Blogging the democratic revolution
Some newspapers have dismissed Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s moving of his oil company’s headquarters to a Havana, Cuba, as just a small detail. Well, it is not a small detail, according to one respected Venezuelan journalist, it is a sign of a spreading shadow of tyranny over a huge region of many flags. Daniel Duquenal has a careful translation of the entire essay here. UPDATE: Venezuelan oilman Gustavo Coronel’s essay on the same topic is a must-read here.
Stefania over in beautiful Sardinia has a tremendously good blog called Free Thoughts, highlighting freedom struggles and democratic revolutions around the world. What makes it so valuable is the singularity of her information. It’s news we don’t see here, not even in the rightwing press. She also has a lot of photos. Scrolling through it is fascinating. She now has photos from deep inside Cuba, pictures of the little groups meeting and trying to forge civil society in the ramshackle Castro-ruins that pass for housing in Havana. They look like people in a war zone. But their brave, defiant faces…
Credible sources inside Cuba report that Val Prieto’s estimable Babalu Blog has been banned by Cuba’s brutal dictator. That means his eloquent words are resonating grandly to Cubans through the pinhole access to the Internet a few Cubans have. It also means that the cringing and cowardly caudillo supremo is thrashing around like a chawed up turkey now that the cat’s eaten half of it. Val is blogging Cuba’s democratic revolution. Shrivel, tyrant, squeal, and die. Vaya Val! UPDATE: Steve’s humdinger analysis on the situation is an absolute must-read. I am so tempted to post it, writing doesn’t get better…
Fidel Castro’s Big Dumb Houseboy down in Caracas will listen to any sweet talk from his hairy Havana caudillo provided he says it nicely enough. That was why it was so easy to convince the hulky fool to turnnnnnn the checkbook, uhrrrr …. precious oil resources … over … to Castro’s own loving care. Fidel, you see, has convinced Chavez that he knows his wants and needs better than even Chavez himself. And can take care of Venezuela’s oil supply mucccccchhhhhh better than the Venezuelans can. It all makes perfect sense. Doesn’t it? Miguel Octavio has the deadly lowdown on…
Whether the MSM reports it or not, Latin America has been heating up with Cuba and Venezuela seeking to destabilize and undermine democracy throughout the entire continent. At a time when the Community of Democracies is meeting in Santiago, Chile, its virtual antagonist composed of the most criminal minds in the western hemisphere converged on Havana to seek an alternative to free trade and democracy. I have never in my life seen such a perverted brothel of lowlifes, making perhaps the most up-front declaration of intentions I have ever heard. HAVANA (Reuters) – The leaders of Cuba and Venezuela relished…
Alvaro Vargas Llosa, an author of The Complete Guide To The Perfect Latin American Idiot (it has a whole chapter on Castro worship) and now, Liberty for Latin America: How to undo 500 years of state oppression will be interviewed by Jim Lehrer of PBS. Alvaro Vargas Llosa is one of the world’s foremost experts on Latin America. Like Hernando de Soto, he’s a Peruvian, and he’s now at the Independent Institute, in Oakland. When people ask me where I learned about the place, I always point in his direction. He is one of the most brilliant and interesting intellectuals…
Alek Boyd has a disturbing e-mail message from someone inside Venezuela’s phone system, reporting the growing signs of a potential Internet blackout in beleaguered Venezuela. If so, this would be the first steps toward making the Internet as accessible to Venezuelans as it is to Cubans. And that’s not a step upward. Read it here.
How bad is it for Venezuela? Is it really a colony of Cuba? This essay by Gustavo Coronel should settle the question definitively. Read it here.
Spain’s Foreign Secretary Miguel Angel Moratinos expressed from Washington “the military ships and planes sold to Venezuela ought to be considered as humanitarian aid”. Whilst in Capitol Hill he was scolded by both Republicans and Democrats with respect to the shady relationship that Spain maintains of late with the Cuban dictator and his Venezuelan toyboy. What’s more, John Kerry declined to a pre-arranged meeting with him. However Zapatero’s representative did have the time to keep at defending the indefensible and went as far as to suggest that Bush may be ready to meet with Zapatero. Well I for one doubt…
It’s started. Cubans in Cuba are publicly meeting to begin their post-Castro revolution. Babalu has it. Don’t miss it. Read it here.
You’d think Carlos Santana wouldn’t make a mistake about what’s hip and what’s out, but that’s just what he did at the Academy Awards last month, showing up in a big Che Guevara tee shirt. So old. So out. So out of it. And so damn despicable. Santana learned to play his instruments with Cuba’s famed Lion of the Bongos, Mongo Santamaria in the clubs of Tijuana after Mongo fled the horrors of the Castro regime. Santana knows very well what the Castro regime is all about. And he went and wore the disgusting tee shirt anyway. Val at Babalublog…
An amazing trend is beginning to show up, on all places, at Ivy League campuses. There, young people who were barely old enough to remember the collapse of The Wall in East Germany in 1989, have sensed a new something in the air and are making it their own statement. Attractive young Ivy League students, some of them sons and daughters of Cuban exiles, and others just interested in Cuba, are coming out and challenging the prevailing Che tee shirt logic of ignorance and stupidity. At Princeton, there was a big spontaneous demonstration against communism in Cuba. Other kids are…
Venezuelans are barraged daily with exhortations about the wonderful state of Cuba’s progress. One blogger, Daniel in Yaracuy, notes the Tortugas refugees, and thinks there must be another story. What a sad thing to have to contemplate that from Venezuela, which is rapidly heading down that Cuban path.
