Blogging the democratic revolution
A plastic-explosives bomb went off in downtown La Paz, Bolivia, today, killing two people at a hotel. An American and a supposedly Uruguayan woman were arrested. Police say they have confessed to doing it. The event is strange in itself. Miguel B. at MABB noted (well, until he changed his post!) that this hasn’t happened…
Glenn at Instapundit has gotten some amazing information about France that you don’t see in the mainstream media, along with a couple incredible pictures. There’s a vast youth counterprotest full of beautiful young people who are standing up against the bandana-swathed firebomb-hurling losers who would burn the city down, all for the right to not…
Venezuela’s Viaducto 1, a key bridge on the only highway route that links the vast city of Caracas to its international airport on the northern coast has collapsed down a deep Andean ravine with a huge crash. Holding my breath, it was this bridge I rode out of Caracas across on my last day there…
Via RealClearPolitics, I read a fascinating essay by Ruben Navarrette on the strategy of protests, which, in one case he says are hurting their own cause. His lede says it all: It used to be that protesters took to the streets to build public support for their cause. Now they do it to show their…
DOWN is a good way to put it for today’s world festival of anti-Iraq democracy protests. Because as GatewayPundit has noticed, attendence is down at every single one of these. He’s got a liveblogging roundup of these “antiwar” (who the hell isn’t antiwar?) protests around the world, city by city, showing that this ‘movement’ doesn’t…
You’d never know this from reading most of the mainstream media, but today in Ecuador, and I don’t mean in just coastal rightwing Guayaquil, but in the heart of the country, in central Quito, the capitol, tens of thousands of Ecuadoreans marched IN FAVOR OF free trade with the U.S. Source: Associated Press That’s right,…
Not since 1968 has France seen so many educational institutions occupied and on strike. Thousands of students and young people have brought Paris to a standstill. Source: Thibautcho They are protesting a new labor law that would permit probationary employment for the first two years of employment for all new workers. That would affect them…
To give you an idea of just what Chile, a country governed by democratic socialists, thinks of Venezuela’s banana-leftist Hugo Chavez, just click on the link here and get an eyeful. The short story is he cut the pendejo dead. The elderly gentleman featured in the mini-film is President Ricardo Lagos, the honorable outgoing president…
An independent board representing Peru’s National Human Rights Coordinator has substantiated claims that Ollanta Humala, the far-left nut who’s a frontrunner in Peru’s April 9 presidential race, did torture peasants in the mountains as an army officer in the 1990s. Peru’s peasants have been making this claim for months and Humala has denied it. Now,…
It may be the final hours for Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra of Thailand, who has been the target of the biggest protests in Bangkok since 1992. Thaksin is the billionaire prime minister of the country who had amassed huge power and a large mandate, but who disappointed his people by his continuous involvement in his…
Miguel Octavio has a short item on the busy, busy, busy Gonzalez family, all 1,921 of whom were born on the same day 32 years ago in Maracaibo, all 1,921 of whom registered to vote on the same day, and most all 1,921 of whom registered at the same center. My, my, my how long…
All four of these journalists pictured in this 2002 photo — Marianella Salazar, Ib????yise Pacheco, Marta Colomina and Patricia Poleo — are now facing trouble from the Chavista regime. Pacheco is in jail, Salazar is headed there, Colomina was subject to a murder attempt and Poleo was charged with murder and apparently sent into hiding….
A golf outing gone bad among a bunch of cronies has toppled South Korea’s strongest prime minister in its democratic history. No time to post but it’s an important story about the growing public intolerance of offiicial corruption as democracy emerges in this admirable country. I feel there are echoes of this same phenomenon in…
Daniel Duquenal has a fascinating post on Colombia’s new free trade pact with the U.S., and explains why it is causing so much distress among the Chavistas next door in Caracas. Their rage has a basis. It turns out Colombia is eating Venezuela’s lunch already in the economic arena and the free trade pact with…
Source: The Nation It’s morning in Thailand, land of the free, and the biggest rally of the year is engulfing the mighty angel city of Bangkok. Hundreds of thousands of protestors are marching in a bid to force the resignation of Thaksin Shinawatra. Things are getting very tense and the King is starting to stir….
This past weekend, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez altered the national flag to add an eighth star, in honor of the Guayana territory, a territory which once included what’s now part of GUYANA, and which is still claimed by Venezuela, based on a 19th-century dispute. Chavez also shifted the national seal, which has a horse on…
Venezuela’s bloggers are now under an explicit threat of prosecution from known Chavista agents. It started with Alek Boyd’s effort to expose the Chavista regime and the post directly below this one provides the background. Miguel, however, adds a post of much further clarity here. The short story is: Venezuela’s dictator has issued his first…
Alek Boyd at VCrisis recently exposed the bizarre structure of one North American Opinion Research organization, a Florida-based group that shares office space with something called ‘Petrotulsa‘ and purports to take polls in Venezuela which repeatedly claim that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez is “popular.” It’s nothing but a front for false propaganda extolling Chavez, which…
A bomb went off in central Bangkok near the home of Prem Tinsulanonda, an adviser to Thailand’s King Bhumibol and a former prime minister. Three cars were trashed and a British tourist was slightly injured. The bomb had been positioned under a bench near a security guard booth but by ‘coincidence’ all three security guards…
Venezuela was fighting like a lone jaguar in OPEC meetings today to urge the cartel to cut oil production so that prices would stay high. Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez needs those high prices to bankroll his fake ‘revolution’ and finance his external meddlings abroad. His so-called revolution is an increasingly ravenous one, and an expensive…
A newspaper office in Los Teques, a small city south of Caracas, was bombed in a multiple molotov cocktail attack that was politically motivated. There were no injuries. The paper, La Region, had done too much reporting on the state of Venezuela’s abysmal health care, led by Cuban agents. Angry fliers were left at the…
Take that, Hugo Chavez! Bright Singapore and lovely Thailand have already negotiated pacts to drop tariffs, challenge China’s export juggernaut, and make lots of money for themselves through trade with the U.S. Now splendid Malaysia is planning to do the same. Malaysia in particular is an important partner because it’s a good democracy and a…
Venezuelans are fleeing their country. When we last looked at the matter, about 300 Venezuelans sought asylum in the U.S. Now, that figure has since grown fourfold, and over 1000 Venezuelans are seeking asylum in the U.S. a year later. The figure is only for 2004, so god knows what it will be for 2005,…
Boz has the past week’s poll numbers (sorry I didn’t see it earlier!) showing the state of the presidential Horse Races in Mexico and Peru, along with an item showing that Ecuador’s reverting true to its political form. The whole thing, with these and other polls, is here.
You gotta see this hilarious post from Mark in Mexico about Hugo Chavez’s 100,000-strong quasi army of reservists from the shantytowns that he’s assembling to fend off a U.S. “invasion.” With his great sense of detachment, Mark shows how illogical it is, how unlikely it will be to incentivize anyone to join it, and just…