Blogging the democratic revolution
Costa Rica’s election, like Honduras’ election earlier, is turning into a cliffhanger. Frontrunner Oscar Arias is ahead, but only by about 0.4 percentage point. It could turn. This referendum on free trade – for his opponent, Otton Solis, is opposed to it – is suddenly a matter for speculation. Will Arias win? Keep fingers crossed. The news story is here and there are blog links two posts below. UPDATE: Nacion, as of 12:26 p.m. Pacific time, is reporting that the difference between the top two candidates is 3,647 votes. The item (if you can get it up, there’s heavy traffic)…
Oscar Arias, a powerful, luminous, fearless advocate for free trade is winning in Costa Rica’s exit polls in what looks like a decisive victory. Reportedly taking in 45% of the vote in a three-way field, it means his victory so strong he will avoid a runoff, if these numbers hold, putting this election on a comparable level with Evo Morales’ in Bolivia. The cutoff for avoiding a runoff is 40% of the vote. What does it mean? It means that despite the naysayers, the people insisting the region is turning left, Costa Ricans in their thousands cast their votes for…
I watched the President’s State of the Union address with a French diplomat friend and my friend remarked that about 2/3 of Bush’s speech was on foreign policy, with a significant amount of it on democracy movements. “As it should be,” he added. I thought there was a nuance to it, though, and it was a little painful. President Bush outlined with great precision the consequences of America’s addiction to imported oil, explaining how high oil prices were fueling dictators and undercutting freedoms abroad, the very freedoms we were fighting for in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he named the wrong…
Rather unexpectedly, Schafik Handal, 75, El Salvador’s top communist guerrilla, and the leader of the FMLN has died of a heart attack, just as he got back from Evo Morales’ presidential inauguration in Bolivia. A Palestinian-Salvadoran, same as Conservative President Tony Saca, Handal brought years of war to El Salvador in the 1980s. However, he took part in the peace process at the end of it and today, Salvador is a nation on its feet, with Handal’s FMLN part of the picture, many of its denizens now local mayors in and around El Salvador. This should raise some questions about…
And now for a truly satisfactory little tidbit, The Hill Rag reports that the 15 brave pro-CAFTA Democratic Congressmen who bucked their party leadership in the name of free trade for Central America, and who were politically threatened by vengeful union thugs for doing it – are now reaping big rewards from campaign contributors grateful for their effort to stand up for revolution. Oh it is good news! Donations are flowing left and right to these Congressmen who resisted lunatic economics against free trade in the name of helping Central America’s poor and everyone else too. Free trade lifts business…
Right in the middle of fermenting Panamanian unrest over pension reform, coupled with pot-stirring by Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, our Daniel of Yaracuy, Venezuela, found himself in the middle of Panama on a work visit. From shopkeepers, he learned of corrupt Chavista officials blowing in to Panama for shopping trips and money-laundering ventures, sure in the belief that they will not be noticed. One of them dropped $8,000 on a wristwatch. They’re wrong of course, the Panamanians see what’s going on and tell everything. Read the whole riveting account of Daniel in Panama’s storm here.
