Blogging the democratic revolution
Fausta has an impressive piece at Pajamas Media on how and why Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez was able to rise to absolute power as a dictator of Venezuela, which he announced on Jan. 9 and consolidated on Feb. 4. If you’re new to Venezuela, or if you just want to read something summed up perfectly, make…
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez assumed power to dictate by decree today Source: EFE, via Yahoo! Mexico Never let it be known that Hugo Chavez is not a dictator now. Anything he says, goes. The Venezuelan rubber-stamp assembly passed a legislative bill to let Hugo “rule by decree.”He will continue to expropriate property, devalue the money,…
Australian patriot babes celebrate National Day on Friday Source: Tim Blair Hat tip: Instapundit More Aussie freedom babes Source: The Daily Telegraph of Australia Australians were told by their nanny-state minders that their beautiful blue Australian flag was nothing more than nasty gang colors and something to be put out of sight, for fear of…
U.S.-Mexico border walk, near San Diego and Tijuana Source: Alex Jones, via Dan Watman Even if you support the U.S. border fence with Mexico, you cannot help but feel deeply saddened by the very idea of a wall going up between two close nations whose citizens’ lives and cultures overlap eternally. A high Stalag-style fence…
Our own dear Stefania Lapenna has published her first column for Townhall on the details of Cuba’s rising democracy movement. Cuba’s democrats realize deeply that there can be no ‘reform’ of Castro’s dictatorship in Cuba, there can only be change – more specifically – peaceful revolutionary change. That informs their tactics and as Castro withers,…
What is the impact of the world democracy revolution? In Arab states, there’s been a significant change toward democratic revolution in the past two years, according to this absolutely fascinating report from a writer who visited Dubai and talked to James Zogby, a respected pollster of the Arab world. He found that young Arabs, both…
Whoo hoo! Our favorite writer, Alvaro Vargas Llosa, has done the impossible in a new essay – taken on sex in Colombia as a struggle for democracy. A perfect topic for Publius Pundit to link, so go see what he’s written here. In Colombia, young women have told their young men to drop the gangster…
Remember Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador? The Obragore of Mexico? Today Mexico’s election arbitrators told him to get lost. Mexico’s electoral tribunal making its ruling on July 2’s election Source: AFP, via Yahoo! News Today the Mexican electoral tribunal ruled that there was no cheating in Mexico’s July 2 presidential election, and all of his 300-plus…
How is this for a new idea? States that have more squiggly borders, on the whole, have more stability and cohesion. States that have harsh, arbitrary ruler-drawn line borders have a terrible tendency toward internecine warfare. Any student of African politics knows something about this, but perhaps for the first time, economists have tried to…
There’s a new U.S. development on the horizon that’s coming on us like a Singapore sunrise – which is to say, fast. Small towns in America are rebelling against unchecked immigration, which has spread well past the big cities like Los Angeles and deep into the small towns of America. Tiny Hazleton, Pennsylvania got itself…
Alvaro Vargas Llosa is now in Lebanon and writing of the experience from his brilliant political and economic perspective, as well as from his eyes on the ground. Like some of our Publius posters, he warns that Israel risks destroying Lebanon’s vibrant civil society, just as it’s beginning to regain its confidence, even as it…
Whenever Sandalistas gather in Caracas, the net result is a grotesque orgy of consumption, where leftwing political tourist after leftwing political tourist buys up Che t-shirts, Hugo Chavez barbie dolls, hippie bracelets, Castro bumper stickers, tapes of Chavez’s speeches, pot-leaf ski caps, fake Birkenstocks, Hugo-Chavez coffee cups, hammer and sickle posters, Allende backpacks and anything…
I hate to have to waste bandwidth on this but there are still people out there who think Hugo Chavez has improved the situation in Venezuela, and is only in power because he is popular. Having been there and talked to people, I strongly doubt it. But I also used my eyes. If it’s true…
Ralph Peters, writing an exclusive on Real Clear Politics notes some reservations about the very concept of democratic revolution, saying it’s a tool that requires skills and people who are just beginning to use the tool often don’t have the right skills. Do you agree with Ralph?
Miguel Buitrago at the excellent MABB blog, just got back from a conference in Turkey devoted to discussing world democracy movements. People from different countries got together and compared notes on the progress of democratic revolution. Miguel, who is from Bolivia, said that three other Bolivians also were there. Turkey’s prime minister attended along with…
Today, Mercer released its annual list of the world’s most liveable cities, based on quality of living. I Googled around and finally found a whole list of the study here. I stripped out all the non-Americas cities and just left in the cities that are in Latin America, in the Caribbean, or in U.S. cities…
I co-hosted two interviews on Belarus and Burma at Global Crisis Wacth/Clandestine Radio. The first, Belarus-related, starts from the minute ‘1 and had our dear friend Robert Mayer as guest. The second, Burma-related, starts from the 22’40 minute. Listen to them here I’d like to thank GCW/CR’s Nick Grace and Rich Lafayette for granting me…
A very brave independent Cuban journalist is on his 57th day of a hunger strike for the right to Internet access in Cuba. Guillermo Farinas Hernandez’s case has gotten little media attention, but it’s an important struggle for freedom of information inside news-starved Cuba. Castro knows very well the power of the Internet and its…
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…
The setup seems so marvelous, the U.S. bipartisan congressional National Endowment for Democracy gives funds to many nongovernment organizations around the world to spread democratic revolution. But what happens when the grants blows up in the recipients’ faces? Such as Venezuela, where Maria Corina Machado is facing charges for taking the money? Does anyone look…
In democratizing countries emerging from tyranny, where tremendous injustice has occurred, there is usually some effort to call the past into account. South Africa is a good example, where truth commissions have forged national reconciliation, and Germany after World War II is another, where Naziism was totally repudiated and renounced, and large compensation payments were…
No one, not even north Americans or Mexicans, waves the national flag quite as intensely as Venezuelans do. The three bright primary colors and the halo of seven white stars, en masse, on a bright blue day, is a spectacular sight vividly illustrative of the anti-Chavez opposition. The photo at the side of Daniel’s blog…
Today is the 300th anniversary of the birthday of Benjamin Franklin. He was anything but a Babe of Politics, but he was a magnificent revolutionary at a very old age – showing you don’t have to be! Franklin’s inspiring revolutionary history as well as his many revolutionary inventive and institutional accomplishments are recounted in this…
In Hugo Chavez’s 21st Century Socialist Venezuela. El Universal has a superb roundup of the year, documenting the continuous stream of expropriations defacing Venezuela as its democracy slides into tyranny. Read it here and here.
Cuban exiles at Killcastro.com (the name comes from Havana street graffiti) went over, point by point, U.S. proposed reforms for a post-Castro Cuba. They focused exclusively on how effective each individual measure would likely be to dislodge “The Beast” from power and enable the blossoming of freedom in Cuba, the coming Havana Spring all hope…