Blogging the democratic revolution
Earlier this week, Mexico’s election board nixed some campaign ads from the conservative PAN party as too fear-mongering, for their warnings about the danger of electing leftist PRD candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador president of Mexico. Election day is July 2 in Mexico. The ads compared Lopez Obrador to Hugo Chavez, with big pictures of Chavez, Fidel Castro and Evo Morales, warning of the danger of populism. The ads were nixed from government-regulated television, but they’ve since gotten out onto the Internet, via YouTubes, and now everyone can look at them, and see for themselves. Miguel has found the links…
Babes of Beirut cheer Brazil Source: AP, Reuters, AFP, via Yahoo! News What’s up with the Babes of Beirut? They’re busy cheering Brazil, which beat Ghana today, moving on to the semifinals in the World Cup! One day it’s a democracy struggle, and as democracy wins, next up, it’s soccer. It’s the same babes, and either way, you know what that means – they’re on the cutting edge of revolution. Today, they’re out in full force cheering Brazil, and according to this excellent post by Ya Libnan, they’re the team of choice. As Nouri has noted in this excellent post…
French fans cheering their team’s victory Source: AP, Reuters and AFP, via Yahoo! News Here’s why soccer is fun – France unexpectedly beat powerhouse Spain in the quarter finals of the match, 3-1, in a very good game. Nobody expected France to do it, not even me, but sure enough, they did. Spain’s a very strong, very impressive team, and they looked hard to beat. But the French team beat Korea earlier, which is not an easy soccer team, and perhaps the effort that went into that was underestimated. Anyway, most everyone wrote off France after their dismal performance in…
Carlos The Jackal, in his yeayyy-babeeee days Source: 24-Hour Party People Just as Venezuelan Hugo Chavez plays the role of clown-dictator in the world Axis Of Evil, so does Venezuelan terrorist Carlos The Jackal play the bozo in the world War On Terror. It’s like a bad parody that keeps repeating itself. Not that his crimes aren’t real. The fat balding terrorist, who had his heyday in the 1970s as an International Man Of Mystery, shooting up OPEC meetings and taking diplomats hostage, in the end ended up in Sudan down there with bin Laden, and eventually was scooped up…
Washington Post has an extraordinary good essay on the parlous and deteriorating state of Egypt’s democrats as the Mubarak dictatorship grows stronger and the U.S. loses interest in democratic revolution. The author is writing a book on Middle Eastern democratic revoltutionaries. It’s a sad but important story. It is a must-read here.
In Venezuela, the ruling Chavistas are starting to implode as an organization. The reason for this is Chavez has gotten rid of all institutions of government and left only the political-party and campaign apparatus as its substitute. Imagine Karl Rove running the Supreme Court, the Congress, the White House, the election apparatuses, the district attorneys, all by his lonesome. You can’t run a government like that. That’s contributed to an idea that’s been around for about two years, somethng called ‘Chavismo without Chavez,’ a face-saving way to say one doesn’t support dictatorship, but loves all the byproducts of dictatorship, like…
Now that all the media glory for France’s masked shop-trashing thugs is over, something sad and quiet has happened in the wake of their violent “victory.” France’s best and brightest are leaving France. One by one, they are leaving their homeland, in search of work, and a better life. They are heading to the savage lands, the lands of capitalism, the places denounced as inhuman, darwinian, American. Places that no French person supposedly would ever want to live. France’s angry young men who actually believe this, taught well by their Marxist intellectual schoolmasters, rioted late last year to condemn that…
Oh man, this is disgusting. You know how Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez likes to break into all the television channels on occasion, with long Castro-style speeches, just to hear his own voice? Well, as All Venezuela has stood by, mesmerized at the World Cup on TV, he’s decided that this would be the perfect opportunity to break into the soccer games to issue his multi-hour political diatribes, called ‘cadenas.’ When a cadena is on, you can’t flip the channel. All you get is him, no matter what channel you flip to. Chavez is known to be jealous of attention the…
What do you do if you are a Venezuelan? Your country is ruled by a madman, a communist, a tyrant. You are steadily watching as all of your freedoms erode. Your country’s institutions are being rapidly politicized, the gears of your own power are being stripped and you are powerless to stop it. The U.S. is not going to invade to save you. What do you do? You fight. You fight for democracy even though you are deeply discouraged, knowing that not only is your opponent much bigger than you, he’s paid the ref to rule against you. You fight…
