Blogging the democratic revolution
Ralph Peters, writing an exclusive on Real Clear Politics notes some reservations about the very concept of democratic revolution, saying it’s a tool that requires skills and people who are just beginning to use the tool often don’t have the right skills. Do you agree with Ralph?
Tim’s El Salvador Blog has a fascinating update and discussion of the famous “14 families” who supposedly rule and control El Salvador. I remember how big a deal that was during the El Salvador War in the 1980s. Today, they are now the “8 Conglomerates.” The discussion is also important, and I half agree with each of the sides. Number one, I do think there’s such a thing as oligarchs in Latin America and while their billions do not bother me, and I make no advocacy of taking them away, they frequently are where they are due to certain privileges…
According to Peru’s official election results page, the battle for a second-place spot for the May runoff shows that free-market Lourdes Flores is beginnning to sharply gain on disastrous ex-President Alan Garcia. If she can completely overtake Garcia, she will be the one to face Ollanta Humala in May, and may well win. As Peruvian expat votes roll in, there’s now less than a 100,000-vote difference between Garcia and Flores. Garcia’s lead above Flores is just 93,818 votes. A few days ago, it was over 200,000 votes. The expats seem to be making a difference. Lobo en Peru has some…
Today is the 45th anniversary of the Bay of Pigs exile invasion of Cuba. Back in 1961, when John F. Kennedy was president, an organized group of Miami Cuban exiles trained as a brigade around Central America and elsewhere and tried to retake their island from the murderous regime of Fidel Castro during his first years in power. Castro in those early years first claimed he was a democrat, and then rapidly instituted an orgy of bloodshed, slamming 3,000 Cubans up against the wall as “enemies of the people” and shooting them dead, including many children, without trial or due…
Like a beautiful woman who’s unaware she’s beautiful, free trade is the unconscious crowning glory of the George Bush presidential administration. The US Trade Representative’s Office has about 200 staff and pound for pound, packs more value for us taxpayers and the work of our government than probably any other office. Its tiny staff negotiates these things, working hard 16-hour days. Amid the tons of paperwork, I’ve talked to them, and they always see the next mountain and hurdle. They talk of obstacles and frustrations. They don’t think they are any good, they worry ab out everything. They never quite…
A common canard from the left is that Miami Cubans are crazed retrograde reactionaries, still pining for property they lost when the communist regime of Fidel Castro conducted wholesale expropriations against what was Cuba’s then-ample middle class in 1959. Anyone who knows Miami Cuban Americans knows that’s false. It’s a comic-book kind of stereotype, and has its origins in the Castro propaganda machines of Cuba themselves, which consider these fellow Cubans the implacable enemy. What’s interesting to speculate about is why it happened. Castroite communists, being materialists, and having materialism at the bedrock of their ideology, have a vulgar obsession…
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has grand designs on the Caribbean. He considers it his swimming pool, and its tiny community of nations his pool-rafts; places where he can swirl his oily mixed drinks and get himself a back rub, made in the shade. Well, the Caribbean states don’t care for this, and today they gave a collective thump to Chavez by seeking a free trade pact as a group with the United States. With a hat tip to Boz, The Miami Herald has the item here. That’s got to be a blow for Chavez who has lavished millions of dollars…
OK, I have made a mistake. All is not lost for Peru’s best candidate, Lourdes Flores. She may still make the runoff. I misread one of Alvicho’s Off Topic posts on the electoral outcome. He had a headline up about the expat vote, but the tally he posted was for the Peruvian electorate as a whole, not just the expats. That’s why I thought the expats were going for Humala. They probably aren’t. Rici, posting a note at Fruits and Votes pointed this out to me. He says the expat vote is still expected to go mostly for Lourdes Flores…
Where were you on April 11, 2002? I was just getting on an airplane to Buenos Aires, Argentina to check out the crisis in that country. But I knew I would be flying over another nation – Venezuela – that was in an even more acute crisis, a military coup against Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez. I hated the guy even then and found myself pleased that it was his time to go. By the time I landed, I got out of the plane and heard the news that Chavez was back and the coup attempt against him had failed. I…
Miguel Buitrago at the excellent MABB blog, just got back from a conference in Turkey devoted to discussing world democracy movements. People from different countries got together and compared notes on the progress of democratic revolution. Miguel, who is from Bolivia, said that three other Bolivians also were there. Turkey’s prime minister attended along with about 700 delegates, from countries far and wide. What a fascinating conference that must be and what a great thing that it’s going on. See what Miguel’s got on his site about this here.
