Blogging the democratic revolution
Gisele Bunchen in Esquire, 2004 Source: Thomas Hawk blog Beautiful Gisele Bundchen of Brazil has always been my favorite supermodel. Her regal good looks, her tall physique, and her unusual grownup features have always made her a natural for the camera and great photographs. Now she’s given me a reason to really like her –…
What’s gotten into Brazil’s supposedly decent president, Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva? He flew up to Venezuela and openly endorsed Hugo Chavez for president, hugging and kissing him, and openly meddling in an election for a country that’s not his own. Oddly enough, Chavez did not do the same for him, which is to say…
Lula By A Light Year – Brazil’s Lula landslides to reelection Source: AFP, via Yahoo! News Brazil’s incumbent President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva has cruised on to an easy victory in Brazil’s runoff election. He’s got more votes than he did last time and the total ballots aren’t even fully counted. With 94% of…
At VCrisis, Alek Boyd has firsthand info about how Hugo Chavez’s shiny new Russian weapons purchases are being used – to massacre Venezuelan and Brazilian peasants from helicopters in the deep jungle. There was a great big massacre of miners in the Amazon rainforest this week and Boyd is on the scene with tons of…
Geraldo Alckmin drove Brazil’s popular incumbent President Lula into a runoff Oct. 29 with a powerful showing in Sunday’s election. The guy rocks. Source: AP, via BBC photo gallery A massive political earthquake is shaking Brazil right now and practically no one in the mainstream media (BBC a notable exception!) is really covering it. This…
Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his challenger, Geraldo Alckmin Source: Reuters, via Yahoo! Singapore Today is election day in Brazil, and for 126 million Brazilians, time to decide who their next president and congressional representatives will be. Via the Washington Post, AP has a good primer on the nuts and bolts of how Brazil’s…
Major mainstream television networks in France and Brazil have both taken aim at the odious regime of Fidel Castro in Cuba. And I don’t mean something small. They’ve put out huge high-advertising long programs out, firing a unusual cannonade at the dictatorship. This has never happened before. These TV programs document Cuba’s long lines, miserable…
Democratic revolution is spreading across the world, in the greatest news and megatrend story of possibly the century. But for those of us who are already in democratic regimes, we sometimes wonder if there is much more we can do except watch and applaud. There is partisan political activism, of course, but that isn’t for…
Babes of Beirut cheer Brazil Source: AP, Reuters, AFP, via Yahoo! News What’s up with the Babes of Beirut? They’re busy cheering Brazil, which beat Ghana today, moving on to the semifinals in the World Cup! One day it’s a democracy struggle, and as democracy wins, next up, it’s soccer. It’s the same babes, and…
Oh, to hear how some Americans talk! – the Chinese are a menace, and Latin America is full of different kinds of Mexicans all of whom want something from us before they go communist, same as the Chinese. In fact, probably joining the Chinese! That’s how the world looks to some on the right who…
This past week, the biggest and most economically critical city of all South America was beseiged by drug thugs from Brazil’s abysmal favelas. The ghetto barbarians, acting on orders from their leader, who’s somehow has a cellphone in jail, killed over 200 people, mostly cops. Imagine if New York City lost 200 cops in a…
The Financial Times describes the gang riots that have taken Sao Paolo by storm: Life in S????o Paulo returned to something like normal by the middle of this week after prison riots and attacks on police and property orchestrated by organised crime left 132 people dead and 53 injured between Friday night and Tuesday morning….
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez is nothing more than a brutal leftist thug with aspirations of being the next Simon Bolivar, the next Fidel Castro. He seeks to unite all the nations of Latin America under his wing, so that together, they may challenge the United States. He would lure them into his axis with the…
President Lula da Silva of Brazil is not stupid. After a softie performance in the first week after Bolivia “nationalized” Brazil’s $1.6 billion in investments there, downplaying any opposition against the taking of it, or any animosity against Bolivian President Evo Morales, he unexpectedly came out and laid the blame for this mess right where…
This week, Evo Morales nationalized Bolivia’s natural gas industry. He didn’t do it as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez did, by a hundred kisses of law, order, and win-win “people’s” baloney, but in the old 1960S style: with guns and goons. Like a pirate, he confiscated the assets of others and called them his own. Then he…
With the nationalization of Bolivia’s energy resources, the two biggest victims in this are socialist Brazil and socialist Spain. Franco, I am still waiting for you to give us word from Spain on this Bolivian travesty, so in the meantime, consider Brazil: Evo Morales is determined to play approximately the same tormenting role to Brazil…
As oil prices hit $75 a barrel, the U.S. is right now caught up in an idiotic debate over supposed price-gouging at the pump. Congress wants to investigate oil companies over it. What they should be doing is asking why the U.S. is dependent for its oil on anti-American Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. We are…
Amid a huge hullabaloo first reported by blogger Daniel Duquenal here and here, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela offered to finance a Brazilian samba school to dance in his honor. But being Hugo Chavez, he suddenly … didn’t come up with the pledge money. This, despite, the Brazilian school’s efforts to accomodate him, to print up…
This is just what we were looking for – of all people, my boss at work discovered it and sent it to me. Just what we wanted to see, a free-market Brazilian blog written by a smart Brazilian that tells us the deal about what’s going on in Brazil. I’m really excited! The blog, called…
The magnificent writer and thinker, Alvaro Vargas Llosa, has a truly awesome, knock-your-sock-off essay today on the demise of Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, why it’s important, and why we should care. Brazil’s soft left revolution that so many have staked their hopes on has collapsed, leaving the hard Chavista left in place,…
Brazil’s failure as a regional leader in the face of growing communist aggression from the likes of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro and Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez is a major concern, I argue, in this American Thinker essay here. UPDATE: It’s on Real Clear Politics this morning here. VCrisis has an in-depth analysis from a famous…
A political corruption scandal over slush funds to supporters is deepening in Brazil, and could extend to the highest reaches of government. It’s a shame, because President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva is a true revolutionary leader who means to do what’s best for Brazil. Left-leaning but fiscally responsible, he’s no Hugo Chavez. But Randy…