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 on a regular basis since the military regime in the 1970s. I recall one car bomb in front of Petrobras headquarters in Santa Cruz in the past year but that is all. There’s a whole lot of chaos in Bolivia, but it’s not the kind…
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 have to work hard in their early years of employment. That’s right, sensible heads have prevailed, the protest babes are out, and the revolutionary spirit of Frederic Bastiat is resurrected. That means thousands of industrious French young people have taken to the streets to SUPPORT…
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 in late December. A thin access road in the valley has since been constructed but I do not know its fate since its nominal opening in late February. Miguel Octavio has spectacular photos and along with Daniel Duquenal, analyses of what this actually means for…
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 strength. Instead of moving you to join them, now they want you to know that they won’t be moved. Navarrette is talking about special-interest immigration protests that have appeared around the U.S., but his question has got a lot of relevance to demonstrations throughout the…
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 quite have the move it used to. Not many people want to go to these stupid irrational things anymore, not after “peace mom” Cindy Sheehan kissed Iran ally Hugo Chavez on the lips. And even more because given the growing victory of democracy and democratic…
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, while much of the mainstream media covered extensively the anti-free trade protests of a few indigenous special interest groups earlier in the week, which are now fizzling due to lack of public support, the real rally was building, the one the vast majority of Ecuador’s…
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 most of all. France’s young people grow up without the big dreams their American counterparts. But at the same time, they have their consolation. That compensation is that if they can land a job, no matter what kind of job, and no matter what kind…
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 of Chile, who’s since been succeeded by Michelle Bachelet, the fine new leader of Chile who’s already made her sentiments about the Venezuelan dictator very well known indeed. And for a bit of fun, here’s a shot of President Lagos bidding farewell to Cristina Kirchner,…
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, his denials show that not only is he a brutal leftist thug, he’s also a liar. The story is here.
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 business dealings. The Nation reports that the end is near in its continuous and excellent liveblogging of the event from Bangkok. The link is here. UPDATE: This Newsweek essay, by an investment banker, is very good, here.
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 that line was! Check out Miguel’s heartwarming birthday wishes to the busy, busy Gonzalezes here. It’s since been picked up by The San Jose Mercury News and The Miami Herald, via Knight-Ridder. Knight-Ridder reports: Venezuela’s records suggest vote fraud MARACAIBO, Venezuela – It was the…
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. Source: BBC The Venezuelan press is under attack as never before. Contrary to Chavista claims that there is no campaign against the press, today Ibeyise Pacheco, a columnist for El Nacional, a newspaper MY OWN words have appeared in, was ordered imprisoned for slander by…
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 Thailand, in Philippines, in Hong Kong, and I am going to go out on a limb here, perhaps soon in Singapore. In the late 1990s, the middle class rage was confined to big messy third-worldy hulks of states like Indonesia. Now, the prim, orderly Asian…
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 the gringos will only raise their appetite. Here’s what’s going on: Chavez has driven most of Venezuela’s industries out of business, declaring them a class enemy. That in turn has provided a massive market opening for Colombian manufacturers who have taken over what had been…
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. In one particularly dramatic development over the weekend, the government TV station interrupted its normally scheduled program to run footage of the King’s peacemaking role in the 1992 riots, which was the last time there was major unrest in Thailand. That was taken as a…
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 it, to what he says is a leftward direction. Although there were violent protests over the weekend about this change, with many in the Venezuelan opposition protesting it, and Chavista goons shooting from their motorcycles into the crowds (see the pictures here), the reaction from…
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 threat against bloggers. The threat his supporters ran in Ultimas Noticias today identifies them as ‘The Anglo-Venezuelan Connection’, presumably because they write in English. Miguel’s blog has been named in this threat. He says they should probably have a tough time shutting him down, given…
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 can come in quite convenient as a backstop at ballot-box stuffing time, as Venezuelans well know. Alek’s expose has struck a nerve with the chavistas, who realize that their scam is up. Never again will they be able to release a false poll to news…
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 were inside the house. Some are blaming ‘terrorists,’ and unpopular Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is blaming his opposition for the attack. As the first reports come out, it’s extremely hard to say, it could be any of this, or other things. It does have the…
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 beast that must be fed. But nothing was going Venezuela’s way. U.S. crude stocks soared higher than anyone expected. U.S. refining capacity use dropped to 70%, down from about 98%, signalling slackening of demand. And every single nation on earth was pumping as hard as…
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 scene of the crime, calling the reporters, in explicitly Castroite language, “miserable,” and declaring that they deserved the death penalty by ‘people’s tribunals.’ (Recall that Cuban dictator Fidel Castro likes to use the word ‘miserable’ – an odd word, really – on his enemies.) Venezuela…
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 Muslim-majority country that’s full of smart people who know the advantages of free trade. They’re Asians and don’t do stupid counterproductive things in the name of nationalism, socialism, fundamentalism, or anything else that fails. Malaysia in particular will be a beacon to other Muslim states…
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, but real estate agents in Miami and Houston and Calgary probably have a pretty good idea. The U.S. immigration chief in Miami says that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez is forcing them out, due to his tightening grip on power. People can’t live in conditions like…
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 what the Venezuela they are “defending” from evil gringos really looks like. Read the whole thing here.