Blogging the democratic revolution
From the time the US and coalition forces deposed Saddam and his Ba’athists, over 25 million newly free Iraqis have had the opportunity to develop a society along a new path; the nature of that path has faced challenges from Iraqi sects, international terrorist groups, and foreign states, and its direction has been hotly debated. I have believed for some time that Iraqis have been making gradual but clear progress on many fronts in their attempt to rebuild a society — in terms of democratic reform, economic development and reconstruction, and other key elements of civil society. A little over…
Aussie Girl, the lovely writer of Ukraine affairs at Ultima Thule, including her wonderful coverage of the Orange Revolution, has died this weekend of cancer. She was only 59. She was one of the sunniest and most insightful presences on the Internet. She was also one of the best bloggers – sharp, to the point and on target. She always was interested in my Russia coverage, which I blogged occasionally on due to my interest in the origins of communism. She always was on target on her observations and she occasionally sent me just the nicest notes. Losing her is…
Do you ever wonder what power it was that made Ronald Reagan victorious during the Cold War? A new history book, compellingly reviewed by Herb Meyer, casts amazing insight on what really happened during Reagan’s great rise to crush communism – and the secret was, Reagan was a … union boss: Like Lech Walesa after him, and like Lane Kirkland who did his own share of communism crushing – and like Venezuela’s potential future leader, oil boss Carlos Ortega – union bosses, when they are good union bosses, have the incredible skills to enact great revolutions. Reagan certainly had them,…
The nominees for the 2006 Web log awards are out! These are great fun to vote for, and they introduce us all to great new blogs we have not heard of. Check out the new candidates at this site here – and when you can, make your vote. Here are my own personal endorsements below – what are yours? Best Blog Instapundit Best New Blog Blue Crab Boulevard Jules Crittenden Best Individual Blog Dr. Sanity Riehl World View Best Humor Blog ScrappleFace Best Comic Strip (no opinion) Best Online Community Free Republic Best Liberal Blog (no opinion) Best Conservative Blog…
Venezuela is staring down D-Day, the great final election of a year full of Latin American elections, beginning this Sunday. At stake: Will Hugo Chavez be thrown out of power by his own people? Right now, the polls are mixed, with Chavista polls saying Chavez has a wide lead, and Opposition polls saying Manuel Rosales, his challenger, has a small lead. Besides that, there were the vast avalanchas, showing tremendous commitment from the opposition. The fate of the entire hemisphere – and whether we will have Iran-style nuclear issues directed at the states, from Iran’s ally, Hugo Chavez – hinges…
You’ve heard of VCrisis for Venezuela, no? Now, there’s ECrisis, for Ecuador. A couple of Ecuador hands who believe in democratic revolution and free markets, have gotten together and come up with a beautiful new Web site for all developments regarding turbulent little Ecuador. It’s full of richly sourced stories and the most up to date developments. This new blog is a sorely needed addition to all the good Latin American blogs out there and I will link it here often. It’s a must-see here.
