Blogging the democratic revolution
Warm weather has finally come to Ulaanbaatar, but the spring dust storms are just beginning. First I must say that the eleven staff and instructors at SIT-Mongolia and the fourteen other students I’m studying with are all amazing. Such different people but we all get along and everyone has a new perspective to offer on all the things we’re doing and seeing. My two weeks living with a nomadic Kazakh family in the Altai Mountains of Western Mongolia were phenomenal. Apart from being sick for a day, I was elated to be breathing in the most wonderfully clean air and…
On Thursday Nepal will succumb to a four-day nationwide strike in protest of the King’s seizure of the government over a year ago. He has arrested thousands of people and hundreds of journalists for protesting and writing about the theft of civil liberties in the name of crushing the Maoist rebellion. But the King has made no progress against the Maoists, and his disbanding of the legitimately elected parliament has decreased his legitimacy with the population. So much so that the situation has deteriorated to the point where civil society has taken side with the Maoists in order to force…
Breaking news… Source: ETNA The Thai prime minister announced he would quit after the messages from the streets and apparently because the King told him to. A shame, because just 14 months ago, he was very popular and I liked him in some ways. But amid public perceptions of shamelessness and corruption after a $2 billion profit-taking deal in Singapore, he dropped himself into this. The Thai people have gotten their message out loud and clear that a leader must be not just clean but above the very appearance of corruption. Leaders cannot hide behind legal technicalities as a basis…
Polls can be unreliable but this news is truly radical: Goldman Sachs, in its daily emerging market report, says: Grupo GEA Reports Calder????n Ahead of AMLO in the polls According to GEA (a consulting firm), in a poll conducted between March 18 and 21, Felipe Calder????n (PAN) overtook AMLO in the opinion polls. According to GEA, Calderon rose to first with 36% from 32% (in February); while AMLO fell to second to 34% from 41% in February. Madrazo remained in third with 28% (up 1%). According to El Universal, AMLO said that these polls showing him down reflect the desperation…
The Egyptian immam Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi made an appearence in Tizi-Ouzou, Kabylia (in the Tizi-Ouzou wilaya) today. Qaradawi, who has a television show on Al-Jazeera (esh-Sharieh wal-Hayat) and founded IslamOnline, recently debated Amr Khaled on the Dansih cartoon controversy (he took the “let us show rage” side of the debate), and openly supports suicide bombings, and jihad against Israelis. He believes strongly that “Everything will be on our side and against Jews on ÄJudgment DayÅ, at that time, even the stones and the trees will speak, with or without words, and say: ‘Oh servant of Allah, oh Muslim, there’s a…
Fill up your tank now, because oil prices are about to go higher. Three more international oil companies are out of the game in Venezuela, an unprecedented exit from an energy-hungry industry. They just can’t do business with a thug. Venezuelan dictator has sent his agents to seize control of the assets of two major companies, Total of France and ENI of Italy, in a confiscation move directed at their resistence to being forced in joint ventures that are nothing more than communist workers collectives run by Chavista political hacks. ENI calls it a direct violation of its existing contractual…
You might not have guessed this right off, but Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has been watching Ukraine’s Orange Revolution intently. This Sunday, for the first time, he made a statement about his fear and loathing of it. On his weekly Sunday television variety show, ‘Alo President’ he made this following remark, addressed to his opposition. El Universal reports: Ch????vez wondered where his rivals for next December 3rd presidential election are. He reiterated that his opponents are determined to denounce electoral fraud. He said the dissent, with US support, would establish a “pink revolution,” just like the “gringos” did in Ukraine.…
Not that they already weren’t, as Dawa party candidate and current Prime Minister Ibraham al-Jaafari only won by a single vote within the UIA due to backing by the Sadrists, but the barrier for removing him has been broken as several independent politicians have broken with the alliance and said that someone else should be chosen for the position. That’s the big news over the weekend. BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 1 ???????? A senior member of the dominant Shiite bloc called on Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari on Saturday to drop his campaign to keep his post, becoming the first Shiite political…
One hundred thousand people gathered in Rome to remember the first anniversary of the death of John Paul II, the Polish pope who helped liberate Eastern Europe from communism. Thousands of others gathered in Krakow and around Poland. John Paul was a democratic revolutionary in the purest sense of the idea. Many of us know about how he undermined the communist regimes of Poland and elsewhere by working with the Israelis to provide intelligence and material aid to the Solidarity leaders imprisoned inside the communist regime. You can read about it in Peter Schweitzer’s splendid book, Victory, about what Reagan,…
Thailand’s got snap elections today for prime minister, a manuever by the prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, to take advantage of a disorganized opposition that wants him out but doesn’t have much of an alternative to present. Vast protests have been taking place in Bangkok over the past six weeks. Prominent leaders of the 1992 democracy-now revolts have been seen at them, and the King has voiced a veiled displeasure with both sides in this. Today’s the snap poll, which amounts to a referendum on Thaksin. Most of the opposition saw through the maneuver and word now is that they aren’t…
I found a must-see video-documentary about the Cuban Ladies in White, plus a short interview with my friend Claudia Marquez, former political prisoner now exiled in the United States and currently living in Puerto Rico. Watch the video here
Writing a sophisticated analysis on Babalu blog, Robert M explains a new movie from Cuba about dumpster divers in Havana. Like any such movie under the control of the Cuban censor, it doesn’t directly criticize the 46-year communist regime, but the point is clear enough: Cuba under supposedly egalitarianism is now producing dumpster divers. My own comment to that is this: As dumpster divers clearly can make more money digging through Western tourists’ trash than they can by working for the monopolistic state, there’s something wrong with the system that undervalues their wages that badly and makes dumpster diving more…
Rich Karlgaard makes an original and forceful argument in favor of global free trade by insisting it promotes human creativity and development. He cites the marvel of human achievement in different areas and the great human good of developing one’s talents fully, something that doesn’t always happen because it’s a huge threat to oppressors. In this regard, free trade is always supremely revolutionary and subversive to tyrants. When I spent time in martial law Poland under its communist oppressors in 1982, I was a teenager, and the one thing that struck me, a college student on the edge of starting…