Blogging the democratic revolution
Every dictator dreams of consolidating power into the ‘dictator for life’ designation and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is no different. Today he’s announced he’s set to change the constitution to his liking, which would mean he would no longer be limited to two terms, but to as many as he wants. As many unlimited terms, with unlimited power and nonexistent accountability as he likes. It’s Chavez’s dream. Given his way of running elections on a Chavez-wins platform, that means dictator for life. Miguel has a translation of newspaperman Teodoro Petkoff’s reaction here. Petkoff writes: Chavez is ???????studying??????? the possibility of…
Finally, investigations are being held into the existence of Shia-led death squads in Iraq. Apparently the U.S. military caught some policemen about to execute a Sunni, and when questioned about it, they admitted it as if nothing were wrong with it. The incident has prompted an official investigation, though that it has not happened yet is absolutely astounding. The so-called “death squads” are formed by members of the different Shia militias, like Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and the SCIRI-linked Badr Organization that was trained by Iran for about twenty years. These squads have targeted, and still target, Sunnis and kill…
Peruvian police have just rubbed out the “military” chief of the vile Shining Path guerrilla gang, which in the last year or so, has been making an unwelcome if sporadic recrudescence. It’s the most significant loss for the terrorist group in years. The dead thug, who ate his lead breakfast up in the coca country known as Tingo Maria, called himself “Compadre Clay” I suppose after the landmines he probably laid. He was known to police as Victor Aponte Sinalagua. Gone. The genocidal Shining Path is reponsible for 30,000 to 70,000 deaths beginning from 1980 through 1992, and probably many…
The “unholy alliance” at work again. A disgusting pro-terror rally was held in Rome on Saturday. It was organized (guess who) the communists and the Greens . Among the hate-filled slogans shouted were : “10.100,1000 Nassiryahs” (yes, they wish the terrorists to kill Italian soliders again and again!), “what pacifism, what non-violence? true peace passes through resistance by giving money to the Fedayeen” And, echoing Ahmadinejad and Bin Laden:”With the palestinians, until victory over the Zionist imperialist oppressors” They couldn’t declare the rally over without burning U.S. and Israeli flags! You know what’s the irony in all this? First of…
The municipal government in Volgograd has decided to close down a local newspaper for printing a cartoon showing Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, and Moses watching a crowd of clashing people while saying, “We never taught them to do that…” The mayor of the city is quoted as saying that the paper was shut down in order to prevent inter-religious strife; meanwhile, the prosecutor-general is looking to file charges. Jim Hoft wonders if Russia is just being PC or crushing dissent. I’d say both. But more than anything it is being opportunist. Volgograd is in the south-west of the country, has a…
Rene Preval has been declared the new president of Haiti following mass demonstrations and accusations of fraud. Well, not just accusations, but a garbage dump full of ballot boxes. So in order to prevent large legal complications that would further decrease the legitimacy of the rule of law, the interim government and electoral council decided to allow Preval’s victory by removing blank ballots from the count. Haiti’s interim government and the electoral council have declared Ren???? Pr????val the winner of the presidential election, ending frantic negotiations to stop violent street demonstrations in the impoverished Caribbean nation. Mr. Rene Preval “Ren????…
Miguel has parts II and III on the vast, tangled, family fortune of the Hugo Chavez family of Venezuela, none of it acquired honestly. So much for the “revolutionary” man of the people! He’s nothing but a two-(billion)-bit chorro. Read it here and here.
