Blogging the democratic revolution
Two editorials about today’s launch of Telesur, Hugo Chavez’s grand new television network designed to put the region’s free press out of business, are in today’s Chicago Tribune and Monday’s Investor’s Business Daily. (A third, here, from El Semanal Digital, is in Spanish.) The Tribune points out that Castro is deeply involved in this “news” project, a bad sign given his abysmal record on the free press, and argues that if it’s as bad as it looks, no one’s going to watch it. True. IBD warns that this is an effort to replace Venezuela’s authentic free press and give Colombia’s…
Gateway Pundit rounds up the news on pro-democracy dissidents imprisoned in Cuba for protesting the regime. One of these dissidents is a woman named Martha Beatriz Roque, an organizer of the first ever Assembly for Civil Society in May. Now, at least five of the 20 dissidents have been freed. Cuban authorities have released some of the group of 20 dissidents detained shortly before a planned protest in Havana on Friday. According to the independent Cuban Commission for Human Rights, at least five people have been released. Among those who have been allowed home after being questioned overnight, is a…
We have often speculated about who and where Cuba’s Babes of Politics, the women opposed to the Fidel Castro regime, are. I have found them, I will leave you with their riveting story opposing Castro and a NYT photo that takes care of business: Quote from one of the dancers: “An artist will always be a revolutionary in the whole sense of the word,” Mr. David said, “because he’s always trying to change things, but through culture, not politics.”
This essay, by Gustavo Coronel, tells the real lowdown on how Cuban “doctors” live in Venezuela. It’s incredibly good, compiled with all primary sources. I have never seen a better essay on this topic. It’s today’s must-read. Don’t miss it. Read it here.
A thoughtful analysis by the excellent Cafe Hayek on The Thug Of Caracas and His Master Below In Havana is analysed very well, showing a good grasp of human nature. It also includes a link to an impressive editorial by a banker in Ithaca. Read it all here.
The monster at our door is keeping hurricane aid out from devastated Cuba, as protest grow. The only aid he’s taking is politicized aid, the kind that his agents pick and choose to deliver. Where is the outrage? Read it here.
There’s nothing more satisfying than Alvaro Vargas Llosa taking on the Che juggernaut, overturning every stone and debunking every myth about the fake Cuban revolutionary poseur, Che Guevara, whose main talent was murder. A Yulia he was not. He lives on in assorted tee shirts, appropriately earmarking the world’s idiots for our easy identification. Alvaro, a Peruvian, is awesome. Don’t miss it. Read it here.
I want to highlight a couple of items that reflect how the Castro-Chavez alliance is squandering Venezuela’s oil revenue in order to to sow their ideological seed. I was really concerned when I first saw this article showing that Cuba is exporting its “doctors” to, of late, politically tumultuous Belize. I’m even more concerned reading that Belize will be signing on to PetroCaribe, the much hyped oil company formed by Hugo Chavez. While the attention was focused this week on the visit of Mexican President Vicente Fox and talk of a possible PEMEX gas station in Belize, the Minister Responsible…
In deepest Venezuela, blogger Daniel Duquenal reports that Cuban dictator Fidel Castro is about to make a conqueror’s triumphant return to Caracas. Although the Cuban dictator’s faithful houseboy, Hugo Chavez, has flown to Cuba to worship at the Beast’s feet every weekend or so, Castro’s last trip to Venezuela was three years ago. Now, Daniel reports that Castro’s return to Caracas will have a very different feel. Castro had stayed out of Caracas for years because he was so detested in Venezuela he was a liability for Chavez. It was that bad. Now, Chavez doesn’t care what Venezuelans think. In…
Stefania Lapenna writes a dazzling essay today on The American Thinker, outlining the meaning of Cuba’s democracy conference held in Havana, including many aspects of it that might not be so obvious. Stefania is a brilliant young thinker whose original work will be read for years to come for its insight. Think I’m exaggerating? You won’t after you read it here.
The Luis Posada Carriles terrorism case has drawn a consensus in the mainstream media about the guy’s guilt and the need to throw him in jail even if it is, or especially if it is, in Castro’s Cuba or Chavez’s Venezuela. Cuban Americans have a different view, though, and a prominent Cuban-American, Humberto Fontova, writes an essay that Val at Babalu has linked, exploring some of the complicating factors. It all looks very different to Cuban Americans who are united in their struggle against the monstrous Fidel Castro. The fact that the mainstream media is in glee about having a…
It’s Cuba and it’s loaded with babes. Just as the Cuban revolution is launched, we start seeing the babes all right, and the Cuban girls are dazzling. Val’s got a choice girl from the Cuban nostalgia festival, his window on the world to Cubanismo which blogged away in conjunction with the Cuban democracy struggle in Havana. Here she is, one more babe of politics and we’ll see more.