The expat vote is coming in, the last frontier of vote counting in Peru’s hotly contested election race. As it happens, the Peruvian expat vote pretty much reflects the vote of the home Peruvians – most are going to Ollanta Humala, with the second-highest tally going to Alan Garcia, and free-market Lourdes Flores is left with just slightly less vote than Garcia. What a shame. I am so sad for Peru. CORRECTION: Wrong information, see my update here. That means that come May, Peru will face a stark choice between a leftwing lunatic, Ollanta Humala who has dreams of being…
“Thought he died years ago.” That’s the remark my mother made this weekend when the topic of Fidel Castro was brought up for some reason or another and the conversation rapidly moved on to some other subject. Castro should have died years ago, of course, but that hasn’t happened. If he had any dignity, he’d at least have gone into retirement. That’s why a new post from David A. Einhorn has such resonance. Einhorn recently came back from a trip to Cuba and was not impressed with what he saw and heard. Castro, like Hugo Chavez, was constantly breaking into…
I noticed this photo on the Yahoo! site, listed as one of the most frequently viewed and emailed. It’s interesting because at my workplace, the photo editor was struck by the strangeness of the photo, too, and called me over to look at it as something disgusting. He pointed out that the hackneyed peace symbolism, the dictator-pleasing dance concept, and the scary topic – nuclear uranium – all combined to create a surprisingly Orwellian image. The phony joy of the lobotomized culties just happens to match the ayatollahs’ announcement of “happy news” about Iran’s new uranium enrichment program. Kim Jong…
Now here is something we have been waiting for, Alvaro Vargas Llosa’s take on the wretched electoral situation in Peru, where a leftist Chavista, Ollanta Humala, is in the lead. Vargas Llosa’s got a new essay out, released just minutes ago, called ‘Peru – A Fox Guarding The Henhouse.’ It’s a good neutral analysis of how the votes will likely go and what will likely happen as the electoral situation shapes up in Peru. Read it here.
The great political thinker, Alvaro Vargas Llosa, has written a beautiful essay on the trouble with France and its unsustainable economic model. He touches on the French sense of fear and insecurity as one reason why the protests were so sudden and virulent. He also notes the irony of French students saying they want jobs and security defending the very system that denies it to them. 25% unemployment is not job security. In fact, it’s not even a job. Read the whole brilliant thing here.
