Blogging the democratic revolution
Marxist party hacks, the world over, have the world’s worst record on the environment. Black rivers, dead lakes and Chernobyl are their legacy stretching from the Oder to Hainan. It’s particularly bad when they go after nature preserves, distributing them as political spoils to reward party hacks for their loyalty. That is why the Venezuela government’s expropriation of a priceless nature reserve, Hato Pinero, full of rare anacondas, wildcats, orchids and Amazon rainforest creatures is so disturbing. The Chavez political machine is about to turn this natural treasure into a wasteland. Blogger Daniel in Yaracuy has the full story here.
I just flipped through the keywords on Publius’ tracking system and one keyword search a minute ago was the whole sentence: “Is Tulio Alvarez in jail?” The answer to that seems to be yes, because this lawyer was sentenced to prison by a Venezuelan puppet court, but anyone who knows more, please help us out via comments here.
Val Prieto at the excellent Babalu Blog is performing a public service by holding the New York Public Library accountable for its Castro worship. They’ve done it before, selling Che Guevara wristwatches, and he’s forced them to stop. But they are at it again and he isn’t going to let their dewey-eyed effort to legitimize the hemisphere’s most brutal tyrant go uncriticized. Be sure to click on to see Val’s lashing little note about the Library’s elementary ignorance of Cuban culture in its advertising. (Remember, this is a library, repository of learning, maybe these people should open up a book…
President Hugo Chavez has stacked the Supreme Court with his political cronies, people of very little legal background, and they’ve begun reversing decisions from the previous court – in a bid to persecute Chavez’s political opponents. Those who oppose Chavez are finding that earlier rulings in their favor, shielding them from political revenge, are now perfectly reversible. Venezuela’s bloggers call this a dangerous development. Shorter and longer descriptions can be read here and here. UPDATE: And a very good essay by Jorge Arena here.
Recently proposed in the Senate and the House is the ADVANCE Democracy Act. This bill, as it suggests in the title, would make the spread of democracy and liberty official U.S. policy. To advance and strengthen democracy globally through peaceful means and to assist foreign countries to implement democratic forms of government, to strengthen respect for individual freedom, religious freedom, and human rights in foreign countries through increased United States advocacy, to strengthen alliances of democratic countries, to increase funding for programs of nongovernmental organizations, individuals, and private groups that promote democracy, and for other purposes. This bill is huge,…
I was bothered by Indonesia’s Abu Bakar Bashir verdict and realized it was going to amount to a political struggle in Indonesia’s six-year-old democracy, because voters there had just elected a new president who ran for office on an anti-terror platform. That sham verdict is going to pose some problems for Indonesia’s new president as terrorists grow emboldened there.
Why does the Venezuela’s thuggish dictatorship cringe at the cold spotlight of one of Aleksander Boyd’s meticulous investigations? Find out here.
One of the worst canards out there, sponsored by pro-Chavez leftists, is the repetitively boring claim that Venezuela’s opposition “has no ideas” other than to get rid of widely despised Marxist dictator Hugo Chavez. Alek Boyd at VCrisis has an interesting outline of proposals he thinks would benefit Venezuela in a post-Chavez area. It’s a fascinating glimpse of what’s likely to come and I enjoyed the read.
Remember Stalin’s airbrushed photos, reflecting who was purged and who was in favor? The trend seems to be beginning in Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s political propaganda these days. Venezuelan blogger Miguel has come up with a classic blog expose about crowd pictures in Hugo Chavez’s propaganda. All of the people in the crowds are phony repeat images. He has the photos with diagrammed lines showing the ridiculous fakery. So much for Chavez being a popular guy, he can’t even get a crowd together to illustrate his own propaganda!
I was just passing by C-Span2, and they had George Soros on talking about his book, The Bubble of American Supremacy, something I will probably not be buying. However, we was talking extensively about the Open Society Institute, something I find more valuable than his political leanings in the United States. When asked why he created it, he responded that it was “the result of a mid-life crisis.” Well, I’m glad he didn’t simply settle for a motorcycle.
Winfield Myers emailed me to let me know about this post of his on Democracy Project. Harvard will be paying for six Iraqis to attend its institution for the weekend. A fantastic idea, in theory, until the curriculum became available: Getting full exposure to the typically busy life of a Harvard student, the Iraqi visitors will have a jam-packed schedule during their time in Cambridge. The students will attend the conference course Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality 1203, ???????Gender and the Cultures of US Imperialism,??????? appear at a variety of luncheons and receptions, and participate in a panel discussion…