Blogging the democratic revolution
In the latest inane Michael Moore posing, Wayne Madsen — whoever he is — has written that not only did the U.S. and Israel commit Hariri’s assassination, but Karl Rove authorized it! You’ve just got to read this. March 11, 2005????????According to high-level Lebanese intelligence sources????????Christian and Muslim????????former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was reportedly assassinated in a sophisticated explosion-by-wire bombing authorized by the Bush administration and Ariel Sharon’s Likud government in Israel. There are also strong indications that the Hariri assassination was carried out by the same rogue Syrian intelligence agents used in the 2002 car bombing assassination of…
The phrase, from a U.S. official, speaking on the record about Venezuela, is just too good. Read the whole thing here.
Have you ever wondered how Venezuela ended up with a thug like Hugo Chavez as president? He didn’t blow in out of nowhere – if you watch Venezuela, you might hear scattered reports about how crummy and corrupt the political parties he replaced were, sowing the seed that eventually grew Chavez. Alek Boyd at VCrisis has a chronological rundown about what lowlife they were, and this is important to understanding what the current Venezuelan revolution is struggling against – not just Chavez but everything that preceded him. I love this passage here: Now I won’t deny that I am also…
I bet you’ve all seen that link at the top of the screen! Make sure to click it, and in particular, go directly here for the latest on round 2 of the Kyrgyzstan parliamentary elections at The Argus!
Marxist party hacks, the world over, have the world’s worst record on the environment. Black rivers, dead lakes and Chernobyl are their legacy stretching from the Oder to Hainan. It’s particularly bad when they go after nature preserves, distributing them as political spoils to reward party hacks for their loyalty. That is why the Venezuela government’s expropriation of a priceless nature reserve, Hato Pinero, full of rare anacondas, wildcats, orchids and Amazon rainforest creatures is so disturbing. The Chavez political machine is about to turn this natural treasure into a wasteland. Blogger Daniel in Yaracuy has the full story here.
The LA Times has a good article on the many strange deaths that have shadowed the Orange Revolution. How Yushchenko handles the pressure in this time after the Revolution will tell us much about his ability to govern and the future of Ukraine. My take is here.
This is certainly a positive development. CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt on Saturday released on bail Ayman Nour, an opposition leader detained since the end of January and whose jailing aroused Washington’s concern. Scores of people, waving orange Ghad (Tomorrow) party flags, cheered Nour as he left a Cairo detention center after supporters paid his bail of 10,000 Egyptian pounds ($1,724). Nour, leader of the opposition Ghad party, was held for about six weeks during investigations into allegations that his party forged documents when it applied for recognition last year. The party says the allegations are fabrications. “He came out much…
Gary Metz has published his week in review for Iran, as well as his Sunday briefing. Check those out.
This one almost flew under the radar. NABLUS, WEST BANK — Hamas, the major force behind a four-year suicide bombing campaign, announced yesterday it would run in a coming parliamentary election, a move that could undermine Palestinian efforts to end violence, reform a corrupt government and renew peacemaking. Hamas has emerged as a key player in Palestinian politics. A victory by the militant group in the July 17 parliamentary vote — to be held days before Israel is to begin withdrawing from the Gaza Strip — could be a deciding factor in whether the Israeli pullout leads to peace talks…
I was just searching for news, and the latest confirmation of the opposition’s attempt to block the parliament’s presidential election is showing. CHISINAU. March 12 (Interfax) – Members of the opposition Democratic Moldova Bloc (BDM) who have been elected to parliament made written obligations on Saturday to boycott the election by the new legislature of the next Moldovan president. … The BDM deputies, in explaining in a statement their planned boycott, cited what they called a need for “the decommunization of the country and the development of Moldova along the path of democracy and European integration.” But not all the…
Poor girl, she is totally warped. It isn’t her fault though. She honestly isn’t much into politics, so she doesn’t fervently research what she reads. I emailed her right after the assassination of Hariri and asked her what she thinks, and here is her reply: Anyhow, you know that i lived in lebanon for 4yrs and a bit! and i was very heart broken to hear what happened for more than one reason. 1- Rafik al hariri i knew on a personal level, well not me but he is friends with my parents and he helped me get thru aloth…
The people have spoken. Thousands of Bolivians in many cities have come out and rallied behind President Mesa. Gratifyingly, the news photos showed lots of Indian faces. President Mesa’s victory from his ‘resignation’ seems to have forged a fragile consensus across the country in favor of freer markets, foreign investment and more openness to the world. This shows a lot of courage. Evo Morales vows to make trouble but he does not seem to be gaining traction. His roadblocks are being dismantled or driven right through, only one big one remains, near Cochabamba. Meanwhile, President Mesa is beginning to reach…
Firstly, the OSCE is concerned because of the major crackdowns on independent media, NGOs, and people’s lives in general. A senior official of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has denounced authorities in Belarus over their treatment of independent media. The OSCE’s special commissioner for the media, Miklos Haraszti, said today that restrictions have effectively shut down many non-state media outlets. His statements accompany the release of a broad assessment of media freedoms in Belarus, where President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has kept a tight hold on power for more than a decade. Effectively, Belarus has earned the nickname…
The name Paul Sch????fer is too mild-mannered for a case as weird as this one. An ex-Nazi called that was recently caught in, where else, Argentina. However, he had a whole family cultie enclave in Chile dedicated to torture, to which dictator Augusto Pinochet seems to have outsourced some dirty-war work. That was not all. His Colonia Dignidad cult – braided-haired hausfraus and lederhosen-clad men – also was active in child abuse. What does this have to do with revolutions? It is that savages should be caught the first time, so they can’t set up shop in places like Chile…
Larry Kudlow on Real Clear Politics has an important analysis on just how out out of whack oil prices are and why skyrocketing prices at the pump won’t last. If he is right, there will be political consequences for oil giants like Iran, Venezuela and others whose dictators have sealed their claims to power on a foundation of soaring oil. The market gets these bastards every time.
