Blogging the democratic revolution
Now this is something you have to see! Venezuela’s Francisco Toro has challenged Venezuela’s Gustavo Coronel to an ‘Opinion duel’ on a special blog they set up for just that purpose. They are arguing about the nature of the ‘ni-ni’‘s, those people in Venezuela who have not made up their minds about whether they support Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez or not. The ground rules are posted, with each post limited to 750 words and no more than four posts allowed. Naturally, both parties will argue like Adams and Jefferson, rather than Chavez and his latest Barbie doll, so reason will…
Breaking news – and likely trouble. An electoral board has ruled that the Dec. 4 presidential election will not go through, due to a redistricting dispute. Now, the possibility of roadblocks and using food as a weapon looms. The current caretaker president – who’s in office only because the last two presidents were thrown out by roadblockers – said he would resign if elections were not held by Dec. 4. Well, they’re not being held. I have a blogosphere reaction roundup to follow. But first, here is the news: Agencia EFE has the story here: Electoral court suspends Bolivia’s December…
The bloggers have come up with a real big one on voter fraud in Venezuela. Miguel explains it out very well here. Venezuelan congressional elections are being held on Dec. 4 and a court has ruled in favor of stacking the vote today. See my post here. But that’s not the only problem. Now Javier at Notiven has found thousands of Gonzalezes all born on the same day and the same state, 95% of them in Zulia. He’s got the documents to go see. Here is a translation below from the original on Notiven: Can Venezuelan Electorate Authority explain this?…
On Academic Elephant’s superb blog, I found a small post that resonated with me: The tendency of the mainstream media to belittle U.S. officials when they visit small countries. There are all kinds of valid reasons to criticize them, and from many angles. But to savage Donald Rumsfeld because he paid a visit to distant Mongolia or distant Paraguay is absolutely despicable. The news media has mocked such visits, written them off as proof that Rumsfeld can’t get any other friends, and insulted the countries themselves and their customs. Elephant notes that the media focused almost exclusively on a horse…
Charles Krauthammer really gives it to Brent Scowcroft today – as the world’s foremost anti-revolutionary. Scowcroft has spent his entire life obstructing democratic revolution. If you believe in democratic revolution, you will never look at that man the same way again. He pretends to be oh so safe and sane. But he’s set democracy back decades in many places and still hasn’t paid a cent for it. Read it here.
In a significant defeat for Venezuela’s democracy, a new voting system installed by the Chavista government, called ‘los morochas’, which disproportionately benefits Chavista incumbents, was affirmed by Venezuela’s Supreme Court, an appointed body stacked with Chavista loyalists. It is expected to raise Hugo Chavez’s representation in the Congress – where he already has a majority – to Kim Il Sung levels of popular ‘support.’ The bell tolls for Venezuelan democracy with this ruling. Non-government organizations like Sumate have stated that this is a blow for democracy and there is no chance of fair elections being held now. This is a…
…on poverty figures. It’s one of the most disgusting things he’s ever done. Andres Oppenheimer of the Miami Herald, in one of his best columns, uncovered what bloggers have been saying all along: poverty has risen, not fallen, in Hugo Chavez’s ’21st-century-socialist’ Venezuela, supposedly a champion of the poor. They of course meant: creating more poor during a time of record high oil prices. The item is here. Miguel Octavio had the original item on the re-cooked statistics on poverty, probably as a result of Oppenheimer’s column. In all, it amounts to the Cubanization of Venezuela’s once-reliable statistics, a corruption…
Boz has an excellent roundup of all the polls being taken around the hemisphere, with at least one for each country. The polls are invaluable tools for sensing which way the winds of change are blowing in this coming fateful election year in the Americas. He also has a link to a very valuable poll from The Economist that shows how the attitudes of the public from different countries stack up against each other. In this particular poll, note the powerful pro-market sentiment expressed by the stars of Colombia, who rate number one in our hemisphere for faith in free…