Babalu blog has a tremendous scoop on a unreported story of great interest to anyone who’s keeping an eye on Cuba. Fourteen Cuban refugees reached Dry Tortuga in a rickety boat and with it won their right to stay in the U.S. The arduous journey and the determination of the Cubans is chronicled – with pictures – here. Val also has an moving editorial about how the exclusive story was obtained. The blogosphere is rapidly becoming the most important place for chronicling the eventual collapse of the communist regime of Cuba. The significance is historic.
And over in the next communist regime, it’s wild caribou marinated in blueberries and other confections. It’s been quite a sybarite feast this weekend for the hemisphere’s communist regimes. Here Val at Babalu fills us in on the dinner menu in Havana from a Canadian trade mission. The excesses are Bourbonite. But alongside that, doesn’t it give you a funny feeling that this might be the decadent end? One day, these excesses will be as memorable as Marie Antoinette’s champagne and cake eating feasts. Read the whole thing here.
Last year, Castro threw 75 brilliant, thinking people – economists, journalists, leaders – into his dungeons. This wasn’t the usual garbage from him, it was a desperate effort to destroy a new generation of potential opposition leaders as he declines into his fading years. The U.S. embassy put up its Christmas display to let them know they are not forgotten, triggering a rabid reaction from Castro’s goons. But most of the imprisoned are still there. Val at Babalu blog doesn’t forget. He has a tribute to them here.
I was a little surprised by how much attention I got from an essay I wrote for Babalu Blog the other night on Castro’s wealth, but in retrospect his position on the Forbes billionaire’s list is an important news story as the the Cuban dictator begins to eye the vultures circling. He’s been on the Forbes list before but now the value of his fortune is suddenly sensititive as his grip on power slides, his party hacks begin to jockey for power, and Cubans begin to learn the true scope of how his vast wealth derives from their poverty. And…
Castro apologists – in the media, in Hollywood, in education, in every corrupted institution of America are always bleating about the ‘virtues’ of ‘free’ Cuban health care. Sure, Cuba may be an odious tyranny whose citizens would walk across a bed of landmines to flee or climb aboard a leaky tire raft headed for the high seas to escape … but it’s still got all that free health care. They parrot this line all the time. Val Prieto at Babalu blog shows firsthand evidence with photos the condition of Cuba’s best hospital. He’s got powerful commentary giving context, too, and…
Cubans and Cuban-Americans who oppose tyranny have an unusual problem in the United States: It’s not just that they are shut out from all participation in American culture, such as films, books and television. It’s also that they are openly abused and derided by the most powerful cultural exporting machine the world has ever known – Hollywood. This juggernaut has not only slammed the door on Cuban-Americans but hurled rocks at them from the window. Val Prieto at Babalu blog has seen a new example of this cultural attack on Cubans in the U.S. in an American television show that…
Europe is busy telling Castro’s communist Cuba to ‘dialogue’ with it on human rights. Carlos Alberto Montaner argues that if Europe is serious about human rights in Cuba, it will ask Castro’s regime to dialogue with Cuba’s opposition instead of Europe itself. Given Europe’s tendency to side with failed regimes over ascendent peoples, jealously undermine successful nations that don’t, and stew about its lack of influence in the world because of these repeatedly bad choices, I can’t see them taking him up on this idea. However, Montaner is right.
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…
Publius Pundit isn’t the only one thinking about democratic revolutions – it’s a idea that’s caught fire in the minds of people all over the world. Val Prieto at Babal???? reports that there’s a young man at Columbia University, Loren Crowe, who’s studied in Cuba and now made it his mission to get documentary word out, in a non-ideological way, about that closed society. He’s seen the place up close and he’s doing it to counter all the tired Che-tee-shirt romanticism he sees around campus. What Loren’s doing is a revolution, too. I had a look at his site and…
Cuban refugees risking it all to flee communism arrive at the gates of Guantanamo and are ordered by US troops back to communism – through a field of landmines. One of the troops who had to carry out these illegal orders tells the terrible story here and I blanch at the inhumanity. Where is the outrage? Update: The serviceman who describes the account says this happened ten years ago and from what he understands, US policy has changed. Who says Cuban-Americans’ raised eyebrows at Clinton were confined only to Elian? Clinton was capable of incredible inhumanity to the helpless.
In a truly alarming development, Miguel Octavio reports that Venezuela’s dictatorship is handing over the job of issuing identity cards for every Venezuelan to a Cuban “company.” With this measure, every Venezuelan’s fingerprints, photograph and identity particulars will be in on file with Castro’s secret police. Every one. Given that the Chavez dictatorship enacted a recent law to allow Castro’s secret agents to question, arrest and spirit back to Cuba for Castro’s “justice” any Venezuelan they like, this complete citizen database in the hands of Cuba’s secret police has got to be the most damning dangerous thing Hugo Chavez has…