I just flipped through the keywords on Publius’ tracking system and one keyword search a minute ago was the whole sentence: “Is Tulio Alvarez in jail?” The answer to that seems to be yes, because this lawyer was sentenced to prison by a Venezuelan puppet court, but anyone who knows more, please help us out via comments here.
Val Prieto at the excellent Babalu Blog is performing a public service by holding the New York Public Library accountable for its Castro worship. They’ve done it before, selling Che Guevara wristwatches, and he’s forced them to stop. But they are at it again and he isn’t going to let their dewey-eyed effort to legitimize the hemisphere’s most brutal tyrant go uncriticized. Be sure to click on to see Val’s lashing little note about the Library’s elementary ignorance of Cuban culture in its advertising. (Remember, this is a library, repository of learning, maybe these people should open up a book…
President Hugo Chavez has stacked the Supreme Court with his political cronies, people of very little legal background, and they’ve begun reversing decisions from the previous court – in a bid to persecute Chavez’s political opponents. Those who oppose Chavez are finding that earlier rulings in their favor, shielding them from political revenge, are now perfectly reversible. Venezuela’s bloggers call this a dangerous development. Shorter and longer descriptions can be read here and here. UPDATE: And a very good essay by Jorge Arena here.
Despite the reappointment/disappointment of Karami back to the position of prime minister, several fantastic developments have occurred today. Like always, let’s begin with Hizb’allah. First of all, the European Parliament has finally designated them as a terrorist group. Christmas was a few months ago, but better late than never! European legislators on Thursday branded the radical Lebanese Hizbollah group a ???????terrorist??????? organization and urged EU governments to place the group on their terrorist blacklists, as the bloc did with the Palestinian Hamas group in 2003. ???????ÄEUÅ Parliament considers that clear evidence exists of terrorist activities by Hizbollah. The ÄEUÅ Council…
Recently proposed in the Senate and the House is the ADVANCE Democracy Act. This bill, as it suggests in the title, would make the spread of democracy and liberty official U.S. policy. To advance and strengthen democracy globally through peaceful means and to assist foreign countries to implement democratic forms of government, to strengthen respect for individual freedom, religious freedom, and human rights in foreign countries through increased United States advocacy, to strengthen alliances of democratic countries, to increase funding for programs of nongovernmental organizations, individuals, and private groups that promote democracy, and for other purposes. This bill is huge,…
Click here to see what I mean. Well, unless you’re at work. Here is another good picture that is more work safe.
Last week I reported on the brutal murder of the biggest opposition journalist in Azerbaijan, and between then and now over ten NGOs have condemned the murder. While there has been a near media blackout in terms of what has happened since then, a new scandal within the government has erupted. Top government officials have been found to be involved in a high-profile kidnapping ring, and the opposition is once again calling for the government’s resignation. BAKU, March 11 (AFP) – The Azeri opposition called Friday for the government to step down in the wake of the break-up of a…
There are two people who you absolutely need to keep up with in order to keep up with the growing protests in Kyrgyzstan. Nathan has got the latest dispatches from the ground. Meanwhile, Gateway Pundit has some cool pictures for you to check out, though they are from January when the weather was much colder. Right now, the weather is around 46 degrees fahrenheit as I post this.
The so-called "tapegate" revolving around the murder of Georgiy Gongadze is but one of many recording-related scandals in Ukraine. One such long and torturous story (which also features Mykola Melnichenko and his recordings) involves a prominent banker whom former President Leonid Kuchma is said to have conspired to intimidate, jail and destroy. This story has gone largely unreported in the West. It is time to tell it. On March 13, 2000, Borys Feldman, President of Sloviansky Bank, which at the time was Ukraine’s most profitable commercial bank, was arrested and charged by authorities with failing to pay income tax on…
This week, the U.S. declared Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s economic model an absolute failure and warned him against exporting it abroad. That’s the right thing to say, and obviously, they have looked at what he’s done domestically. But for ordinary Venezuelans, there is still hunger and poverty. Venezuelan blogger Gustavo Coronel gives an important description of how this Chavez model has created new hunger in his essay: ‘The Venezuela of Hugo Ch????vez: The truth in numbers.’ What is happening there is devastating.