France has scrapped its proposed youth jobs laws that allows workers in their first two years of employment to be fired at will. The idea behind the bill, backed by Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, was to give employers more incentive to hire the young by alleviating their fears of getting a slacker they wouldn’t be able to get rid of. Things had been so bad in France that no one wanted to hire anyone. Consequently, young people had the highest rates of unemployment, by far, in the nation – something like 20%, with at least 40% unemployment rates among…
Today, Mercer released its annual list of the world’s most liveable cities, based on quality of living. I Googled around and finally found a whole list of the study here. I stripped out all the non-Americas cities and just left in the cities that are in Latin America, in the Caribbean, or in U.S. cities with more than half their populations from Latin America and speaking Spanish. Here’s how it all adds up – note how low Caracas ranks, a disgusting thing, given the amount of oil wealth this country has: 55 56 LOS ANGELES, CA United States 98.3 98.3…
You can call it a peculiar kind of poll, but today’s markets are betting that Lourdes Flores may well be able to win the presidential election in Peru. This candidate’s got to fight hard but apparently she can do it. That’s why markets in Peru are up today. The dynamics are curious in Peru. Roughly, they go like this: early polls have always shown that Flores comes in second place in a three-way race with the two leftists, Alan Garcia and Ollanta Humala. But in a two-way race, Flores can defeat Humala. Logic would suggest that the two leftists would…
It doesn’t look good for Peru. Source: Noticiero Digital Today is the first round of the presidential election, and Ollanta Humala, the pro-Hugo-Chavez leftist with a verified personal record as a human-rights violator, is leading in the polls in Peru with 29.6% of the vote. The result is based on an exit poll by Apoyo, a good polling firm. It gets worse. Alan Garcia, the lunatic leftist who ruled Peru during the 1980s and gave Peru 7000% inflation and a near-death experience with the Shining Path, as well as loads of trouble for President Ronald Reagan, is unexpectedly in second…
A new poll shows that Peru’s free-market, free-trade, pro-property-rights, anti-poverty, anti-Hugo Chavez candidate is BACK IN FIRST PLACE ahead of Peru’s polls this Sunday! If it’s accurate, this is great news! Lourdes Flores is once again topping Ollanta Humala in Peru’s presidential race, not a moment too soon. It immediately follows Flores’ willingness to confront and speak the truth about Hugo Chavez, the continent’s worst tyrant (see my post below), and stand up for democracy! Flores at her campaign rally in Lima yesterday. Source: Reuters, via Yahoo! EFE has the breaking story here: Poll: Flores takes lead in Peruvian presidential…
Peru’s free-market candidate for president, Lourdes Flores, is sliding in the polls ahead of Peru’s first-round presidential election on Sunday, but apparently has taken a strong cue from Felipe Calderon’s successful Hugo Chavez ads against Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico. Aggressively, she’s lashed out against the dictator in Caracas. She’s hammering him as “a danger in the shadows to all Latin America.” Will this win her back votes? We don’t know. But suddenly, Peru’s election is exciting again and it’s only got a couple more days until April 9’s first round. El Universal has the new item, so far…
Conservative PAN party candidate Felipe Calderon, who’s leading or nearly leading the polls in Mexico’s July 2 presidential election, is determined to drive home that his opponent, leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is a second Hugo Chavez. I wasn’t sure if he was going to do this – both Chavez and AMLO himself said that he shouldn’t do it, something that I read as signs of panic on both their parts, but I wasn’t sure if PAN saw it the same way I did. After all, PAN had pulled a television ad they ran for a week that had compared…
Source: AFP, Reuters, via El Universal Protests have exploded across Venezuela against the murder of the three young Faddoul brothers, and against all crime, much of which is committed by the Venezuelan police. The three Faddoul brothers, John Bryan, 17; Kevin 13, and Jason, 12. The anger is cutting across class lines, because kidnapping, robbery and murder affect rich and poor alike. This is the first event ever that’s united rich and poor in Venezuela. The shantytowns of Caracas are some of the most dangerous places on earth. The wealthy and middle class, meanwhile, are regular targets of opportunity for…
Dictatorships are commonly thought of as authoritarian affairs, where crime is low and the trains run on time. Hugo Chavez’s dictatorship is exactly the opposite. A modern dictator, he has no need for archaic devices like secret police to come knocking on doors of dissidents to terrify them, as happened in the Stalinistic and Castroite days of old. It may come later, but right now, he’s got a more efficient means of controlling the population through terror by allowing for runaway crime across the country. Due to virtually absent law enforcement (except for “political” crimes), people area all terrified of…
Fausta has an excellent French news roundup on all the riots that have engulfed the key European state this week, with links to tons of news sources. Many of her items are taken from the French press, adding a better dimension to the picture than ordinary media usually do. Check it out here.