Via Real Clear Politics, Donald Rumsfeld has presented his thinking on the new kinds of challenges the U.S. faces as it fights the long hard war on terror and seeks to win the hearts and minds of the Arab world in spreading the idea of democracy. He lays out all the angles on how this is playing out in democratic revolution – through technology and the power of ideas here. This happens to coincide with what we’ve been seeing on the State Department’s Web site, debunking all the flying-saucer theories put out by leftists and assorted ignoramuses and tinfoil-hat wearers…
Dying to know the deal on Peru (hint: to watch a Marxist sink?) Want to see what kind of garbage Telesur is up to? (hint: maybe this explains why Uruguay asked to have its name taken off the masthead?) Want to see something cool out Mexico? (hint: the good guys are continuing to rise). Boz at Bloggings by Boz has the week’s poll numbers from around the hemisphere in this election year right here. Meanwhile, a note: One of the polls cited by Boz, on Venezuela, has been identified with documents as a government-controlled polling entity by Alek Boyd. Check…
I’ll be in Washington, D.C. from Saturday night to Tuesday morning. Anyone in the area want to have lunch/coffee?
In a beautiful statement, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called on the world to stand up for Venezuela’s battered democracy. Rice appealed to the governments of Austria, Spain, Brazil and others to get up off their duffs and face facts and start saying something to defend the last tattered remains of Venezuela’s democracy. To date, they’ve not done a thing. But now the time for hiding, hunkering down, pretending there’s no problem, and turning one’s head is long, long gone. Rice specifically cited Hugo Chavez’s monstrous Sumate trial against Venezuela’s battered civil society democrats, something that is the biggest…
Eduardo at Barrio Flores has an item you’ve got to see to believe – some Bolivian minister is publicly saying he wants coca – that’s right, COCA – fed to schoolchildren, given its nutritious qualities. Ummm, tasty, delicious, crispy, chewy … coca leaf! If you thought it was white-trash heaven to fill the baby bottle with Coca-Cola, wait till you see these Bolivian green Cheerios! Cripes, this is what we call the slippery slope, first coca would be made legal, now it will be fed to children. Heck, it should be required chewing for everyone, given this guy’s mentality. Dogs,…
Miguel found something on VCrisis that I’d missed, a remarkable consultant report outlining the ownership structure of a string of state-owned companies controlled by the family of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez along with an analysis of the potential of these entities for money-laundering. The network of what the Chavez family controls, in food processing and other fields is striking and tangled. This explains a lot about why the Chavez government is so obsessed with food production, price controls, driving the private-sector to its knees and military control. It’s not just a bid to let Castro take over, although that’s part…
As hearings begin on Capitol Hill over Google’s kowtowing to the repressive Chinese regime, China itself is cracking apart INTERNALLY over its Google censorship. Party officials have taken on other party officials and they are all slashing at each other at the top levels of Chinese government. Christian Science Monitor has the story here. Pamela at Atlas Shrugs is doing some terrific, tremendous blogging about this Google controversy. Read her latest in full here. Rebecca McKinnon at RConversation has news from Capitol Hill and further background here and here. Or go here and just keep scrolling.
Protests in the Middle East are rarely both large and spontaneous at the same time, although often it will appear that way. The same holds for the printing of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohemmed in a Danish newspaper, in which it appeared that many of the Muslim protestors took the same streets, bought and burned hundreds of readily available Danish flags, and were ready and willing to torch European embassies. All at the same time. Obviously, it has come to be shown since then that incitement and organization had been prepared for some time by a Danish imam, followed by…
More photos here. The failed state of Haiti, which has only been able to maintain minimum order because of UN occupation and a transitional government, held its first presidential election on Feb. 7 following the exile of former President Aristide. The frontrunner Rene Preval, favored by the country’s impoverished masses, was winning handily with well over 50% of the vote while his nearest contender barely broke ten. His lead quickly diminished mysteriously and accusations of fraud began to fly. The shit hit the fan as violent protests in support of Preval began to break out. No election is perfect, not…