Venezuela’s main newspaper, El Universal, in a true blog style, is now putting out a weekly roundup of all the Zimbabwe-style land confiscations engulfing Venezuela under the far-left Chavez regime. The list of all the farmers who have had their ranches taken away ‘in the name of the people’ is long and horrible, given the fact that all of these productive farms will soon fall fallow. It’s also revolutionary tinder. No society can build itself on a foundation of stealing from others. It’s an important roadmap for the coming news and there is enough of it going on now that…
As we noted here, Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez has offered to take questions from the public through the BBC. It’s about what you’d imagine, with readers asking some fairly tough questions, along with plenty of softballs, and Chavez replying glibly and smoothly. If you ask me, it looked coached, due to the suaveness of Chavez’s answers, quite unlike the rougher impromptu ones he gave to Ted Koppel and the Washington Post. Contentwise, it sounds as though Chavez intended to be a crowd-pleaser in the West, because his BBC words not matching his words at home. If that’s so, it’s a…
Stefania in Sardinia reminds us to think of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi who is marking her tenth year of house arrest under the thugs who run Burma. Suu Kyi is the rightful leader of Burma. She also is a brave woman who has stood up to the gross tinpot military thugs in her struggle to bring democracy to her beautiful country. She is a revolutionary democrat who ranks with Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel in the annals of revolution. But her struggle is long and hard and she is still under house arrest by these unsavory, illegitimate rulers who…
The great Rosa Parks died today, a leader in the civil rights struggle that completely changed the U.S. for the better, and radiated its message of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness throughout the world. In no small part did it inspire the Philippine People Power Revolution of 1986, the Czech Velvet Revolution of 1989, the anti-apartheid struggle won in South Africa in 1990 and even the current struggle for civil society in today’s Cuba, as well as the struggle against dictatorship in today’s Venezuela. Parks was a lone individual who triggered a vast revolution in the early ’60s…
Given that politicians tend to hone to their campaign financiers’ agendas, it’s pretty creepy to see that Evo Morales has gotten a new Web site – financed and hosted, not from his home country, as any self-respecting candidate for president would want, but brazenly from MEDELLIN, COLOMBIA. Morales, you will recall, is running for president of Bolivia on a legalize-cocaine election platform.UPDATE for Eduardo: Morales SAYS he’s not for legalizing cocaine, only the coca leaf, but there’s no such thing as cocaine without the coca leaf. I think his stance is a ruse. Morales also claimed he was ‘only’ for…
Right on the heels of the Bolivian factory workers’ history-making march to demand a free trade pact at the U.S. embassy gates, one of Hugo Chavez’s minions has come out to condemn free trade with all of the Americas (ALCA), and said MercoSur (a smaller non-U.S. trade bloc dominated by Brazil and Argentina) is the way to go. Something in the Bolivians’ actions has stuck in the chavista craw. There is something odd about how they are raging against trade with the U.S. so virulently all of a sudden. When we last heard from such people, they were ranting on…
As the U.S. attempts to spread democratic revolution around the world through the sharing of our hope, something insect-like is eating away at our national fabric and forcing growing numbers of us to wonder if the emporer might eventually not have clothes. It’s our country’s repeated failure to adhere to international agreements. I’m not talking about U.S. failure to heed corrupt multilateral organizations like the United Nations or bureaucratic-till-the-point-of-pointlessness organizations like the World Court or the European Union. On those matters I remain unyielding in criticism until they change. It’s something else. The U.S. is starting to get a reputation…
Thousands of Bolivian workers marched on the U.S. embassy yesterday to demand … A FREE TRADE PACT WITH THE U.S. Now who knew that? For god sakes give them their free trade pact! We’ll all benefit if we can buy Bolivian goods! I lift my first cup of Trader Joe’s Bolivian Blend coffee to toast these Bolivians as I wake to this terrific news! Best kind! Long live free trade with Bolivia! Source: Diario Correo del Sur Now let’s face facts: Bolivians do not want communism. Most Bolivians do not want Evo Morales as their next president. Bolivians especially do…
