Blogging the democratic revolution
Today’s the Big One, Peru goes to the polls today. I’ll have something up on that in a minute but here is an important background topic I post as a sidebar: Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s political meddling in Peru during its election. At times, it’s been the central issue of the entire Peruvian campaign in…
I visited Yaracuy, Venezuela, a few months ago. It’s an agricultural state famous for its sugar and it looks like this: A Yaracuy sugar farm But the atmosphere was tense everywhere, for land wars were going on, and people were getting their farms confiscated. That wasn’t the only fear. Every day, I witnessed people worrying…
It’s happening in three countries of the Americas, simultaneously at this very moment: Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba. In at least two of the three cases, Venezuela and Bolivia, there’s a rapidly building case for civil war as productive land owners seek to defend their life’s work from the Mugabization of it all into smoking ruins….
The Big One, Peru, is ahead tomorrow. Will it a Chavez pawn take power in Peru? Voters go to the polls about it in just a few hours… Boz has the last and latest polls on that, and more polls from around the Americas in this key election year. Go see if Hugo Chavez really…
Nazanin, a 17-year-old Iranian girl, who was attacked by an Iranian rapist thug in a Tehran park as her weaselly, masculinity-challenged ‘boyfriend’ ran away, was left to defend herself with a small knife, and in the course of that act, accidentally killed the vile bastard, who is now in hell where he belongs. But that…
Whenever Sandalistas gather in Caracas, the net result is a grotesque orgy of consumption, where leftwing political tourist after leftwing political tourist buys up Che t-shirts, Hugo Chavez barbie dolls, hippie bracelets, Castro bumper stickers, tapes of Chavez’s speeches, pot-leaf ski caps, fake Birkenstocks, Hugo-Chavez coffee cups, hammer and sickle posters, Allende backpacks and anything…
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez addressing OPEC this morning Source: Associated Press, via Yahoo! OPEC is holding its quarterly meeting in Caracas right now and sure enough, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and his new best-friends-forever in the Iranian regime have sought hard to cut oil production to drive up prices and stick it to the Americans….
I don’t know exactly why but this manic photo caption by Castro-regime Cuban boat refugee Charlie Bravo at KillCastro absolutely cracks me up every time I read it. See what you think here.
Source: Reuters, via Yahoo! I never thought I would utter such words. A long time ago, Alan Garcia was Peru’s pain-in-the-ass leftwing president, from 1980-1985. He was only 35 then, and apparently not the same person he is now. He’s grown up. And he’s turned his spectacular talent to be a pain-in-the-ass to the guy…
Celebrating democracy, with a great leader they voted for and won! You know what this means … I don’t have to explain a thing… Source: Reuters, via Yahoo!
Source: Reuters, via Yahoo! Colombia is headed for the polls today, and wonderful President Alvaro Uribe is likely to win in a landslide. He only needs to get past the 50-percentage point mark to avoide a runoff, and that’s likely to be a piece of cake for him. He’s got a 30-point lead in the…
East Timor, with less than a million people, is like a small town, with small-town niceness … and small-town small-mindedness. It’s also coming off a 25-year populist guerrilla war for independence, meaning that there are a lot of unemployed soldiers and guerrillas around, without a purpose. The barely-developed half-island won its independence from Indonesia in…
Why is this man smiling? And why should we smile back? This may shock you, but he’s happily, shamelessly taking credit for the U.S. House and Senate votes on immigration this week. He didn’t have all that much to do with it, except a little and except that it was none of his business. Nevermind….
A few days ago, I was blogging about the tombs of Imogiri, near Yogyakarta, in central Java, discussing them as the place I was at onset of Indonesia’s democratic revolution in 1998. Today, those tombs are at the epicenter of the deadly earthquake in Indonesia, centered in Bantul. Hospitals are overflowing and more than 3000…
Students are protesting in Iran, and according to this report, it’s against Iran’s nuke program. Some of it has turned violent. Police are blamed. GatewayPundit has the scoop, and a tremendous roundup of this big potential democracy revolution here.
It was Publius’ and Venezuela Today‘s scoop last May 10. Hugo Chavez has a new role in Hollywood, not as an Oliver-Stone conspiracy hero, but as a videogame villain. Apparently, he caught wind of our post because we were the only ones posting about it, and has now blown up, calling it a CIA conspiracy…
The Miami Cuban community is often maligned as a bunch of “older Cuban men” who’ve not been able to get over the loss of their “stuff” from the thieving and murderous reign of Fidel Castro. They are portrayed as troglodytes, fanatically rightwing, living in the past, playing dominoes, recalling the good old days, sexist and…
I have dreaded this topic, because I hate the revolting Jimmy Carter more than anything. The only good thing Jimmy Carter did was give back the Panama Canal and make me a flaming Reagan Revolutionary. In other words, he’s a perfect example of a stopped clock being right exactly twice a day. Everything else Carter…
Economist Steve Hanke has a brilliant essay in today’s Wall Street Journal on his experience and knowledge of Montenegro. Professor Hanke is one of the most important sources of reliable information on the country’s progress and very knowledgeable about the leadership of the country. Notice that recurring theme of currency turmoil that has begun to…
Nutsy leftwing conspiracy-theory-loving Hollywood director Oliver Stone repudiated Hugo Chavez’s claim that Stone would be making a movie, all about him. And that’s not surprising. Stone is trying to go mainstream in the U.S. film scene, cranking out a watchable, straightforward, decent portrayal of 9/11 cops in his upcoming World Trade Center movie, which is…
Peru held important presidential debates this weekend, which seemed to show lightly socialist Alan Garcia holding his ground against Chavista favorite Ollanta Humala. Garcia currently has about a 13 percentage point lead. Alvicho at Off Topic has an excellent roundup of all the blog and other news sources on this landmark debate, to give you…
Dear old Gus Dur of Indonesia is the one of the best Muslims I have ever known. He’s a holy man whose life of prayer reflects vividly in the life he leads. He is humble, gentle, kindly and noble. I used to talk to him back in Jakarta, years ago, before he became Indonesia’s first…
So goes the apocryphal “chutzpah” story of the man who was put on trial for killing his parents and asked the judge to show him some mercy for being an orphan. Such also is the world of Chavistas who get caught with their hands in the till. Francisco Toro at Caracas Chronicles has a short…
Ahead of December’s presidential elections, Venezuelans don’t have many avenues within their own government to plead for free and fair elections. Political power is consolidated into the hands of a single party, and what’s more, that one party is very closely aligned to the ideals of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, who has not allowed a…