Six days ago, I reported that American and British diplomats were meeting to discuss how to promote democratic regime change in Iran. Needless to say, most of the commenters were skeptical, generally pointing to the mere ten million dollars set aside for pro-democracy activities. That’s chump change. As Marko in the comments said, “$10 million to spend? Let????????s buy them all pro-democracy keychains!” Thankfully I know better than others that internal regime change is a serious policy direction for the administration because it is the only way a nuclear Iran will be acceptable to the Western powers. News of diplomats…
Terror-enabling Italian Muslim Association threatens to sueall those Italian media that printed- or intend to – the Mohammed cartoons. The UCOII (Union of the Islamic Communities in Italy) is a pro-Hamas organization that controls most of the mosques in Italy. As the brave investigative journalist, Il Corriere della Sera’s Magdi Allam often states,these mosques – with UCOII blessing – preach jihad and hatred against the ‘infidels’. UCOII is a sort of Islamic Mafia. Their target are several newspapers and TV programmes that dared to show the cartoons. The newspapers being targeted are: Libero , La Padania,La Stampa and Il Corriere…
This just in from Goldman Sachs – I have not seen this in the media but this is a credible source. I suspect the U.S. company is Heinz: Land Expropriations Continue The National Land Institute continues to survey large rural estates with a view to repossessing land holdings that are considered idle or underutilized or whose private property titles cannot be certified. Since last year, a number of high-profile rural estates have been taken over by the State and given to small local cooperatives. In the latest development, the Land Institute claims that a large property owned by a US-based…
Francisco Toro has a fascinating essay about the findings of pollster Alfredo Keller. As Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez prepares to seek reelection in December, the composition of those likely to vote for the supremodomo becomes important. Francisco reports that 52% of the electorate plans to vote for Chavez. Of this 52%: -33% do so only because they want Chavez’s handouts. -14% do so because they depend on government jobs. -6% do so because they are hardcore ideological leftists, the exact same number of people who voted for hardcore leftists before Chavez was elected. There is probably some overlap, e.g., some people…
Dissidents dismissed reports claiming that Cuban independent journalist Guillermo Farinas ended his 13-day long hunger and thirst strike. His health, as well as those of other dissidents who bravely are supporting him and are on hunger strike too, is deteriorating. Meanwhile,Dr. Darsi Ferrer from Havana sent me an email with photos of his humanitarian work among poor Cuban families. He,his wife and other freedom fighters visited some people suffering from AIDS. As fyou can see, their living condition is quite bad. Castro tried to arrest two of these activists along a Czech model for taking pics of these people and…
The burning-tire news photos from Haiti’s presidential election look horrific. After seven delays, elections finally went through in UN-occupied Haiti, and the result is a disaster. The election was held on Feb 7, and the vote counting went through the weekend. The organizers said there would be a delay in the expected results, but people celebrated who they thought had won anyway. The expected winner had been an agronomist named Rene Preval, who was a close associate of exiled President Aristide. Preval’s Hope party had been leading in the exit polls, but now the organizers say he got less than…
…everywhere a bil bil, old McChavez had a well… On hearing that oil prices took another serious beating today (think they are below $60 a barrel, so happy times are coming to a pump near you) I clicked onto El Universal to see if there was any reaction from Venezuela’s oil-drenched supremodomo Hugo Chavez, who’s openly sought oil at $100 a barrel to finance his “revolution.” Nothing. The vases are being thrown in the palace in private, I suppose. But I was struck by the pattern I was seeing. Another $1.2 billion was missing from the state coffers. Late last…
Rock singer Carlos Santana is famous for wearing a great big Che Guevara t-shirt at the Oscars a couple years ago. Cuban-American Pundits blogger Conductor met the guy on the street by chance in Sausalito, wearing his ‘Che is dead’ t-shirt and provoked the rock star into a conversation with him. I had expected Santana to be a guy who could be talked sense into, but unfortunately, this wasn’t the case. The amazing encounter of the conversation between Santana and the rational Cuban American is here. BREAKING UPDATE: Conductor described Santana as a pot-addled space case and it turns out…
Today marks the one year anniversary of the assassination of Rafik Hariri and the start of Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution. At least 500,000 people took to the streets of Beirut to commemorate that fateful day. Images here. All the links you can handle here. Let’s hope that not only will today be used to commemorate the death of Rafik Hariri, but to help build momentum toward bringing the regime who killed him and occupied Lebanon to justice.