Blogging the democratic revolution
GatewayPundit has a letter from Zimbabwe. The locals there are terrified. Houses are being razed left and right and those homeless must sleep in the freezing weather. Soon, all houses will be razed or taken over by the state. The writer argues that genocide is coming. The letter-writer warns that this isn’t business as usual in Africa, it’s something new and truly evil. They need help. Read it here. Hat tip: Instapundit
The best part about CAFTA is upon us – Hugo Chavez has come out screaming on Venezuelan television about CAFTA’s passage. And why shouldn’t he scream about our CAFTA victory? A rich El Salvador, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica are the last things Chavez wants to see. It’s bad enough that these democracies are friendly with the U.S. – now they have free trade rights, too, and as nations they have embarked on a great regional mission to become as rich as America. Why shouldn’t they be? They’re our friends. But for Chavez, it’s pain upon pain.…
Fidel Castro’s goons were in for the surprise of their lives when a whole neighborhood in Havana rose up and beat them back with sticks when they tried to confiscate a barrio TV set. A line was crossed. Nobody gets between Cubans and their TV sets. Nobody.
Fausta at BadHairBlog, citing someone named ‘Cake Eater’ has a truly marvellous comparison of the efforts of the McCartney sisters to break the back of the vile IRA terrorists, versus the non-efforts of too many Muslim “moderates” to halt the Islamofascists among them. it’s been speculated that it’s because these moderate Muslims are afraid to speak up, for fear that the Islamofascists will turn on them. Well, it appears that six women—who loved a man as a brother and a fiancee—proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back when it came to the IRA. Robert McCartney, a Belfast…
Any time Danny Glover, Babs Streisand or Michael Moore open their big Hollywood mouths, the media come running, happy to feed these bawl-babies with free publicity. But let Puertoriqueno singer Ricky Martin, declare his intention of improving the U.S.’s image abroad, particularly among Arabs, using his experience as a Boricua, and these media suddenly go silent, desperately silent. To heck with that. Ricky Martin is out to spread democracy and I am going to say something! Check out GOPinion’s full story about this admirable young man here.
Developing countries almost never have civil society organizations, making them vulnerable to tyrants who are always happy to fill the void with … tyranny. Rare indeed are the PTAs, the Elks, the Kiwanis, the Ladies’ Auxilliaries, the Neighborhood Watches, the Surfriders’ Foundations, the Explorers’ Club, the Roadrunners – and all the much-maligned but critically necessary spontaneously organized private groups that are the building blocks of democracy. So it was a joy to read that in determinedly democratic El Salvador, our new CAFTA ally, Salvadoran locals got together to clean up the beaches. And had wild exuberant Latin American fun together,…
It’s the biggest demonstration since the August Recall Referendum. Chavez sicced the firehoses on the thousands of demonstrators. Miguel Octavio has the story and the first dramatic photos here. UPDATE: Daniel has further information here. And Instapundit has taken note, too. UPDATE: Associated Press reports that rocks and bottles were hurled at the thousands of opposition marchers by two dozen chavistas screaming insults. UPDATE: Reuters reports that the chavistas blocked the marchers and set piles of garbage on fire.
CAFTA is often compared to NAFTA, but the roots of the trade pact are very different. They began in 1983 when the great Ronald Reagan launched his Caribbean Basin Initiative. As he fought the march of communism with all his strength, the far-thinking President Reagan also knew that U.S. might is based not only on military power but on economic power and more particularly, the ability to share our hope with others. The American Dream is also the Honduran Dream, the Salvadoran Dream, the Costa Rican Dream, the Guatemalan Dream. Now, with CAFTA, we all share the same dream. CAFTA…
Alexis de Tocqueville, the extraordinary French observer who chronicled how democracy rose and developed in America, is 200 years old today. In the Age of Democratic Revolution & Civil Society, he gave us all a roadmap that is more important than anyone ever realized. Great economists like Hernando de Soto, who first underlined the importance of property rights, got much of his material from American history and much of that he took from de Tocqueville. Alexis de Tocqueville is a true polestar of authentic democratic revolution and a great capital-L Liberal. The Adam Smith Institute blog has a marvellous essay…
in the House. Victory for our hemisphere. The full list of how they voted. Our friend Will has analysis and a good roundup of what other bloggers are saying here. IBD has an editorial saying this trade treaty will benefit businesses across the board, citing the word of Central Americans who are in the middle of this. It is here or here. Sigh. I am too tired to comment. But I am overjoyed.
Tulio Alavarez, the respected Venezuelan attorney who conclusively proved that there was fraud in Hugo Chavez’s recall referendum, was set upon by Hugo Chavez’s thugs as payback for his democracy work. The goons stopped him as he was preparing to get on an airplane. They tried to call his car stolen. They tried to plant weapons on him. Alvarez was released but he attributed it only to the swift response of the Venezuelan bloggers, who rapidly publicized the travesty. Now, Chavista goons are pretending nothing happened. These thugs, along with their fellow thugs in Havana, have clearly begun an assault…
Tick tick tick – CAFTA’s victory is expected in three hours, according to my sources, and to the Washington Post, but cross your fingers, it’s not over until it’s over… This trade treaty is the most important measure of support we can give to the entire hemisphere. Central Americans don’t want our troops. They don’t want our money. They just want a chance. They want CAFTA. Political death to anyone who votes against it. No forgiveness and no forgetting. FREE TRADE THROUGH THE AMERICAS NOW!!!!