U.S.-Japan anti-ballistic missile test in the Pacific Source: Honolulu Star Bulletin OK so the U.S. and Japan don’t have such great soccer teams this year. The trans-Pacific allies seem to do other things better. Like blast incoming nuclear missiles out of the sky. In news that just feels good to wake up to, a U.S.-Japan team near San Diego shot down an incoming medium-range test missile off Kauai in six minutes, 100 miles high, demonstrating to the madman ruling North Korea that his technology and his nuclear threats are obsolete. And that we mean victory. Source: Navy Times We are…
Less than TEN DAYS to go for the most important, as well as the very closest race of the entire year – MEXICAN ELECTIONS! As Mexican voters make up their minds, Boz has the latest poll numbers, showing a slight lead in many cases for Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. But it’s not all of them – see Boz’s list of polls in this link here. He’s also got items on whom Guatemalans really respect, whether Peruvians will ever be fair to outgoing anti-Chavez Peruvian President Alejandro Toledo, and whether Santa Cruz province will seek autonomy from the leftist grip of…
You might wonder about the mysteries of the stars or you might wonder about why Ecuador is so screwed up, and in either case you’d be touching on the immutable truths of the universe. While we’re on Ecuador, something interesting has happened. After confiscating $6 billion in investment from Los Angeles-based Occidental Petroleum, and scrapping its entire free trade pact with the U.S., effectively swapping market access to a $11 trillion economy for $1 billion in oil pumping equipment, Ecuador is moving back in the direction of good sense. Ecuador has decided – at the last minute – not to…
Romanticized mercenary and psychopathic killer, Che Guevara Source: Le Blogue du LFG – Guadalajara If a thug has a pretty face, does that justify his mass murder? That’s an issue the Academic Elephant explored after a firsthand look at images of Che after Che after Che after Che after Che after Che at a fancy London Museum, which was putting on a Che Display for the radical-chic set. Elephant explores the images of Che and how their use is designed to manipulate viewers. All of that has culminated in the hideous situation we have today, where Che (a two-bit tramp…
Pestiside is a zippy, if probably left-leaning, blog that really makes you feel like you’ve got your hand on the pulse of Hungary. It’s full of the lowdown and fun to read. On this great day that George Bush visited and honored the Hungarian Freedom Fighters of 1956, Pestiside put in a delicious item that I enjoyed reading: Pestiside writes: A big shout out to reader J. for sending us the subscription only MTI story about yesterday’s demonstration organized by Amnesty International Hungary to protest alleged abuses of suspects in the “war on terror.” (Wait – we forgot – is…
Hungarian freedom fighters atop the jackboot remains of the Stalin statue Source: 1956 Hungary President George W. Bush, in Europe today, remembered some of the bravest democratic revolutionaries in all history, Hungary’s Freedom Fighters, who stood up to Soviet tanks in the name of democracy. It’s the fiftiest anniversary of that stunning struggle in the name of freedom. Source: The Menzies Era In the aftermath of World War II, half of Europe was enslaved by the Soviet Union. The communism it imposed was a truly terrible kind, disallowing all free thought as the Stalinist colonializers stamped their deadening blotting-paper-gray imprint…
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez calls himself a revolutionary, but his principal achievement has solely been to tear things down. In a technical sense, I suppose that means he’s making a difference but its not quite the difference most people would like to see. Chavez has wrecked the political infrastructure of the country, the civil institutions, the courts, the bureaucracy, and the security and turned them into zombie institutions that exist solely for his own aggrandisement, his own perpetration in power. Everything in Venezuela is politicized now. But there’s no need to stop at political things. He’s also wrecked the roads,…
Ecuador Source, all photos: AP and Reuters, via FIFA World Cup Yahoo! You see a lot of World Cup soccer photos here on this site, some of you must wonder if the football tournament is part of a democratic revolution. But of course it is! It’s the only true world sports event that everyone watches. Wars stop and politics stops and peace reigns for at least one month in June. Everyone is in on this. And small countries, as well as big countries, rich as well as poor, depending on how hard they work and how much they shine, can…
