Blogging the democratic revolution
You may have noticed a lack of updates today. While it’s partially due to end of semester term papers and finals (oh, you should see my last-ditch effort at putting together a piece on Lebanese consociationalism as a model for Iraq), it also has to due with a very special project I was putting together….
Publius has been nominated as a finalist for the Best Group Blog category in the 2005 Weblog Awards. You can vote by clicking here, and you can vote every 24 hours. So please do that! It’s quite an honor to be a finalist, after less than a year of blogging, and on the same level…
That????s what happened in Venezuela today. I????m blogging live from Caracas, and today I saw utterly empty polling stations, one after another, guarded only by tinpot military men with big guns and the occasional red-t-shirted chavista troll on the street corner, standing around looking mean and intimidating for voters. On and off it rained, as…
People are voting in presidential elections today in Kazakhstan, though the winner is a forgone conclusion. Oil-rich Kazakhstan, the most prosperous country in ex-Soviet Central Asia, voted Sunday in a presidential election widely expected to give Nursultan Nazarbayev, who has led the country for the last 16 years, another seven-year term. Amid allegations of both…
Hong Kong is like no other place on earth. It’s a sanctuary on an island, ceded to the British in 1842 and ruled by China since 1997. The city is a frothy blend of these two cultures in what has matured to be one of the most liberal economies and societies in the world. It…
With the Muslim Brotherhood gaining an unprecedented amount of seats in this month’s parliamentary elections, the authorities in Egypt clamped down to the point of surrounding polling stations with riot police and knifing down voters. These voters, in turn, went as far as using ladders to sneak into polling stations so as to simply cast…
Sorry about the lack of updates everyone. My birthday was on Thursday and people had plans for me that apparently didn’t involve a computer screen. I’ll make it up over the weekend!
02.12.05 ö Diplomatic sources in Caracas report about an opinion trend that appears to be gathering force. The “electoral boycott” hypothesis, peddled by Venezuela’s officialdom and its OAS sidekicks, has it that the decision of opposition political parties to withdraw from Assemblymen elections on December 4 constitutes, at best, a “boycott” and at worse “an…
As Bolivia’s Dec. 18 presidential campaign, one that will influence the entire direction of a continent kicks, into high gear, Eduardo Avila has compiled a comprehensive roundup of what’s being said in the Bolivian blogosphere. There are the usual good analytical blogs, but he’s found some photo blogs and new names we’ve not seen in…
Val Prieto at Babalu has found the most incredible Italian film quietly describing the always constant move toward democratic revolution. Just to see it is light and edifying – its charm and creativity and emotion capture the spirit perfectly. See the whole marvelous thing here.
The Primero Justice party has pulled out of the coming Venezuelan election Sunday, leaving just Hugo Chavez’s MVR party all by its lonesome to run for Congress. This news comes from Marta Colomina, a well-known journalist in Venezuela. This pullout represents the full unification of the Venezuelan opposition, something never seen in Venezuelan history. They…
This past Sunday, Egypt completed the run-off to the second of three rounds of parliamentary elections. The system is set up such that roughly a third of the 444 seats are up for contest in each round. Because the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is legally banned, they run candidates as independents and so ascertaining their strength,…
Alvaro Vargas Llosa has a brilliant – and I mean a most brilliant – essay, both in original thought and in exquisite writing – on Bolivia and the dangerous role of Evo Morales. He points out that Morales’ problem is not globalization, as Morales so drearily claims, but something most people don’t realize: U.S. subsidies…
Agencia EFE has the first reports on a clash over bus fares. Alek Boyd has more preliminary reports of riots in three cities over the stacked, rigged, fraudulent election here. GATEWAYPUNDIT has a major roundup, with photos of the week’s multiple events here. UPDATE: Miguel has riot photos here. UPDATE: Scott has a terrific roundup…
Speaking from Mexico, Mario Vargas Llosa really gave it to Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez. The short news account is here. It follows recent condemnations of the Venezuelan dictator by former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, here.
…except Hugo Chavez’s MVR party, exiting because the electoral setup is utterly tainted. It lacks transparency, it lacks secrecy and it lacks integrity. By doing this, the opposition is saying: No more participating in fraud. It’s amazing that whole political machines can operate in unity like this. It is the first time I’ve ever seen…
A Saudi national studying at Arizona State University, a party school by all counts and from my own recollection, thinks that the school should sanction the possibility of expelling students for wearing any clothing with the ASU logo when posing for dirty, dirty magazines. The ASU Web Devil reports! If one student leader has his…
Carlos Alberto Montaner always gets it right, but he’s done it this week with special brilliance. He warns that Bolivia is on a suicide path with the likely election of Evo Morales, but also notes that the failure of the current ruling class over so many decades is to blame, something I believe too. It’s…
On Dec. 4, Venezuela will hold Congressional elections. They are expected to be the final nail in the coffin of the Venezuelan opposition as dictator Hugo Chavez consolidates power and installs a Marxist regime. There are pretenses of them being legitimate as a vote however and therein lies the farce. A test of the Smartmatic…
In keeping with Argentina’s dangerous direction leftward, President Nestor Kirchner fired several members of his somewhat moderate cabinet, including his economy minister, Roberto Lavagna, and replaced them with far-left extremists who are deep in the Hugo Chavez camp of Argentine politics. They are also economic morons, set to take power in what is South America’s…
Falsifying elections is a tough job, so you need just the right authoritarian government to do it. Armenia was another country on the list to do so this weekend, with a constitutional referendum that, despite polling places being nearly empty all day, reported a relatively high turnout. But given that the opposition simply boycotted the…
Hey, why is only President Putin and his entourage of ass-kissers dancing? That’s because the first parliamentary elections in Chechnya since 1997 were held on Sunday, in what the dear leaders over in Moscow are hailing as the last legal step toward restoring the region. It’s all a flash-by cinematic sequence for those watching in…
I managed to watch some of Al-Jazeera’s coverage of the trial of Saddam Hussein. While he was in power, it was known that he was a semi-literate thug, albeit an exceptionally cunning one. He was reportedly frustrated by his inability to converse with other members of the Iraqi elite on equal terms because he couldn’t…
I have now posted my Middle East Week in Review news bulletin. News briefs for the week deal with issues in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Iran and Chechnya. Lots of election news this week, although some of it is “election” news. Democracy watchers may want to focus…
Reuters has the first report here. The lock-em-up-and-throw-away-the-key candidate won over the bring-back-the-death-penalty candidate from the incumbent party. This is considered a suprise upset for the challenger who is said to be slightly more left-leaning, though I am curious about the name of his party ‘Liberal’ – which, internationally, means Libertarian. More to follow… UPDATE:…