Blogging the democratic revolution
For a dictator, the truth hurts, and that includes what’s written on the Internet. Killcastro at the Killcastro blog is a computer wizard more than a little familiar with the tactics of hackers and cyberattacks, and he’s always alert to trouble from the dictator Havana. He got one this week from a group that appeared to be from the U.S., but when he probed it a little further, found its base in Havana, Cuba. It was at a location near Hotel El Nacional, a ritzy place in Havana, where the G-2, Cuba’s secret police, are known to have haunts. I…
I got a call from Beijing, Red China earlier this week from a friend who lives there. He told me he saw a growing willingness of the people from the outer cities to challenge the authorities. He also saw a growing willingness in the authorities to repress such people. The cops, he said, had it down to an art. He was in downtown Beijing on other business this month when he happened upon a large group of protestors, maybe 100 people, holding banners, passing out fliers and demanding justice for their dead killed in a police massacre last year in…
That’s the analysis of Academic Elephant in this well-thought out essay on how we should think about the growing power of the Fidel Castro regime. Should the U.S. lift a trade embargo on an increasingly aggressive regime, fortified by Venezuelan oil, like Cuba? Read the whole thought provoking thing here. And don’t miss Elephant’s special Contra Tyrannum feature, focused this week on Castro’s Cuba here or here.
This past week, the biggest and most economically critical city of all South America was beseiged by drug thugs from Brazil’s abysmal favelas. The ghetto barbarians, acting on orders from their leader, who’s somehow has a cellphone in jail, killed over 200 people, mostly cops. Imagine if New York City lost 200 cops in a week of drug violence? More ominous still, the violence wasn’t stopped by the cops or troops or anyone restoring order. It was stopped because the authorities made a deal with the thug called “Marcola” who had just got done killing 200 people, burning 80 buses…
Two big elections in the troubled Andean states in the next two weeks – Colombia and Peru. Will the voters go Chavista or seek something more economically viable? Will it be a lunge for the messiah-savior of leftwingery or a vote for reality? See what Boz has on the latest polls, as well as doings in Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, Brazil and others here.
Glenn has found an important source on the doings in Syria, the benighted sub-Axis-Of-Evil tyranny. Intellectuals of all stripes are being rounded up by Syrian goons in the heaviest crackdown on dissidents in years. First in line for government oppression are those who have criticized the Syrian involvement in Lebanon. One by one, name by name, they are disappeared. It’s believed that the international lull in attention of Syria’s role in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri is what’s emboldened the tyrants. That underscores the need to turn the heat up on Syria over its murderous practices.…
Via Real Clear Politics, I have found an exceptional essay by the excellent Fareed Zakaria on the problems Americans have perceiving the world’s vast move toward democratic revolution. Zakaria writes that Americans are pretty convinced that their country is the beacon of freedom. And with its visa lines and 12-million-strong illegal alien count, who is to argue with us? But he discusses how inside countries like Russia and Singapore, there really are a lot of people who support their existing governments, flaws and all. And part of the reason they do is that they have the memory of the world…
Looking out the window on an air flight to Miami, Ziva at Blog For Cuba can’t help but look over and across the vast blue Florida Strait for traces of all those thousands from Cuba who desperately tried to make their way to freedom, and died trying. Her haunting post is here.
In London, site of the cold-blooded Islamofascist train and bus bombings in 2005, terrorism is a serious subject. We already know that the London cops, having shot an innocent Brazilian in string of police errors, aren’t really up to the frightening task of countering such major-league terrorism, and the city is full of hundreds of thousands of home-grown Islamofascists and their imported mullahs who “love death.” What’s stunning is that, surrounded by real terrorists, the trivial mayor of this vulnerable city, should be so quick to label a Venezuelan blogger as a supporter of terrorism. We’ve never heard him go…
By Pedro Camargo Special to Publius Pundit De facto, Hugo Chavez is adding Ecuador to his growing roster of Bolivarian nations. He is close now with the final steps in place. Ecuador is following the Chavez nation-destroying playbook by ending its international trade and its own democracy. How did Chavez do this? Easy. He followed the Fidel Castro playbook. Harkening back to Napoleon????????s assault on Moscow, Chavez, as the Russian monarchy in the early 19th century knew, applied their best weapon: time and patience. Patience and time. In this case, time and patience has been propelled by oil profits out…
With the new advent of new “revolutionary tourists” tramping through the shantytowns of Caracas on guided dog-and-pony “reality tours,” Venezuelans, the latest zoo animals for these gringos, are aghast. Here these unkempt, arrogant, Che t-shirt-wearing Sandalistas are, well-fed and staying in Caracas’ five-star hotels, getting out to get down and dirty among the ‘real people’ and imagining that they know what’s going on. The problem is, being tourists, they see a tourist-eye view of things regardless of how many Che t-shirts they own, and refuse see what’s really going on. At all. They see what they and their tour guides…
In a war, the first casualty is truth. So, show trials for ideological deviation have begun in Venezuela. This is characteristic of all communist regimes as they consolidate power. Eventually, the truth is the target. Now in the seventh year of Chavez’s regime, there are new orthodoxies Chavez wants people to accept, ones that ring contrary to their own experience and understanding. And there are signs he’s not going to trust them on their own to accept it. These new truths will be enforced. With the destruction and rubble and crime and deterioration Venezuelans see all around them, the regime…
We are getting a lot of keywords today looking for news of Ecuador. I will have a roundup ahead, I do think the conditions are there for democratic revolution because that government has just jumped the shark. Here is one news editorial to start and after I get back, I’ll have a proper roundup. Big stuff happening there.
