Blogging the democratic revolution
Singapore arrested two bloggers for making offensive-to-Islam remarks on their blogs, with charges of contributing to religious hatred. The de-facto state-controlled Singapore tabloid, The Electric New Paper, breathily noted that this pair also even was ‘said to contain vulgarities.’ In Singapore they have laws against that kind of thing. I am an ex-Singapore resident who first learned how to use the Internet in Singapore. Prior to that, I had no idea what it was. I was a denizen of Singapore’s first Internet cafes, (since I didn’t have a very good home computer) and often I consider Singapore and cyber-Singapore my…
And now, Harry Hutton has come up with something totally different – teaching Colombia’s repulsive guerrillas – yeah, real ones – how to blog. No, I’m not making it up. He’s actually described how he’s taught these (update: ex-)contact killers and kidnappers how to go to www.blogger.com, set up a blogspot blog, and blog away. It’s quite a change from what they are used to doing, which, as Harry explains: At an age when I would ring on people????????s doorbells and run away sniggering, he was in the jungle picking off FARC guerrillas with a pistol. There’s one small problem,…
Following up on Glenn’s post, I’ve just donated to and would recommend donating to the Union for Reform Judaism’s Disaster Relief Fund. They have an option to donate specifically for Katrina help, and 100% of your donation is used for relief. You don’t have to be a member or anything to donate (I’m not). Check out Glenn’s post and follow along at Instapundit for further details and updates, and many more ideas for donating or otherwise helping out. UPDATE: the truth laid bear is keeping tabs on Katrina relief and offers a comprehensive list of blogs and charities. ANOTHER UPDATE:…
Today’s Wall Street Journal has an in-depth essay today on the Babes of Politics theory, developed in depth here at Publius Pundit, at WILLisms and at Gateway Pundit. It’s excellent. Read it here.
U.S. blogger Steven Vincent, whose book ‘In The Red Zone’ about Iraq, was kidnapped by Iraqi terrorists dressed as police in Basra and shot dead several times. His blog and his books were critical of terrorist infiltration into the Iraqi government, and were favorably reviewed. What an atrocity. What a damn shame. If you are not familiar with Steven Vincent, you can read about him here and here. UPDATE – with a hat tip to M: This recent essay about the sexiness of democracy in the Middle East is exquisite. What a terrible tragedy this writer’s death is! Don’t miss…
Hear that poofing sound? It’s the showering, shattering of electronic pixels as one by one, British Intelligence destroys al-qaida Web sites. The move cuts critical communication lines among terrorists. Suddenly they can’t plot and giggle together through sinful Western Internet technology. They’ll have to go back to inscribing on Stone-Age tablets or something. Or give up terror altogether. In war, it’s not enough to just cut financing lines and indoctrination houses like madrassas – communication lines are important, too. It’s so in any war. Britain and the U.S. should have done this a long time ago. This is war 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…
This is a roundup for the Egyptian blogosphere (plus some other Arab blogs) and the protests against terrorism which they are organizing. I’ll be updating this post as I get new links. I would like to note that I was in Luxor, Egypt in December 1997, shortly after the gunning down of foreign tourists at the Temple of Hapsetshut there. It really hurt the local people and they were very angry. There were signs in the streets saying “No to Terrorism” in Arabic only; this wasn’t a campaign for foreign consumption. There was also an Arabic-only interview with Egyptian national…
Nosemonkey from Europhobia is doing something pretty cool. With the absence of need for donations to the Red Cross or likewise organizations in the 7/7 terrorist attacks, he will be accepting and dispersing donations in the form of free pints of beer for police and emergency personnel. I like this idea.
Gary Metz of Regime Change Iran has the opinions of several Iranian bloggers who seem to express the sentiments of quite a bit of the electorate. Here are the ones he posted below: The Adventures of Behi — Tonight, I was talking to Mrs. Behi about the decision we shall make for the election tomorrow; voting or not voting. We have been dubious about this since the start of the election campaigns we have been always having a good will for the reformists but still are not convinced about their capability to keep their promise in getting the non-elected parts…
Jim Hoft of Gateway Pundit is hosting this week’s carnival of revolutions, catching you up on everything that has gone down this week in the democratic movement. “So let????????s cut to the chase, down to this past week????????s developments in democracy, elections, tyrannous acts, human rights, and pie. Apple pie.”I knew that quote would come back to get me! On a similar note, Arthur Chrenkoff has a new installment of good news in Iraq. Also critical reading.
