Blogging the democratic revolution
Castro’s henchmen have disappeared their first delegate to the Conference on Civil Society. His name is Antuan Clemente Hernandez. His event is to be held this weekend. They know what a threat it is to the communist regime. It’s Cuba’s Charter 77, its Declaration of Independence. And its participants face the same risks as those…
Tens of thousands of union supporters from El Alto, apparently, people even more extreme than Evo Morales, have begun roadblocks through Bolivia to shut down the country until it comes around to their point of view about developing Bolivia’s natural gas resources. And they’ve since raised earlier demands from a mere 50% royalties to full…
Our good friend blogger Stefania in faraway Sardinia alerts us that Cuba’s brave civil society delegates, seeking to forge a free Cuba out of the ruins of Castroism, in a conference this week, are now being abused by Castro’s goons. My writeup on Babalu is here.
Word is out that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez was ranting and raving about this El Universal piece we linked this morning here. Chavez angrily cited it by name, calling it all lies. The piece itself was built around the first-rate research and writing of Gustavo Coronel, whose essay this morning we linked here. Coronel clearly…
Looks like ol’ Shirin’s figured out how the world works much better than the rest of us. American Revolution? Orange Revolution? Tulip Revolution? That’s just wrong! The best means to help create democracies in societies ruled by tyrannies is through negotiations, and if that fails, by resorting to the United Nations,” she pontificated. “This is…
Profoundly good analysis by Gustavo Coronel. A must read. Read it here. UPDATE: My own take here. UPDATE: Another good take from El Universal. (Man that must have been a beach to translate!)
Sure enough, right outside the office of a foreign oil company, Brazil’s Petrobras, in the pro-trade city of Santa Cruz. A car full of dynamite. The news item is here. And an updated item with the broader picture is here. Here is what the Bolivian blogs say: BARRIO FLORES’ Eduardo says the bomb raises the…
Luis Tascon, the Venezuelan congressman who put signers of a recall referendum against dictator Hugo Chavez on a special Internet-accessible blacklist, has met a miserable demise. In this way, he would seem to parallel Joseph McCarthy, who died an isolated drunk. That said, the signers of the petition cannot be compared to McCarthy’s targets –…
It’s all over for the Islamofascists. They are now lying to their Syrian recruits to get them to drop suicide bombs. Nobody wants to join them. They stand for nothing. Young Sunni Iraqis are rushing to join the building of their new young nation. The heroes are obvious to them. The police, firefighters, army, businesses…
On Val’s Babalu blog, I wrote a long essay on the Posada Carriles case. It is a foreign policy issue, but now that Fidel Castro has made the claim that it’s a U.S. ‘credibility’ issue, there is a people-power dimension to it. People with access to mass communication would think so, and that is who…
Val has important updates on Cubans’ efforts to forge a civil society from the depths of Castrodom. Note that they are doing it from Havana, showing a courage we can only marvel at. And in what will surely go down as a vote of shame, there were actual U.S. Congressinsects who voted against supporting them…
Tomas Sancio has a superb piece noting the strong and growing presence of Latin American popular culture into mainstream American culture. He takes a screenshot from a Web site to show his point. I am always fond of telling my Latin American friends that when they come to big cities here in the states, they…
Last week, Congress approved steep taxes on oil and gas as a compromise between the industrious free marketers of Santa Cruz province, and the Marxist nationalizers of cocalero kingpin Evo Morales, who gets his funding from the drug trade and from Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. Obviously, that was no solution. Santa Cruz province is threatening to…
U.S. Congress has just passed a resolution offering support and encouragement to Cuba’s brave civil society advocates, who, like the creators of the Declaration of Independence, are meeting in perilous conditions in Castro’s island hellhole to forge the beginnings of a new civil society, a new social contract, a new means of governance in what…
Miguel has an item out from a Mexican newspaper reporting that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez may have shipped weapons to Mexican Marxist guerrillas, bought with funds from Mexico City Mayor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s office, who is now running for president of Mexico. Via Havana. AMLO denies he knew anything about it, but that’s not…
Leftist ecology outfits are basically money-making operations. The more of a stink they can raise on an issue, the more the cash rolls into their coffers. It has nothing to do with merit, only buzz. And the causes they champion are not based on principle but on how leftwing. Ask anyone who’s ever been involved…
It was the winter of 1982. It was the freezing nadir of the Cold War. Soldiarity’s Revolution in Poland had been bitterly crushed. I was a student in England, passionate about Soviet studies and in the center of great scholarship. As Greenham Common leftists camped out to protest cruise missiles, Ronald Reagan and the U.S….
I’m tempted to pontificate on the cult of personality and the nature of totalitarian regimes. Never mind that. Just click here.
Some newspapers have dismissed Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s moving of his oil company’s headquarters to a Havana, Cuba, as just a small detail. Well, it is not a small detail, according to one respected Venezuelan journalist, it is a sign of a spreading shadow of tyranny over a huge region of many flags. Daniel Duquenal…
Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez has created another useless union this week, positively thrilling the Canadian press, but in Latin America, there is nothing new about it. So here is the deal: In Argentina during the 1990s, people used to joke about the extent of something known as ‘the corporate republic’ or ‘corporate state.’ The corporate state…
I didn’t watch the UK elections very closely because I was pretty sure that one way or another, the excellent Prime Minister, Tony Blair, would win. But it was a wonderful experience to see how people abroad and from other lands marvelled at this English spectacle, in all its civilized execution. I’ve always liked the…
Alek Boyd has a very good translation of a long article in the Latino press on the specific nature of the totalitarian threat that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez poses to the different countries in the region. He menaces the weakest of the states. It’s very sound, very sane, very informed analysis, well worth reading here.
Bolivia’s passed its Hydrocarbons Law, on fairly miserable terms that will be sure to chase out foreign investment, dispirit President Carlos Mesa, rouse Evo Morales to block roads and starve cities, and drive separatist sentiment in pro-trade Santa Cruz province. And the result of all this? Bolivia’s natural gas will face a great future underground….
Who will lead the Organization of American States? A Chilean democratic socialist so determined he is known as ‘El Panzer’ in his native country. Oppenheimer interviews him for the first time and notices that he seems to be proactive. He counters a Venezuelan party hack’s declaration that the Chilean will honor ‘commitments’ to dictator Hugo…
Stefania over in beautiful Sardinia has a tremendously good blog called Free Thoughts, highlighting freedom struggles and democratic revolutions around the world. What makes it so valuable is the singularity of her information. It’s news we don’t see here, not even in the rightwing press. She also has a lot of photos. Scrolling through it…