You know how it goes: as soon as your diplomats get expelled, its finally a humanitarian crisis! European lawmakers are finally urging their countries to get tough on Castro. This, of course, after they lifted sanctions on the regime earlier in the year. Two former Spanish senators, Isabel San Baldomero and Rosa Lopez Garnica, were expelled, as were lawmakers from Germany, Italy and the Czech Republic. Arnold Vaatz, a German lawmaker who was expelled from Cuba on Friday, called for the European Union to take a stronger stand against Cuba. ééWith its decision to lift (diplomatic) sanctions against Cuba, the…
Is that a great headline or what? I wish I had thought of it myself. Read the whole thing here.
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…
Lovely Stefania in Sardinia, Italy has some truly awe-inspiring near-live photos from the ongoing Cuban Democracy Convention outside Havana right now. The power of these pictures is unbelievable. Only in the blogosphere can any revolution be so chronicled. I dare you to look at these photos without weeping. See them here.
Note: I posted this earlier at Bloggledygook, but then realized that the back story has a lot to do with the struggle for Cuba. Make no mistake: there are those who will do anything to make excuses for Fidel. A post in abdymok on Reporters Without Borders (or RSF for Reporters sans fronti????res) caught my eye this morning. Founded in 1979 by Robert Menard, RSF is a rights organization based in France that monitors press freedom abuses around the globe, with special focus on Cuba. It has been a frequent and vocal critic of the US, most recently over “self-censorship”…
Here is the first mainstream media editorial I have seen hailing Cuba’s brave democratic revolutionaries – it can be read here.
Miguel has some new developments on the Posada Carriles case that illustrates just how weird this case is getting. There’s all kinds of information the mainstream media hasn’t touched on yet, and should. Why does the government of Venezuela really want this guy back? That it does doesn’t make sense, so it’s going from bad to bizarre. Read the whole weird thing here.
Castro’s henchmen have disappeared their first delegate to the Conference on Civil Society. His name is Antuan Clemente Hernandez. His event is to be held this weekend. They know what a threat it is to the communist regime. It’s Cuba’s Charter 77, its Declaration of Independence. And its participants face the same risks as those brave men of history. Stefania has the first alert, and my writeup on Babalu about this struggle against a monster who cannot countenance freedom is here. UPDATE: Juan Paxety has information about a new support center for the Civil Society assembly inaugurated in Miami here.
Our good friend blogger Stefania in faraway Sardinia alerts us that Cuba’s brave civil society delegates, seeking to forge a free Cuba out of the ruins of Castroism, in a conference this week, are now being abused by Castro’s goons. My writeup on Babalu is here.
On Val’s Babalu blog, I wrote a long essay on the Posada Carriles case. It is a foreign policy issue, but now that Fidel Castro has made the claim that it’s a U.S. ‘credibility’ issue, there is a people-power dimension to it. People with access to mass communication would think so, and that is who Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez seek to appeal to with this extradition demand directed at the U.S. Those elites among them hate us as intensely as they hate the purple fingers of our friends the Iraqi voters. They know we support revolution. Hence, their hollow…
Val has important updates on Cubans’ efforts to forge a civil society from the depths of Castrodom. Note that they are doing it from Havana, showing a courage we can only marvel at. And in what will surely go down as a vote of shame, there were actual U.S. Congressinsects who voted against supporting them in their effort to end tyranny. Why oh why are these lowlife citizens of our free country? There is no order in the universe! Read it here and here. UPDATE: The Weekly Standard’s item is here.
“Fidel Castro asserted terrorist should be judged in Venezuela” goes one headline from one of those impartial and objective Cuban propaganda sources; another one reads “New York Times Urges US Government to Deny Asylum to Terrorist Posada Carriles”… The majority of the 176 Posada Carriles-related articles, indexed by Google News, originate from Cuban or Venezuelan funded sources. Fidel Castro’s and his toyboy’s ‘assertions and demands’ aside -as if words uttered by them had any relevance or weight- the US administration is faced with a dilemma; that of returning a long time collaborator to Venezuela in the know that revolutionary justice…
U.S. Congress has just passed a resolution offering support and encouragement to Cuba’s brave civil society advocates, who, like the creators of the Declaration of Independence, are meeting in perilous conditions in Castro’s island hellhole to forge the beginnings of a new civil society, a new social contract, a new means of governance in what they hope will be a free post-Castro Cuba. It is a thing of beauty to know there are such brave souls out there willing to fight for what is right at their own potential peril. It’s also gratifying to know that the better members of…