Investor’s Business Daily has an amazing editorial today suggesting that oil prices have probably peaked. It cites significant trading activity showing that some very big players are selling oil stocks like a herd of panicked elephants, unafraid to take losses now – because they know the losses are going to be bigger later. It’s really interesting stuff because this paper knows how to read stock markets in a systemic way and implicitly forecasts very well. If this reading is correct, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is finally in for some very bad times. Right now he has held onto power not…
Aleksander Boyd at VCrisis has an great post about how he, as a citizen journalist, confronted power directly in the most amazing way I’ve ever seen anyone in the blogosphere do. It’s a great lesson in creativity for any democratic revolutionary anywhere in the world. From his exile in London, he learned of a London trade show on Biometrics where the top Venezuelan election official would be addressing a business audience of peers. He creatively figured out a way to get an invitation and managed to get a question about Venezuela’s fraudulent recall referendum asked – and answered – directly.…
Boz has a new collection of polls from around the Americas, and with more than a dozen elections scheduled for this hemisphere in the coming year, they are all worth watching. One of the most significant polls he’s found is on Mexico, showing that upstart-dinosaur Arturo Montiel Rojas, was running even with establishment-dinosaur Roberto Madrazo, meaning that he was mounting a significant challenge to the oldest of the old party guard. His sudden exit after a finance scandal today from the PRI primary race will likely hurt the PRI’s chances for the presidency when elections are held in mid-2006. The…
Matt Margolis at Blogs for Bush was invited to Congress to talk to and query congresspeople about their stances on issues. It’s a great new experiment in participatory democracy and they are inviting any of us to send them questions to ask the congresspeople. (They probably aren’t the only ones invited, so if you know of any left-leaning or centrist bloggers who are in on this and who also invite questions, send me the link at ammorayleon at gmail dot com and I will post theirs, too.) It comes on the heels of BBC’s ‘Ask Hugo Chavez’ Internet program coming…
Eduardo Avila of Barrio Flores has a good weekly roundup of news from the growing Bolivian blogosphere. Go see it for its different thoughts on the political situation, particularly from a new blog he’s found by a Bolivian indigenous blogger who’s now at university – he comments on academic corruption but seems to have a sort of insular mentality that may be reflective of what we might see later in the political arena. Eduardo’s also found original posts on Bolivia’s book exchange program, an interview with a Bolivian orphan in Cochabamba, and blog by a Bolivian rock star who’s annoyed…
Miguel Buitrago of MABB on Bolivia has a chart showing that the regions in Bolivia that receive the most and the least government spending. Guess which ones are the richest and which ones are the poorest? Go see here. For those who claim more government spending means more wealth, that the rich are only rich at the expense of the poor, that there is only so much to go around, that the economic pie is only a matter of slicing and not expanding, that redistribution from rich to poor is the only answer, there are going to be some surprises.…
An international panel ruled that the Mexican government cannot prevent former foreign minister Jorge Castaneda from running for president as an independent in 2006. Castaneda is a former NYU professor who, although distinctively left-leaning, is on the DEMOCRATIC left, and more to the point, is not a muddlehead. He wrote the first scathing biography of Che Guevara to his great credit and for that, Castro has never forgiven him. If I were Mexican, I might not vote for him because of disagreements on ideology but I would appreciate the chance to vote for him as one candidate among many. I…
Colombia’s constituional Supreme Court has ruled that Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe can run for re-election as president again! Earlier on, Colombia’s Congress had voted to change the constitution to allow Uribe to run for a second term, and now the Court has given the green light. There’s one more ruling awaited in November, but, like that first CAFTA victory we won in the Senate, this is a great first step and fantastic news! President Uribe currently has an 80% popularity rating among Colombia’s voters and is likely to win reelection, ensuring a continuation of his policies. There is no finer…
Boz has a fascinating collection of polls from around the Americas in several countries signalling the political temperatures in assorted hot spots like Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru and others, all put together in a clean roundup of news. Don’t miss the weird Argentine soccer poll at the bottom. Well worth a click here.