I am sitting here in the crosshairs of a madman out of North Korea. Incredibly, he’s fuelling up a Taepodong missile and getting ready to launch it in my direction. It can reach 9000 miles. And I am on the receiving end. The mighty U.S. military industrial complex has activated its missile defense system a few miles away, up in Vandenberg Air Force base. In the 1980s, nuclear war used to be talked about all the time. Duran Duran used to sing about it. But ultimately, the idea of nuclear menace was an abstraction. Vandenberg was an abstraction, it was…
Remember Dubai Ports International? The first-rate Emirates-based firm that, fair and square, tried to buy the operations of several U.S. ports? They were reviled as terrorists, a public outcry followed and then U.S. Congress stuck its nose into the whole business, baselessly condemning the company for no good reason until they were ignominously forced to withdraw from those plans. It was totally unfair to them, they didn’t deserve that kind of treatment, and it sent an incredibly bad message to the rest of the world that the U.S. was flamingly hypocritical. That whole debacle made me ill. Anyway, this setback…
Venezuela is getting increasingly militarized. We know that from the photos of Hugo Chavez brandishing rifles, alongside his vow to start a Kalashnikov factory. That doesn’t mean his military is getting more professional, however. If anything, they are more incompetent, and easier to beat in battle than ever. Chavez’s priority isn’t military excellence, but to expand and use the military to scare his neighbors. He’s wasting state funds on unproductive investments. He’s contributing to crime as extra rifles get into the hands of drug criminals. He’s intimidating Venezuelans. Of all the things Venezuelans need … like, good roads, good bridges,…
Oh, to hear how some Americans talk! – the Chinese are a menace, and Latin America is full of different kinds of Mexicans all of whom want something from us before they go communist, same as the Chinese. In fact, probably joining the Chinese! That’s how the world looks to some on the right who don’t look too closely. I’ve seen it on bulletin boards and heard it on talk radio shows and listened to it from friends. It’s all scarily wrong. And fortunately, not the foreign policy of the U.S. Most in that establishment see far more closely what…
French Revolutionary Sabine Herold Source: Never Yet Melted La Margaret Thatcher of France? Source: The Telegraph, London Glenn at Instapundit has found the impossible, an authentic French revolutionary and Babe of Politics, Sabine Herold, 25, who takes it as a compliment when people call her Mlle. Thatcher. Mlle. Herold is a fierce free marketer who thinks Nicolas Sarkozy is a wimp and has begun running for office on a campaign ticket that says the French have got to stop going on strike all the time. Given the fact that the French are just northern Latin Americans, white-wine Latin Americans, deep…
Hates Free Trade: Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador Source: EFE, via Yahoo! Mexico If polls are right, Mexican leftist presidential candidate, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has probably taken the lead in Mexico’s upcoming presidential election July 2. If he comes to power, we will have a leftist on our border who’s going to be causing us a whole lot of trouble. He hasn’t said anything openly anti-U.S. that I know about, but that is likely to be tactical. He hates free trade and foreign investment but he says he wants to build a bullet train all the way…
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Imprisoned Democratic Revolutionary Of Burma Source: OA Net The Burmese military junta’s 61st birthday present to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was a beefed-up contingency of military troops at her door this morning. Burma’s democracy leader has now spent all of ten years under house arrest, with very few visitors allowed. The Burmese junta fears her popularity, and knows its days are numbered. To read the backstory of this leader, see this site here. In the past, Burma’s democratic revolutionaries have released doves into the air on Suu Kyi’s birthday, so that even if she…
Less than a week after Hugo Chavez threatened to shut down the broadcast press by yanking their licenses, a newspaper editor for the weekly Ahora newspaper was gunned down in a targeted hit. His death raises the total of news editors shot dead to at least four that I know about. Hugo Chavez has it in for the media. And there will be no letup. The death of this editor shows the range of tactics he intends to employ as he begins to dismantle the independent media. Can you imagine the impact of this on the rest of the free…