The weakest link in the CAFTA system has, bigtime, ratified CAFTA! This is a body blow to Daniel Ortega and all his Marxist thugs! They fought with all their strength and dirty tricks to oppose this. This ratification is tremendous news. Democracy has won big in battered Nicaragua against all odds. Daniel Ortega has been handed yet another People’s Revolution of defeat. Victorious Nicaragua will get used to being a rich country now, faithful in the power of free markets to make people free. iVIVA NICARAGUA! UPDATE: Oooh, this was a hard blow – the screaming and yelling from the…
So much for George Bush being intimidated by the bitter union- and leftist-bankrolled struggle this past summer to ratify CAFTA. In less than four weeks, negotiators say a free trade pact with Panama could be signed. Negotiators are rushing to polish up the accord in the last weeks before President George Bush visits the wonderful country in early November. If they can get it done, it send a spectacular message to the rest of the Americas that free trade is alive and well and nobody, but nobody, will be shut out of the growing potential for U.S.-style prosperity up and…
El Salvador’s soldiers have served the effort to spread democracy through the world with great distinction. Not only are Salvadorans always there when a tyrant is in need of dislodging – side by side and doing heavy lifting with the U.S., they are well-known for their courage and heroism. Salvadorans do what they do not because they are interested in benefits, but because they are committed to freedom. They are true idealists in today’s world. Ask any U.S. military man, he will know all about it. Here is a great interview with a Salvadoran soldier who passionately defends the cause…
Back in the 1980s, Nicaragua’s Sandinistas engaged in a communist campaign of mass murder against the innocent Miskito Indians on Nicaragua’s north Atlantic coast. The Miskito were peaceful people who lived in a strategic spot coveted by Cuban troops who were making inroads into Nicaragua as the region slid into civil war. Cuban troops wanted a supply route to foment unrest in Honduras and El Salvador, where the war to end communism was much hotter. The Sandinistas razed villages, burned crops and killed lifestock. Then they force-marched the Miskito on a long trek through the jungle to ‘re-education camps.’ There,…
…against humanity. The vicious Marxist dictator slave-marched thousands of Miskito Indians on a death march to ‘re-education camps’ that killed hundreds in the sweltering Atlantic jungle. He did it to force communism on them and to prevent them from joining the resistance. Now, with the glorious CAFTA passed, Nicaragua’s government has grown stronger and the human rights organizations are growing bolder. This is a great day for democracy, a mass murderer is getting called to account. This goes to show that the justice moves around the Americas are real, and do not just apply to thugs on the right. They…
Developing countries almost never have civil society organizations, making them vulnerable to tyrants who are always happy to fill the void with … tyranny. Rare indeed are the PTAs, the Elks, the Kiwanis, the Ladies’ Auxilliaries, the Neighborhood Watches, the Surfriders’ Foundations, the Explorers’ Club, the Roadrunners – and all the much-maligned but critically necessary spontaneously organized private groups that are the building blocks of democracy. So it was a joy to read that in determinedly democratic El Salvador, our new CAFTA ally, Salvadoran locals got together to clean up the beaches. And had wild exuberant Latin American fun together,…
CAFTA is often compared to NAFTA, but the roots of the trade pact are very different. They began in 1983 when the great Ronald Reagan launched his Caribbean Basin Initiative. As he fought the march of communism with all his strength, the far-thinking President Reagan also knew that U.S. might is based not only on military power but on economic power and more particularly, the ability to share our hope with others. The American Dream is also the Honduran Dream, the Salvadoran Dream, the Costa Rican Dream, the Guatemalan Dream. Now, with CAFTA, we all share the same dream. CAFTA…
in the House. Victory for our hemisphere. The full list of how they voted. Our friend Will has analysis and a good roundup of what other bloggers are saying here. IBD has an editorial saying this trade treaty will benefit businesses across the board, citing the word of Central Americans who are in the middle of this. It is here or here. Sigh. I am too tired to comment. But I am overjoyed.
Tick tick tick – CAFTA’s victory is expected in three hours, according to my sources, and to the Washington Post, but cross your fingers, it’s not over until it’s over… This trade treaty is the most important measure of support we can give to the entire hemisphere. Central Americans don’t want our troops. They don’t want our money. They just want a chance. They want CAFTA. Political death to anyone who votes against it. No forgiveness and no forgetting. FREE TRADE THROUGH THE AMERICAS NOW!!!!
Earlier today A.M. Mora y Leon posted an entry on the necessity of passing CAFTA, and I wanted to add to that. Today the Wall Street Journal published an article which described the kind of negotiating going on in the House of Representatives over this trade pact, and in doing so illustrated the short-sightedness which seems to perpetually dominate that august institution (see “White House Barters for Trade Pact Votes;” A4, subscription required): As the House moves toward a vote this week on President Bush’s Central American trade pact, the White House is trying to cut deals to shore up…
All stops must be pulled out to pass CAFTA. Not doing it will destroy our country. And we can kiss the hemisphere goodbye. The showdown is this week. We cannot fail. I repeat, cannot. Andres Oppenheimer, in the most powerful argument yet, explains why here. Update: The Washington Post, in its bluntest argument yet, warns that a vote against CAFTA is a vote for Hugo Chavez. It’s as simple as that.