What would a ‘colligation’ of all the free-market blogs in Latin America look like? As one big blog coming in from a feed? Luis Afonso Assumpcao of Swimming Against The Red Tide wanted to find out, so he set up an interesting new blog, compiling all the thoughts coming in from Miami Cuba, Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia and the rest of the region where longing for free markets is growing. As Hugo Chavez’s crazed empire shows high signs of meltdown, and rightwinger after rightwinger gets elected president throughout Latin America, libertarianism is an idea that is growing in importance through Latin…
I was going to put together a Venezuela blog roundup but Daniel got there before me, putting together a fine collection of Venezuelan blog posts in these fermenty times, and saying all the stuff I wanted to say. It reminds me of Daniel’s and my own simultaneously-made observation that Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit did exactly for Miguel Octavio what Hugo Chavez did for Noam Chomsky – rocketed him up to Number One. For Miguel, Glenn’s link yesterday got Miguel’s blog over 13,000 hits and put him at the very top of the salon.com blog rankings for two days in a…
There’s such great blogging going on in Venezuela these days that I almost feel I have been remiss in keeping track of it all. Ahmadinejad of Iran is in Caracas, Chavez is running for reelection, and Venezuela’s economy is falling apart. Here is a brief blog roundup from some of the finest: Daniel, of Venezuela News & Views has a great bloggy mishmash (or since he is in France now, let’s say ragout) of acid comments about Chavismo with several pearls of observation, like this one about current condition of Chavez here: The historian in this blogger has seen too…
Venezuelan exile Alek Boyd went back to Caracas for a visit after several years living in England, and has asked us to flag his chronicles of his tour there, where he will be covering the campaign of Manuel Rosales. Sounds interesting enough. In his first dispatch, he writes a fair and accurate account of arriving at the airport there, speaking of the monumental Chavista signs, a dictatorship trademark, and the courteous, swift Venezuelan customs officials, something pleasantly surprising. But oh god, Alek’s language! And I don’t mean his command of English, which is fine, but his use of language to…
Netcraft claims that President Ahmadinejad is running NetBSD or OpenBSD — maybe he will have BSD tortured or killed. Also check out the blog, and don’t miss out on this opportunity to send Mahmoud some e-mail feedback — I’m sure he would appreciate receiving some “generous offers” and perhaps a “limited” amount of your honest advice… Actually, it looks like I got it wrong and ahamdinejad.ir is the blog, while president.ir has a bunch of other stuff. ahmadinejad.ir is apparently running Windows 2000 (infidel software from the Great Satan). Oh, and for readers as well as spam crawlers, please send…
For those of you who are eagerly awaiting the next round of “Islamist propaganda Clue,” our friend Jim at Gateway Pundit, along with some particularly acute commenters, has apparently busted the New York Times participating in a Hezbollah photo op. It’s unclear at this point who staged what… UPDATE: LGF has this obvious photoshopped fake, by the same NYTimes photographer. You can also see a slideshow of his photos, which he narrates, here.
Charles at LGF caught Reuters in what looks like an obnoxious faked photo, with lots of dissection and discussion. A special correspondent who works for Reuters sent me this photo from the series, which I believes corroborates Reuters’ story. Judge for yourself: UPDATE: Now that Adnan Hajj has gone public, I feel it’s ok to share the rest of this story. Some readers may have questioned the authenticity of the original photo, even after I presented the above evidence, but surely we can all agree with Adnan’s explanation: As a ÄformerÅ Reuters photographer, I deny having deliberately attempted to manipulate…
I’ve discovered an interesting new blog called Cubanology which has encouraging words for Cubans and Cuban exiles in a new iSi se Puede! – ‘yes, you can’ – campaign. It’s got an interesting colorful layout, and sterling reporting on all the doings in Fidel Castro’s Cuba. See it here.
This is too funny! Is this the tragicomic end of the Glenn Greenwald saga? Greenwald is presently denying the claims, but I don’t think it helps his credibility that his own biographical blurb reads almost exactly the same as the alleged sock-puppet posts in question… UPDATE: He seems to have changed the tenor of his bio. I wonder what else he’ll be revising? Why Greenwald is probably doomed I believe Glenn Greenwald is probably doomed to relegation. If the suspicions around his online activity are correct — and judging by his response of frantic denial, personal attacks, revisionism, etc., it…
Cuban communist dictator Fidel Castro is probably on his last legs. Rumors of the tyrant’s demise are circling like vultures over dead carrion. According to Val Prieto at Babalu blog, citing some items in The Miami Herald, the communist press on the island prison is giving considerable prominence all of a sudden to Castro’s no-good little brother, Raul, whom he’s designated as his dynastic successor. We are likely to know for sure on July 26, which is Castro’s favorite holiday, that of his putsch. But there’s more than that. Val has suddenly started getting actual hate mail from Castro’s brutal…