I kid you not. As corrupt, thuggish and stupid as they are ugly. Miguel has much more here. As an antidote, feel free to compare and contrast.
First views of Hugo Chavez’s new Marxist TV station reveals the grand unveiling of another Chavez failure – this is a real dog. The programs following the inauguration were sad and gray: verses of Eduardo Galeano, a sugary documentary on the life of Che Guevara and news totally biased in favor of the Ch????vez revolution. The commercials featured the former Colombian guerrilla leader Marulanda and the singing of a woman taking a bath and apparently calling for Al-Qaeda. Gustavo Coronel has the rest of the story here. Pathetic.
Marvellous, prosperous, democratic, revolutionary Chile, which has already signed free trade pacts with the U.S. and other nations, has signed three more free trade pacts with Brunei, New Zealand and Singapore. While Hugo Chavez up north and his Master in Havana scream about how bad they are. And the U.S. thrashes about trying to decide CAFTA, as special interests howl like jackals in the desert. Chile’s citizens have three more bright lights on their horizon while Chavez’s Venezuela slips further into economic darkness, blaming the U.S. all the way down. And while the U.S. tries to decide between Big Sugar,…
Miguel Octavio, in a vintage Miguel presentation, outlines the latest illogicalities of the Chavista revolution. My god they are stupid. Don’t have a government television station anyone wants to watch? Fine then, build a new international one. And so it goes with several more examples. Well worth reading, read it here.
All stops must be pulled out to pass CAFTA. Not doing it will destroy our country. And we can kiss the hemisphere goodbye. The showdown is this week. We cannot fail. I repeat, cannot. Andres Oppenheimer, in the most powerful argument yet, explains why here. Update: The Washington Post, in its bluntest argument yet, warns that a vote against CAFTA is a vote for Hugo Chavez. It’s as simple as that.
Nicaragua’s Contras, the original freedom fighters in our lifetime, who during the Reagan Era, took on the name and tradition of the original Hungarian freedom fighters who resisted Soviet tanks in 1956, have turned their swords into plowshares and begun the extraordinary task of growing some of the world’s best coffee. Freedom-fighting Contra Cafe! Being Nicaraguan, it’s going to be good – it would be good even if sandalistas grew it – but so much the better that it’s a project of those who truly know what freedom is. Boli-Nica first discovered the phenomenon, and Instapundit has some good and…
Greenpeace recently told Venezuelan activist Alek Boyd it had better things to do than defend endangered species in Hugo Chavez’s slash-and-burn Venezuela. So, rare-songbird soup is back on the menu in Chavistaville. A private nature conservancy full of rare animals and plants unique to Venezuela, Hato Pinero, is under the machete by Chavez’s Marxist-Leninist land-confiscators as never before. The Los Angeles Times has the full horrible story on Hato Pinero that Greenpeace doesn’t care about here. Here are the desperate pleas from Hato Pinero’s owners about this ensuing maelstrom of environmental waste ahead: Andres Branger made pleas to save his…
Two editorials about today’s launch of Telesur, Hugo Chavez’s grand new television network designed to put the region’s free press out of business, are in today’s Chicago Tribune and Monday’s Investor’s Business Daily. (A third, here, from El Semanal Digital, is in Spanish.) The Tribune points out that Castro is deeply involved in this “news” project, a bad sign given his abysmal record on the free press, and argues that if it’s as bad as it looks, no one’s going to watch it. True. IBD warns that this is an effort to replace Venezuela’s authentic free press and give Colombia’s…
We have often speculated about who and where Cuba’s Babes of Politics, the women opposed to the Fidel Castro regime, are. I have found them, I will leave you with their riveting story opposing Castro and a NYT photo that takes care of business: Quote from one of the dancers: “An artist will always be a revolutionary in the whole sense of the word,” Mr. David said, “because he’s always trying to change things, but through culture, not politics.”
This essay, by Gustavo Coronel, tells the real lowdown on how Cuban “doctors” live in Venezuela. It’s incredibly good, compiled with all primary sources. I have never seen a better essay on this topic. It’s today’s must-read. Don’t miss it. Read it here.
It’s all over the place and in all sorts of forms. Venezuelans everywhere are protesting the remodelling of their once-great country into beggar-state failed Cuba. It’s intolerable. Our friend GatewayPundit has great photos and analysis not seen in the media. Read it here. Our friend Fausta has equally worthy stuff, plus one of the grossest pictures of the kissin’ pirates of the Caribbean you’ll ever see. Be sure to read it here.
Booker Rising, a neat blog for Black-American conservatives and moderates reports approvingly that two tiny Caribbean states, Trinidad & Tobago, and Barbados, showed the presence mind to tell Hugo Chavez and his smothering oil deal ‘no.’ Both self-respecting nations cited their national interest in different ways – Hugo Chavez’s artificial oil prices would undercut Trinidad’s authentic energy business of its own. Barbados, with its refining businesses aligned with Trinidad, wanted no part of Hugo Chavez’s kill-our-economy offer. These two tiny states stood up to two monsters in our hemisphere, Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro, and should be encouraged and applauded.…
A thoughtful analysis by the excellent Cafe Hayek on The Thug Of Caracas and His Master Below In Havana is analysed very well, showing a good grasp of human nature. It also includes a link to an impressive editorial by a banker in Ithaca. Read it all here.