The Philippines is seeing massive protests over the discovery of a tape which purports to show that that President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the daughter of a founding president of the nation, rigged her re-election last year, a contest she just barely won. She got her initial power in a People Power coup in 2001, an event I witnessed in Manila, and now apparently it’s her turn to exit the same way. Sad, because none of this is democratic. Initial news accounts are here, here, and here. Much of the blogging sentiment around Manila is that bad as she is, the…
Like Rwanda 1994, Bolivia grows worse, and worse. It’s collapsing as a nation. No one is at the helm of leadership, and no consensus on any leadership is on the horizon. The angry indigenous groups seem to be energized by growing strife and are rising in numbers. There seems to be an equally determined group on the other side in Santa Cruz who can find no common ground with their countrymen. President Mesa has warned that the country is sliding into civil war and has appealed to his Santa Cruz vice president to submit to elections. The vice president has…
Many of you may remember Le Sabot Post-Moderne, where the Discoshaman pretty much live-blogged the Orange Revolution in Ukraine during those amazing months. He’s back. Check him out.
London 08.06.05 ö I come from a country where people spend time discussing the relevance and implications of a photo op. Since enough water has passed under the bridge I’ll take the liberty to give my humble opinion vis-a-vis Maria Corina Machado’s encounter with George W. Bush. There is a saying back home that goes “cachicamo trabaja p’a lapa” and in this particular instance, without wanting to substract merits to Maria Corina or Sumate, I feel that such is the case. The country was in awe, outraged by the rampant corruption going on at PDVSA. For the first time the…
The awesome President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia and all of his presidential challengers are setting up blogs for the upcoming presidential race. It’s going to be hotly contested, but I defy anyone to outdo President Uribe in sheer eloquence. He’s a quiet little academic-looking man, but his power is in his thinking, and not only intellectual brilliance but emerald-grade moral clarity. That’s a lot better than how much hairspray. I think this will make politics less a TV show and more a contest of ideas – which is what blogging excels at. Grim’s Hall has a note about it here.…
Gary Metz at Regime Change Iran is looking toward the Iranian presidential elections on June 17, and he wants the people there to know the truth about what goes on in their own country. That’s why he’s organizing a blogosphere campaign to spread the news about Iran so that the people have plenty of opportunities to circumvent regime attempts to shut them out. If you support democracy in Iran, and you are a blogger, be sure to visit the link.
Counting oil sands, Venezuela has more petroleum reserves than any country on earth. Even Russia. Even Canada. Even Iran. Even … Saudi Arabia. It’s unbelievable what the Texas-and-Oklahoma-sized country only 1350 miles away from us really has. Venezuela could probably supply the entire world with oil if it wanted. That road you are driving on, if it’s nice, is probably made of Venezuelan-oil-derived asphalt, the world’s finest. Which is why Venezuela’s declining oil production is such a scandal. Only Iran and Indonesia have comparable production declines in their state-dominated oil industries, but not nearly as intense. Globally, it forces the…
Val Prieto has got a party and revolution going over at Babalu blog with the twin Cuban Nostalgia Festival and the Assembly for Civil Society simultaneously happening this weekend. It may sound farfetched but they are closely related. Val has a full blogging exhibit at the nostalgia festival, which is Cuban Americans’ defiant effort to keep their culture alive in all its glorious forms against the horrible efforts to erase it by Cuba’s tyrant. The latter is the revolution itself, which is electrifying the world as I write this. Those gorgeous photos of Cubans standing up for democracy against the…
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.
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…
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…
Credible sources inside Cuba report that Val Prieto’s estimable Babalu Blog has been banned by Cuba’s brutal dictator. That means his eloquent words are resonating grandly to Cubans through the pinhole access to the Internet a few Cubans have. It also means that the cringing and cowardly caudillo supremo is thrashing around like a chawed up turkey now that the cat’s eaten half of it. Val is blogging Cuba’s democratic revolution. Shrivel, tyrant, squeal, and die. Vaya Val! UPDATE: Steve’s humdinger analysis on the situation is an absolute must-read. I am so tempted to post it, writing doesn’t get better…
An amazing article in today’s New York Sun has the number on how blogging is revolutionizing the world. Now, there is a new project to rationalize what we look for in from blogs, utilizing their inherent competitive advantage, when a global news event happens. (Because we want to know just what it is like in the middle of the crowd when Beirut happens!) And fascinatingly, this new development is led by the genius who understands this phenomenon better than anyone else on earth, Instapundit, Glenn Reynolds, specifically speaking of revolutions. When you read the article, notice Glenn’s powerful way of…