…that Hugo Chavez says he wants to sell to Iran. Miguel has the funniest take ever on this topic, with ‘ewwww, gross!’ photos! You got to see it here.
The Peruvians, in the midst of their heated presidential campaign, are having a grand old time lampooning Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, who has continuously meddled in their election – promising $3 billion in sewer upgrades for instance if Peruvians elect his promised candidate, Ollanta Humala. As you might imagine, it’s sunk Humala’s candidacy beyond repair. Nobody likes that kind of open voter bribery. It’s patronizing, for one thing. And it’s boosting the campaign of Humala’s opponent, Alan Garcia. It all comes down to Hugo Chavez fundamentally not understanding anything at all about Peru. Peruvians are people who have authentic pride…
He’s done it! Hugo Chavez has finally joined the club! He’s a made man! He has status. A leader of a pariah state! It’s an elite club but considerably cooler than that Hated Country Club of Caracas that he’s trying to turn into a shantytown, and dammit, he finally made it. Chavez got the U.S. to yank all weapons sales to him, amounting to $34 million in mostly cargo parts with the prestige of being recognized at long last as dangerous. For Chavez, this is a big promotion. He’s not just a clown anymore. He’s dangerous. Now he thinks he…
For many of us, we are just bloggers. We blog, taking alter-egos, saying all the things we’d like to say in the regular world but don’t, and then return to our normal lives, happily anonymous. For some bloggers, it can get to be quite a contrast indeed. Proto-blogger Matt Drudge, a humdrum Hollywood gift shop clerk, quietly lived a second life no one knew about – as the biggest voice on the Internet, with the capacity to shape news, all because of his grasp of technology and ability to connect to others. But some people are stepping out beyond even…
Defying Mubarak’s goons on May 11 Source: AP via Yahoo! News Hundreds more were arrested in Egypt Friday as a result of the massive pro-democracy protests in this pharaonic tyranny that is proving itself a petri dish for Islamofascists. The intent of the democracy protestors is to stop that from happening by stopping tyranny. These fearless unarmed Egyptians are not only fighting for democratic revolution, they are also fighting binladenite Islamofascism. Not with clubs, as the Mubarakites do, but with the inner fire of democracy, something that dries up Islamofascism like a desert wind. Sadly, the U.S. supports this wretched…
I was somewhere outside Yogyakarta on this day eight years ago, within sight of Mount Merapi volcano. One of the greatest democratic revolutions in history was about to erupt but I didn’t know it then. I was at a mysterious Javanese graveyard of tombs outside Yogyakarta, where old and young many of them in traditional Javanese dress of batiks in ancient cinnamon and indigo dyes, alongside boulevards of tombs and walls, a lot of dark palms shading it all, mysteriously gloomy, even as amid the equatorial sun its shade made it all refreshingly cool. The old women, like the men,…
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez is nothing more than a brutal leftist thug with aspirations of being the next Simon Bolivar, the next Fidel Castro. He seeks to unite all the nations of Latin America under his wing, so that together, they may challenge the United States. He would lure them into his axis with the promise of U.S.-financed cheap oil, yet punish and intimidate any who don’t go along with his direction by cutting off that same oil. He’s telling all nations that it’s either him or the U.S., and the U.S. has nothing to offer them. Every last nation…
Egypt exploded into riots after police moved in and cracked down on peaceful protestors seeking to defend judges who were trying to defend rule of law. The targets of repression were treated barbarically by police, as the photos in the links below show. Egyptian bloggers who are seeing all of this firsthand suggest that this is a real fight for democracy in this country. Source: Sandmonkey Unrest in Egypt was based on the government’s thuggish sweep and crackdown on all sorts of democracy activists, often under the pretext of hunting terrorists. Since there really are terrorists in Egypt, it’s a…
Evo Morales’ nationalization of Bolivia’s energy resources seemed to be the act of a retrograde madman intent on repeating the mistakes of the 1960s. And largely, that’s what he is. He’s taking Bolivia right down the road to ruin, as if this poor country can afford any more of that. Nationalization has got to be the stupidest, insanest, most guaranteed-to-fail thing he can possibly do for, or rather, to, Bolivia. Yet there are many people … for now … who support him. It defies belief that in this day and age, anyone could possibly support the messes of the idiotic…
…reality to Evo Morales and Hugo Chavez. “If you do not have clear rules for the game, capital is not going to come. If there is no capital, there is no growth. If there is no growth, there is no employment. If there is no employment, there is no income. If there is no income, there is nothing to invest more in nutrition, health and education, which are the most powerful weapons for reducing poverty,” the Peruvian president said. What a beautiful grasp on how the world works! Why don’t honorable, intelligent, and yes, indigenous, Latin American leaders get more…
President Lula da Silva of Brazil is not stupid. After a softie performance in the first week after Bolivia “nationalized” Brazil’s $1.6 billion in investments there, downplaying any opposition against the taking of it, or any animosity against Bolivian President Evo Morales, he unexpectedly came out and laid the blame for this mess right where it belonged: at Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Lula is a gentle man, but in this case he came on uncharacteristically strong: He demanded that Chavez stop meddling in the Southern Cone, and warned the Venezuelan dictator that there would be consequences. Lula knew very well…
I chatted with Rob last night, he’s got one big thing he’s got to get out of the way, but he’ll be posting soon, probably later today or by tomorrow. Stay tuned!