Blogging the democratic revolution
Source: Daniel’s Venezuela News & Views What do 70,000 unsolved murders look like? That’s what Venezuelans tried to show today in a unique and passionate protest in Caracas. The most visible legacy of Hugo Chavez’s regime is murder. As the entire governmental infrastructure becomes politicized, one hard hit section is the police. Bad cops, so…
The spectacular decline in the visual appearance of Caracas, Venezuela, once one of South America’s smartest cities, continues to be noted. Caracas under the Hugo Chavez dictatorship is getting that telltale ‘Havana‘ look, as a result of the same types of policies that made Havana the heap of rubble it now is. We’ve recently noted…
For the 45,873th time, communism has failed. Forced confiscations of once-productive farms have left Zimbabwe a hollowed out shell of itself, its people hungry and starving, its government without revenue, and its infrastructure a smoking ruin. How many times do people need to learn this? Is there ever such a thing as learning from others…
Boli-Nica has a tremendously important piece about the role of the Internet is having on burning down Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s lead in Mexico’s presidential election to be held on July 2. Well, we here certainly don’t like the guy! But more importantly, Boli points out how Mexico’s bloggers are warning, criticizing, exposing and ridiculing…
Cuba’s state-controlled press has just reported that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez is proposing a new federation of “autonomous” nations in one big Bolivarian union. It’s a massive show of self-aggrandisement (for who would rule such an entity but Chavez himself?), but also an incredible call to regess to the failed past. Chavez has dressed it…
I downloaded Pajamas Media’s first podcast directly to my 1 GB flash mp3 player, and listened to it on the way home from work. Wow! I think it worked out really great. Austin Bay hosted Glenn Reynolds, Tammy Bruce and Eric Umansky, and they discussed Iraq, Iran and more. I thoroughly enjoyed it: familiar blogs…
Russia took over the rotating chair of the Group of Eight (G8) Presidency on January 1, 2006, and therefore Russian President Vladimir Putin will host the G8 summit in St. Petersburg in July 2006. Putin has made it clear that he wants ???????Energy Security??????? to be the number one topic of the summit, and it…
The Shia-led United Iraqi Alliance, which is the largest bloc in parliament and is therefore constitutionally obligated to nominate for approval the prime minister, has decided within itself to scrap Ibrahim al-Jaafari as its candidate for the post and has instead voted to nominate someone new. His name is Jawad al-Miliki. No comment yet from…
King Gyanendra finally addressed the people. The result was less than miraculous. In it he promised to return executive power to the people and asked the Seven Party Alliance to name a new prime minister. Meanwhile, the current government would continue to function until that happens. Nothing about giving up his power. Nothing about restoring…
Boz has his weekly polls roundup from around the Americas, and first, the best part: Spanish voters rank Chavez and Castro as rock bottom from among the region’s leaders. Chavez’s trips to Spain, where he made an incredible fool of himself, obnoxious all the way, must have had something to do with this. Castro, meanwhile,…
The topic is hideous but it’s getting harder to ignore: Venezuela is becoming the New Medellin, an emerging drug-trafficking capital for our hemisphere. It’s a big change. As brave President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia crushes Marxist narcotraffickers in his own country, these same narcos are finding greener pastures by moving next door, to Hugo Chavez’s…
Thomas Friedman has a terrific new piece out in Foreign Policy magazine, describing something I have discussed earlier, the creepy inverse relationship between rising oil prices and declining freedom. As oil prices have shot up, many oil producing countries and regions – Venezuela, Iran, Russia – have correspondingly lost their freedoms. Others, like Nigeria and…
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is really starting to tumble in the Mexican presidential polls, to be held July 2. He’s still ahead, but now only by 3 or 4 points. And with three months to go before election day, his trajectory is down. Reuters has a new story here showing that for the first time…
Yesterday, at a meeting with the Algerian speaker of parliament, Ammar Sadani (or Saadani), the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared that the years of “discord” among the Muslim countries was over. These years of discord had allowed Israel to occupy Palestine and for the West to dominate the lands of Islam. But, the “enemies” of…
Cuba Liberal has a 58-minute-long must-see video, in Spanish, about the horrific tortures used by the Castro’s regime against all who oppose him. The video starts with the liar Castro claiming that “nobody has ever been tortured or mistreated in Cuba”. But the reality is all the opposite. Watch the video here .
Teodoro Petkoff, a prominent newspaper editor and politician on the left, has said he will run for president against Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez in December’s election. It’s a fascinating decision. Petkoff is an ex-leftist guerrilla who can’t stand Chavez. He was also a good government infrastructural minister who really got things done. He’s extremely competent, and…
You thought commissars were a thing of the past? Not at UCLA. Here in the states, a fierce debate is going on as to whether illegal immigrants should all walk out on their jobs on May 1 to make a political point, one that says the U.S. economy cannot function without illegal immigrants. It’s a…
I hate to have to waste bandwidth on this but there are still people out there who think Hugo Chavez has improved the situation in Venezuela, and is only in power because he is popular. Having been there and talked to people, I strongly doubt it. But I also used my eyes. If it’s true…
Chinese President Hu Jintao is in the United States to meet with President Bush this week amid much fanfare. Undoubtedly any meeting between the leaders of these two countries will be historic. On the one hand you have a longtime military and economic superpower, and on the other you have a country that hopes to…
Nepal continues to be gripped by a national strike jointly called by the seven-party political alliance and the Maoist insurgency. People have been staying home from work and protesting in the streets, putting pressure on King Gyanendra to restore democracy in the country. So far, he has been unyielding. The political parties have called for…
Another day, another 20,000-vote narrowing in the gap between Lulu Flores and Alan Garcia, the two candidates vying for second place in Peru’s electoral race, which will go into a second round next month. Yesterday, Flores was trailing Garcia by 93,000 votes. Today, it’s 71,000 votes. There’s still about 8% of the votes to be…
Ralph Peters, writing an exclusive on Real Clear Politics notes some reservations about the very concept of democratic revolution, saying it’s a tool that requires skills and people who are just beginning to use the tool often don’t have the right skills. Do you agree with Ralph?
Tim’s El Salvador Blog has a fascinating update and discussion of the famous “14 families” who supposedly rule and control El Salvador. I remember how big a deal that was during the El Salvador War in the 1980s. Today, they are now the “8 Conglomerates.” The discussion is also important, and I half agree with…
Kyrgyzstan, formerly the Kirghiz Soviet Socialist Republic during Soviet times, gained its independence from the Soviet Union in August 1991. After the fall of the Soviet Union, Askar AKAYEV became President of Kyrgyzstan and the country seemed to be on the road to democracy. However, over time corruption became rampant, the country suffered from a…
According to Peru’s official election results page, the battle for a second-place spot for the May runoff shows that free-market Lourdes Flores is beginnning to sharply gain on disastrous ex-President Alan Garcia. If she can completely overtake Garcia, she will be the one to face Ollanta Humala in May, and may well win. As Peruvian…