Blogging the democratic revolution
Islamofascist fanatics have set fire to the Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Chilean embassies in Damascus, blaming all four for the Danish cartoons that offended Koranic commands not to make graven images of religious figures in a bid to halt idolatry. Anyone who looks at those cartoons can be pretty sure he wouldn’t be tempted to…
Thais have had it up to here with Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and 100,000 people are now in the streets demanding his resignation. The billionaire-army cop-turned prime minister has used his office to pocket billions for himself in yet another ‘Corporate State’ business deal while the rest of Thailand languishes in the aftermath of the…
Venezuela’s dictator is now celebrating his seven miserable years in power with self-satisfying congratulations and an obligatory trip to Fidel Castro in Cuba. This extravaganza is happening as Venezuelans find themselves poorer, bleaker and less free than ever before. Teodoro Petkoff, an intrepid dissident editor of the left in Venezuela, writes a moving essay on…
I watched the President’s State of the Union address with a French diplomat friend and my friend remarked that about 2/3 of Bush’s speech was on foreign policy, with a significant amount of it on democracy movements. “As it should be,” he added. I thought there was a nuance to it, though, and it was…
Peru’s April election just keeps getting more interesting. It’s a real black and white choice for Peruvian voters, nothing complicated, quite simply a contest between the good dignified low-key free-market lady and the racist tinpot dictator wannabe. There’s also plenty of sideshows to keep it interesting. In fact, this Peruvian election is shaping up to…
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has been openly meddling in Peru’s April election. He’s hurled insults at centrist Lourdes Flores, a leading candidate, and cavorted on camera with Ollanta Humala, in a message implying to Peru’s voters that a vote for Humala was a vote for Chavez’s abundant open checkbook, something Flores would never get. This…
In democratizing countries emerging from tyranny, where tremendous injustice has occurred, there is usually some effort to call the past into account. South Africa is a good example, where truth commissions have forged national reconciliation, and Germany after World War II is another, where Naziism was totally repudiated and renounced, and large compensation payments were…
Boli-Nica has come out from hibernation for this to state, in his richly colorful way, that he is not impressed! It’s a must-read here. More to follow – must get some other stuff done.
Val Prieto at Babalu blog reports that Cuban dictator Fidel Castro is raising a Great Wall of Havana to encircle the U.S. Mission there. Castro is enraged at a running lighted billboard which plays the UN declaration of human rights across its pixel-stream and the words of Martin Luther King. The former is actually an…
Glenn at Instapundit has an excellent roundup of this growing issue about Google’s problematic relations with Red China’s government and its implications for freedom of press. The link is here. Val at Babalu and Steve at Hog On Ice have additional thoughts – or well, deeds – here and here. UPDATE: This just ran across…
Veneuzela’s vast gold and diamond mines, no small thing in the era of soaring gold prices, have sold concessions to several foreign firms to mine the minerals. But they have witheld the permits, so the firms, which have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on infrastructure, are unable to mine them. Squatters are jumping in,…
Rather unexpectedly, Schafik Handal, 75, El Salvador’s top communist guerrilla, and the leader of the FMLN has died of a heart attack, just as he got back from Evo Morales’ presidential inauguration in Bolivia. A Palestinian-Salvadoran, same as Conservative President Tony Saca, Handal brought years of war to El Salvador in the 1980s. However, he…
I spent some time at Globovision in Caracas. It is a fearless television station that insists it will defy the newly declared censorship from the Venezuelan government. This is all fully in character. During the coup attempt of 2002, when Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez tried to break into all the television stations with a speech…
Venezuela is literally breaking off in chunks under the Hugo Chavez dictatorship. The Viaducto 1 bridge to the airport is tottering on its last legs, and unusable, leaving anyone flying in from the Maiquetia airport on the coastline the wretched specter of mountain donkey trails to cross in order to get to homes or hotels…
A few months ago, a 70s-leftist at Columbia Journalism Review, John Dinges, smugly assured us all was well with Venezuela’s press freedom and the only problem in that country was the ‘irresponsibility’ of the private media. For, you know, printing unfounded rumors and stuff. And not liking it (due to their being hopelessly middle class!)…
Mexico’s governor of Sonora state makes an impassioned declaration about how free trade works awesomely in his state and in neighboring Arizona. He explains how free trade lifts businesses across the board. How great it is to look on Mexico as an equal neighbor instead of a problem issue. That’s the beauty of free trade…
Miguel has the story here, the background here, and the new freedom-babe photos here. UPDATE: I grossly underestimated the size of the crowd in my original headline, it was 120,000, not 10,000. I have since updated it. El Universal has story here.
About 100,000 leftwing activists will arrive in Caracas for the World Social Forum next week. With numbers that great, there will be sane, thinking people among them, even if they are on the far left. And maybe, some will be in moderate and democratic left, it’s pretty sure. That’s why Venezuelan bloggers are doing their…
Miguel Buitrago at the excellent MABB blog has a list of all the attendees and a map of how the procession will go. It’s everything you need to know about the Morales inaugural, which I am watching closely. Read it here. One of our posters, Jonathan, provided an excellent link to show that Cuban dictator…
Eduardo Avila at Barrio Flores has discovered something a bit different for Global Voices this week, with unusual blogs showing growing readership in Bolivia – yes, soccer blogs. Don’t laugh – of course this is revolutionary – this is a hemisphere that has had ‘soccer wars!’ Check it out here.
Excellent stuff from Boz, the Mexican and Peruvian presidential campaign polls in particular are important as far-leftists are among the contenders, the horse races are close, and elections are coming up soon. Also, check out the latest polls on existing presidents in Latin America, at the end of his post. It is all worth reading…
At least in principle. He will enrage the left by this statement. Strike up the band and play, “the world turned upside down.” Good sense has come to the mind of Evo Morales! As long as he continues on this path, he’s gonna make it to the finish line. Keep going, Evo! And boy is…
Unbelievable. Code Pink, an anti-American, anti-Iraqi-freedom, anti-Iranian-democracy full-Sandalista nuisance group, has taken to photoshopping photographs of Iranian freedom babes brave enough to protest against the monstrous mullahs of Iran, and used their beautiful images as recruiting tools for their own odious, anaphrodisiac cause. This cause just happens to be cut-and-run from Iraq, so that mullahs…
…that doesn’t read like satire. Miguel got human nature and the Chavista mentality down on the effect of tax cuts, business incentives and housing shortages so precisely that he fooled me into thinking he had posted a perfectly straight news story! It wasn’t! Ohmygosh! You have to see this thing here!
No one, not even north Americans or Mexicans, waves the national flag quite as intensely as Venezuelans do. The three bright primary colors and the halo of seven white stars, en masse, on a bright blue day, is a spectacular sight vividly illustrative of the anti-Chavez opposition. The photo at the side of Daniel’s blog…