphere’s worst dictators. And yet! Seeking a free trade pact, same as Mexico’s Vicente Fox has got! I am flabbergasted. Talk about unexpected! Uruguay was one of the five nations that didn’t sign on to the free trade pact with the U.S. at the Mar Del…
Two weeks ago in Caracas, I was continuously monitoring Globovision TV and El Universal newspaper for information about Viaduct 1 leading to Maiquetia airport. There was a real concern that the damn thing would collapse. It was the listing bridge on the only highway leading to the airport. Rains came down, and shifted the mountains, twisting the steel and cement linking bridge over a steep ravine. Without that highway and without that bridge, there was no getting out of Caracas. I began to consider how I could get to Maracaibo or some other city with an international airport if it…
Our favorite babe of politics has come out swinging in the settlement of the gas dispute between the Ukraine and Russia, and will be challenging the deal in court. The reason has little to do with the actual price negotiated, but much more to do with the single issue that she really stands out on: corruption. Apparently, the intermediary company is a bit shady; and by a bit shady, I mean a lot shady, and was once at the center of a Tymoshenko-led organized crime investigation nixed by the Yushchenko government. Neeka sums up the details. But, as noted above,…
Despite the arrest of thousands of peaceful demonstrators, the further slaughter of hundreds more, and the trial the leaders of the democratic oppositions, the United States will not be joining other World Bank donors in revoking aid to the Meles regime. According to the article, the U.S. doesn’t feel this is necessary as there has been progress toward democracy and because the aid is being used for development projects and the combating of AIDS. Therefore, the aid is actually being used to help foster democracy. Or so the argument goes, which is why the ambassador has called the idea of…