Blogging the democratic revolution
Europe. Treasure box of civilization that every other civilization on earth, grand and small, old and new, owns a few pearls and diamonds from. Reason, individualism, liberty, fairness and linear progress from the Judeo-Christian European heritage have affected human aspirations all over the earth – everything from Pakistani kids longing for Nikes and Iranian women…
Defying the laws of economics, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez started state-run groceries for poor people to buy food at cut-rate prices. He never imagined that the little darlings he claims to champion over Big Bad Corporations might take the cheap food, buy a ton of it, and then turn around and sell it at higher…
Alek Boyd has more continuing coverage of the Manuel Rosales presidential campaign that is challenging the presidency of Hugo Chavez. Alek reports that Rosales is attracting huge, growing crowds out in the Venezuelan burgs and boondocks. He has some choice quotes from locals and some descriptive writing on what it all looks and feels like….
The world is loaded with well-wishers who have visited communist Cuba as tourists, and marvelled at beauty of the island, the sultry enticing laid-back culture of the people, the music, the ease of life, the apparent lack of materialism, the supposed universal health care, and other illusions. Over at Killcastro, a fine blog by Cuban…
What is the impact of the world democracy revolution? In Arab states, there’s been a significant change toward democratic revolution in the past two years, according to this absolutely fascinating report from a writer who visited Dubai and talked to James Zogby, a respected pollster of the Arab world. He found that young Arabs, both…
The Moscow Times newspaper maintains an impressive stable of pundits analyzing Russian political developments, and their weekly columns are often required reading for those who wish to understand and properly respond the rise of the Neo-Soviet Union. Two recent examples deal with the disturbing and self-destructive rise of official anti-Americanism in Russia: Georgy Bovt documents…
Hot on the heels of the surprise power-packed U.S. consumer boycott of Venezuelan oil, a huge refinery explosion of Venezuelan oil occurred this morning in Havana, Cuba, where considerable Venezuelan oil is being refined. Gigantic. Val has a photo of the inferno, the latest oil blow to Hugo Chavez. The Real Cuba has more photos…
Jonathan Scheele, head of the European Commission’s Delegation to Romania said about the upcoming accession of Romania to EU that, “There will be no more reports by the European Commission and it will therefore be very important for the Romanian political class, civil society and Romanians in general to take responsibilities.” Easier said than done….
On the left above, you see the face of pro-U.S. Ukrainian Viktor Yushchenko before he sought the presidency of his country. On the right, you see his face shortly after he made that decision. What happened? Well, he ingested a large amount of highly toxic chemicals, and it wasn????????t a suicide attempt. Many people believe…
Cripes, what’s got into these guys? I used to live in Singapore and I used to write for the Far Eastern Economic Review, mostly slapping around China’s oppression in those palmy expat days. Today, the once-ominiscent FEER, now a news-turned-essay magazine, and down on its heels due to the Internet and global forces, is nevertheless…
There is something majestic about the power of the markets. No dictator, anywhere can control them. They do what they do, based on thousands of decisions by thousands of individuals, acting on a collective wisdom. No central planning can match this people’s verdict in reflecting the here and now, or the future. That’s a people-power…
Venezuela tonight held its first presidential debate. But it wasn’t quite like any other debate I’ve ever heard of. Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez refused to participate of course, due to a congenital inability to share the television screen with any other human being. The Caracas megalomaniac just can’t make himself do it. But that was…
Bolivian government coca-leaf graffiti targeted at dissidents in Santa Cruz Source: AP, via Yahoo! News Argentina’s Cronista Comercial newspaper last week released an Argentine foreign ministry study, whose authors used various corporate-risk business models to forecast a 56% chance of civil war breaking out in Bolivia in the next few months. It’s faster than anyone…
The European Commission has announced that Romania and Bulgaria are set to join the European Union at the beginning of 2007. It truly is an historic achievement; something that bodes well for the future of the two countries and the continent as a whole. The European Commission has announced that Romania and Bulgaria will be…
Gates of Vienna posts and interesting article, along with his own commentary, regarding a recent referendum in Switzerland in which around 2/3 of the population voted to tighten the country’s asylum laws. This is what happened: According to early poll projections, Switzerland has voted heavily in favour of making it harder for asylum-seekers to gain…
Whoo hoo! Our favorite writer, Alvaro Vargas Llosa, has done the impossible in a new essay – taken on sex in Colombia as a struggle for democracy. A perfect topic for Publius Pundit to link, so go see what he’s written here. In Colombia, young women have told their young men to drop the gangster…
The mystery country in the United Nations voter lineup for Security Council seats, Chile, led by a socialist with roots in the Allende era, is apparently fed up to the quick with the government of Hugo Chavez. Chavez’s anti-American diatribes disgusted most nations that had planned to support Venezuela over Guatemala for the Security Council…
Boz at Bloggings by Boz has a must-read collection of poll numbers, many the last pollings that will be available before elections next week in Brazil and Nicaragua. He has a special item on Brazil here, as well. I love his item on what Guatemalans have on their minds, it’s something that will provoke a…
I was going to put together a Venezuela blog roundup but Daniel got there before me, putting together a fine collection of Venezuelan blog posts in these fermenty times, and saying all the stuff I wanted to say. It reminds me of Daniel’s and my own simultaneously-made observation that Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit did exactly…
By popular demand, I post Alvaro Varga Llosa’s awesome essay on Chavez’s appearance at the United Nations and what it really means for Venezuela. For educational purposes, only Ch????vez’s Inferno By ALVARO VARGAS LLOSA September 25, 2006; The Wall Street Journal Page A14 It would have been more appropriate for Hugo Ch????vez to brandish Dante’s…
Alek Boyd has an excellent new photo show of scenes from the Chavista political “base” around Caracas. He shows dilapidated housing and garbage flung all over the place, in pictures that make Tijuana look like Beverly Hills. Check it out, here.
Following the famous United Nations devil speech, this is the singularly best Hugo Chavez cartoon I’ve ever seen, snidely illustrating the realities of the U.S.-Venezuela relationship. I’ve never seen anything so mean. Hugo comes out absolutely pathetic, you’ll never look at him the same way again. See it here.
We have previously discussed the question of Russia????????s membership on the G-8 panel; given Russia????????s feeble economic performance and, more importantly, its widespread corruption and anti-democratic politics, it is virtually impossible to offer any cogent argument in favor of membership. Russia simply is not qualified. However, there is a second major question which is harder…
President Evo Morales of Bolivia was the first Bolivian president ever to skip the famous Expocruz, the Santa Cruz cow show. He did so because he considers its denizens capitalists. Out in Bolivia’s Butch-and-Sundance territory, nothing’s more important than this show. Miguel Centellas, in this post here, noted that Morales’ absence from the show worried…
Manfred Nowak, the UN’s chief man on anti-torture, said today that torture in Iraq is worse now than it was under Saddam. “What most people tell you is that the situation as far as torture is concerned now in Iraq is totally out of hand,” Mr Nowak said in Geneva. “The situation is so bad…