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 brave men of history. Stefania has the first alert, and my writeup on Babalu about this struggle against a monster who cannot countenance freedom is here. UPDATE: Juan Paxety has information about a new support center for the Civil Society assembly inaugurated in Miami here.
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 Stalinist-style nationalization. Until Bolivians consent to that, they are going to starve them, preventing the entry of food into the cities. The government is powerless to stop them. Agencia EFE reports that tens of thousands of these supporters tried to storm Congress in La Paz.…
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 is getting under the dictator’s skin. This is what blogging is all about.
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 the only way, this is the only means. Hear that, Babes of Beirut? You’re doing it wrong! Kindly send a copy of her memo in triplicate to Cuba’s civil society democrats, Venezuela’s angry oil workers, Ecuador’s furious street demonstrators, Bolivia’s pro-trade Santa Crucenos and Venezuela’s…
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 specter of the gas development struggle taking a violent turn. He notes that the people claiming responsibility for the attack have said their assault against the Brazilian company was actually an anti-George Bush statement. Some believe they spoke with Central American accents. The terrorists also…
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 – they were not interested in operating in secrecy, for one, they were not interested in subverting the U.S. system in the name of Joseph Stalin, and they were not doing anything illegal. No, Venezuelans just woke up one morning and realized that signing a legal…
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 and teachers are the ranks they would like to join. No more Islamofacism. TechCentralStation has it here.
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 Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez seek to appeal to with this extradition demand directed at the U.S. Those elites among them hate us as intensely as they hate the purple fingers of our friends the Iraqi voters. They know we support revolution. Hence, their hollow…
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 in their effort to end tyranny. Why oh why are these lowlife citizens of our free country? There is no order in the universe! Read it here and here. UPDATE: The Weekly Standard’s item is here.
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 can happily get away with not a word of English and listen to all the same music here that they might listen to there. It’s new. It’s the reality. It’s beautiful. It’s perfectly dynamic. And it’s a revolution. Which is why Hugo Chavez’s weird, insular…
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 secede over this move that is sure to keep Bolivia’s gas in the ground. The province is also angry at the breaking of already signed contracts with investors. The Marxist coca growers, meanwhile, threaten more roadblocks to starve the cities into coming to their point…
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 they hope will be a free post-Castro Cuba. It is a thing of beauty to know there are such brave souls out there willing to fight for what is right at their own potential peril. It’s also gratifying to know that the better members of…
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 impressive because he is not famous for accountability. If the news is true, it’s an extremely dangerous development. Read it here. UPDATE: Here is my own analysis on American Thinker here.
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 with an NGO racket. Not one of them is normal. They are all sharks. That’s why their biggest causes aren’t necessarily the most objectively serious ones. Greenpeace or an eco-outfit like them will happily harass a Midwestern farmer over a ‘wetland’ (read: swamp) or sandalista…
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. troops there to defend Europe, not far from my university. As Lady Thatcher and Ronald Reagan stood firm. As the Soviet Union under the fearful, edgy, oppressive gray heirs to Stalin of the Kremlin prepared to hit the nuclear button. Never did the world come…
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 has a careful translation of the entire essay here. UPDATE: Venezuelan oilman Gustavo Coronel’s essay on the same topic is a must-read here.
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 is not about companies but the expansion of medieval-guild-like organizations designed to keep individual people out of the system in the name of some exclusive collective. That’s what this new Chavez union is. But despite what Chavez claims, he’s hardly first to the party. In…
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 UK system, but it’s instructive to see how others who live in non-democratic societies experience England’s authentic democracy. There are two very good essays out on it now, one by blogger Daniel Duquenal and the other by Aleksander Boyd, both of which are fresh in…
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. Miguel Buitrago has the whole story, nicely analysed, here.
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 Chavez with a wonderful smackdown, saying he owes the Thug of Caracas nothing. Also, the Chilean rebuffs Jimmy Carter’s insistence that the OAS appoint an ‘independent’ commission to evaluate democracies. Oppenheimer disagrees with that but I sure don’t. The disaster in Ecuador hangs heavy on…
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 is fascinating. She now has photos from deep inside Cuba, pictures of the little groups meeting and trying to forge civil society in the ramshackle Castro-ruins that pass for housing in Havana. They look like people in a war zone. But their brave, defiant faces…