Blogging the democratic revolution
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…
It’s going to be a horror show. Sumate, the voter-rights civil society group whose leadership is now headed for Hugo Chavez’s dungeons on treason charges, warns that the next election will not be fair. Hugo Chavez has gerrymandered and manipulated it already in his favor. He can’t lose. But that doesn’t mean Venezuelans aren’t trying…
The following is a translated letter from Akbar Ganji, courtesy of the Free Ganji blog. It is an interesting read, from a man who is becoming the largest rallying cause for human rights inside Iran.
I’ve heard about this for two weeks and have been awaiting its release. Rep. Christopher Smith (R-NJ) and Co-chairman of the Helsinki Commission has introduced legislation into the House entitled the Central Asia Democracy and Human Rights Act. Under CADHRA, all non-humanitarian assistance to each government covered under the legislation would be conditioned on the…
Three students were shot dead in cold blood this week by Venezuelan police who claim they mixed the students up with some criminals they were hunting. Just like that, three lived snuffed out on a sunny street in Caracas. It was all just … another … mistake. That’s brought thousands of people into the streets…
As I mentioned here last April, Luis Ramirez at Voice of America is the best China reporter there is. I noted his daring efforts to report the truth about what is going on in China and and cited his long string of impressive pieces. I was right. Luis has now won one of the most…
An unbelievable 1150 people have been murdered in cold blood by police in just one Venezuelan state. The death squads, which have never before been seen in Venezuela until Hugo Chavez came along, are now spiraling out of control as lawlessness reigns. Activists are taking it to the National Assembly. Alek Boyd has the news…
King Gyanendra ended the three month state of emergency this past April 30, meaning he was supposed to ease up tight controls on civil liberties imposed since February. Of course, that didn’t happen. In the most recent example of his power grab, over 100 journalists were arrested for protesting against the restrictions. Police arrested nearly…
Miguel at MABB on Bolivia has a very significant item utterly ignored in the U.S. media about how Bolivia’s protestors are being coerced. They are being shaken down by Marxist social movements like Evo Morales’ ally FEJUVE, which sends block committees into neighborhoods of El Alto, checking to see that at least one member of…
Joe Katzman from Winds of Change pens how Mugabe changed his mind about guns. As many of you know, I’m from Canada. We have a pretty different attitude to guns up here, and I must say that American gun culture has always kind of puzzled me. To me, one no more had a right to…
Mark Steyn’s latest is out, and it’s absolutely stunning. I won’t even bother to excerpt anything here, just go and read the whole thing.
It is a unique blessing of the free world that its people can express a wide variety of opinions and choose how to live peacefully without being persecuted by their own governments. These are examples of real, universal human rights that need to be defended and brought to the dark corners of the world. This…
Before anything, read Austin Bay’s fabulous piece fisking Amnesty International on their bizarre claim that Gitmo and Abu Ghraib are modern day gulags, and that the U.S. is the leader in human rights abuses in the world. Hahahahahaha. Right. Anyhow, I received an email with a really good idea: Go to Google News and search…
When I lived in Oxford, I remember how tough the U.K. courts were in granting asylum to Romanians fleeing Ceaucescu’s communist hellhole, perhaps fearing a flood of people. They gave almost no one a break. This being England, things don’t change that much, and I doubt U.K. courts are any less tough. So it tells…
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…
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…
Luis Tascon, the Venezuelan congressman who put signers of a recall referendum against dictator Hugo Chavez on a special Internet-accessible blacklist, has met a miserable demise. In this way, he would seem to parallel Joseph McCarthy, who died an isolated drunk. That said, the signers of the petition cannot be compared to McCarthy’s targets –…
“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…
An envoy from the United States met with King Gyanendra yesterday evening to press for the restoration of civil liberties. As you may recall, the king imposed a state of emergency on February 1 and dissolved the parliament, leading to the arrest and detainment of hundreds of journalists, students, and political opponents. Constitutionally, the state…
It was the winter of 1982. It was the freezing nadir of the Cold War. Soldiarity’s Revolution in Poland had been bitterly crushed. I was a student in England, passionate about Soviet studies and in the center of great scholarship. As Greenham Common leftists camped out to protest cruise missiles, Ronald Reagan and the U.S….
I’ve been talking to a 37 year old man named Andrew (last name withheld) over email, who was born in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and moved to the United States, joined the navy, and is now a citizen. He notes to me that while we in the blogosphere have talked a lot about the election there…
No, it’s not a democracy. No, Hugo Chavez was not fairly elected. Yes, there are arbitrary arrests. Yes, there are political prisoners. Alek Boyd has an ever-lengthening list 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…
You may remember earlier in the week a couple Bahraini bloggers were arrested and people protested. Well, they’ve been released and with an added boon to all of us: They’ve passed some pro-democracy legislation. The Cabinet yesterday appr????oved the Chamber of Deputies???????? decision to introduce human rights and democracy as subjects at the intermediate and…
A story so hideous I can barely think about it. This is the third such incident in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. This is how Chavez deals with dissidents and troublemakers … and warns the others. To make it even more suspicious, the soldiers, ages 19 and 20, injured in the incident were improving – but all…