Boli-Nica at Boli-Nica blog has a humdinger of an item about how the Mexican Internet and all its youthful users have roared into life, slamming Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and all his absurd efforts to derail Mexico’s hard-won democracy. Among other things, the Mexican Internet-os are deriding AMLO for failing to learn English! They’re sending e-mails out, setting up Web sites at lightening speed to make fun of the guy and in a less classy move, some are hacking into AMLO’s site, re-directing it to a less flattering one. They are photoshopping AMLO like crazy and making mean little YouTubes…
For a dictator, the truth hurts, and that includes what’s written on the Internet. Killcastro at the Killcastro blog is a computer wizard more than a little familiar with the tactics of hackers and cyberattacks, and he’s always alert to trouble from the dictator Havana. He got one this week from a group that appeared to be from the U.S., but when he probed it a little further, found its base in Havana, Cuba. It was at a location near Hotel El Nacional, a ritzy place in Havana, where the G-2, Cuba’s secret police, are known to have haunts. I…
I guess many of you knew Nickie Goomba. He was an Italian-American blogger who had helped create the logos of my blog as well as the blog of other well-known bloggers, such as Big Pharaoh and Sandmonkey. I was shocked today for learning that he has passed away just 3 days ago. It seems he was suffering from cancer. He suffered so much. Now he lives with God and is watching us from a much better place than this world he loved anyway. Please, send your condolances to Nickie’s wife Maria here. I have no words. Nickie wanted to live,…
Eduardo Avila at Global Voices has an extremely good Bolivian blog roundup covering all the angles on Bolivia’s energy nationalization, an event that has rocked at least three continents this week. It’s an excellent glimpse on what the different Bolivian blogs – of all ideologies – are saying on this week’s biggest event. Read it here.
Boli-Nica has a tremendously important piece about the role of the Internet is having on burning down Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s lead in Mexico’s presidential election to be held on July 2. Well, we here certainly don’t like the guy! But more importantly, Boli points out how Mexico’s bloggers are warning, criticizing, exposing and ridiculing the supposedly untouchable AMLO, whittling down the leftist demogogue’s once-powerful presidential lead, which is now down to 3 or 4 points at most and still falling – with a good long three months for it to fall farther. Mexicans can’t stand this kind of nonsense,…
I downloaded Pajamas Media’s first podcast directly to my 1 GB flash mp3 player, and listened to it on the way home from work. Wow! I think it worked out really great. Austin Bay hosted Glenn Reynolds, Tammy Bruce and Eric Umansky, and they discussed Iraq, Iran and more. I thoroughly enjoyed it: familiar blogs crackled to life, and it felt as one must have felt on first hearing a radio broadcast, although the sound quality was — slightly — better. It’s interesting and exciting, and I would gladly recommend it. Invisible Ämp3’sÅ Crackle with life Bright ÄtransistorsÅ bristle With…
Venezuela’s bloggers are now under an explicit threat of prosecution from known Chavista agents. It started with Alek Boyd’s effort to expose the Chavista regime and the post directly below this one provides the background. Miguel, however, adds a post of much further clarity here. The short story is: Venezuela’s dictator has issued his first threat against bloggers. The threat his supporters ran in Ultimas Noticias today identifies them as ‘The Anglo-Venezuelan Connection’, presumably because they write in English. Miguel’s blog has been named in this threat. He says they should probably have a tough time shutting him down, given…
Glamorous Pamela over at Atlas Shrugs scored an amazing interview for her blog – an interview with UN horsewhipper John Bolton. She’s got the first two parts up and will get a third part up later. This goes to show the changing nature of blogging and how blogging is now beginning to supercede the news. Who wouldn’t want to read an interview with John Bolton? What newspaper ever tried this? It took Pamela to do it! What’s more, from Bolton’s point of view, why wouldn’t he like to talk to her as a friend – he reads her blog and…
As hearings begin on Capitol Hill over Google’s kowtowing to the repressive Chinese regime, China itself is cracking apart INTERNALLY over its Google censorship. Party officials have taken on other party officials and they are all slashing at each other at the top levels of Chinese government. Christian Science Monitor has the story here. Pamela at Atlas Shrugs is doing some terrific, tremendous blogging about this Google controversy. Read her latest in full here. Rebecca McKinnon at RConversation has news from Capitol Hill and further background here and here. Or go here and just keep scrolling.