Nicaragua’s Contras, the original freedom fighters in our lifetime, who during the Reagan Era, took on the name and tradition of the original Hungarian freedom fighters who resisted Soviet tanks in 1956, have turned their swords into plowshares and begun the extraordinary task of growing some of the world’s best coffee. Freedom-fighting Contra Cafe! Being Nicaraguan, it’s going to be good – it would be good even if sandalistas grew it – but so much the better that it’s a project of those who truly know what freedom is. Boli-Nica first discovered the phenomenon, and Instapundit has some good and…
Hugo Chavez and the communist thugs and barefoot Neanderthals one step removed from white sheets who oppose CAFTA are all about to be dealt a stinging defeat. The House leader reports that CAFTA is likely to be approved before the end of July. This is the scent of victory, because defeat is unthinkable. This is the most important legislation of the year because the fate of our entire region is at stake. I just hope we have reason to have hope. We need CAFTA.
Hillary Clinton would have you think she is a moderate Democrat, serious about free trade, reasonable on all issues. A look at her voting record, particularly her despicable ‘no’ vote on CAFTA, shutting Central America out of U.S. markets and U.S. prosperity, will tell a different story. Here is an item from American Thinker about Hillary and her extremist anti-CAFTA cohorts, freaks like CISPES and Witness for Peace. This is the fringe left, so happy togetherrrrrr. Read it here.
The Central American Free Trade Agreement, the treaty to bring our good and faithful friends from Central America into free trade with the U.S. has won – won! – a bruising battle in the Senate. We were terrified all was lost and it was not! This is the greatest victory of the year! Victory! The last step is to get CAFTA passed in the House. If it passes in the House, it will be a strike for freedom and a deadly blow to Hugo Chavez of Venezuela. Communism won’t be the way out, but standing on one own two feet…
There is no issue, none, more critical today than whether the U.S. Congress passes CAFTA. So much is at stake in the treaty that will show whether the U.S. includes Latin America in to its hopes and opportunity or coldly shuts it out. And don’t think Osama Bin Laden, Hugo Chavez and Robert Mugabe aren’t watching – they are. If CAFTA loses, every single one of them will be emboldened. This prospect is unbelievably horrible, and Bush must pay any price, battle any battle, to get this treaty passed. It is that important. If there is a political cost to…
Nicaraguans in their thousands marched to defend democracy! They don’t want the slimey, evil, communist Sandinistas to take over on legal technicalities. Right now, the Marxist Sandinistas have got President Enrique Bolanos backed into a corner trying to force him to resign. It’s Bolivian stuff. Nicaraguans do not want to lose their president and then be forced to undergo communism once again, their property confiscated Zimbabwe-style, their poverty levels rising higher than ever, and all of their democratic rights ending right then and there. They lived through it once, and they just don’t want it. Babe alert! Support Nicaragua’s freedom…
Nicaragua’s slimey unelected Sandinista bureaucrats may have finally cornered President Enrique Bolanos who busted them and their nasty rightwing allies for bonafide corruption. Now, they are demanding that he step down for ‘violating the constitution.’ Don’t tell me this isn’t political. And ominous. Read it here.
Our dear friends in Central America are fighting for their survival. Carlos Alberto Montaner has an important essay out about what he saw in the eyes of Central America’s presidents as they came to Miami to plead for the DR-CAFTA trade bill. He warns that is this bill does not pass, it will be to “invite the Devil to supper.” He’s right. I was in Los Angeles when the President of El Salvador came through on the same mission. The mass media, including the LA Times ignored it, but the room full of Salvadoran immigrants who fully shared his passion…