Blogging the democratic revolution
(Disclaimer: I’m in a heavy-OT zone today, and do not have the time to write this up with the care that it deserves, but the issue needs to be raised, because the “common wisdom” is beginning to accrete in a dangerous direction.) Bosnia has brought up Serbia on war crimes. Yes, the entire nation. This has never been done before, and there’s a good reason for that: the Allies didn’t hang the entire population of Germany for war crimes after World War II, the entire Serbian nation didn’t somehow wake up one morning and think “let’s go murder all the…
The declaration of a state of emergency, the possibility of a military coup, and the rising chance of mass street protests are all challenges to democracy in the Philippines. After twenty years following the original People Power Revolution, it’s high time that all of the country’s stakeholders begin to respect the rule of law. Especially the military. While President Arroyo’s declaration of emergency may be both shady as well as bad politics, especially in light of her lost legitimacy following a corruption scandal last year, the military has done more to undermine democracy in the Philippines than any other single…
After so many complaints that the United Nations Human Rights Commission is host to some of the most abusive human rights violators on the planet, one would think that the United States is being hypocritical by opposing planned reform at the UN for scrapping it and creating a new Human Rights Council that’s more effective in dealing with these issues. That’s what you’d think if you only read the headline and first paragraph of this Guardian Unlimited article, anyway. U.S. Against Proposed U.N. Rights Panel UNITED NATIONS (AP) – The United States announced its opposition to the proposed new U.N.…
Source: The Nation It’s getting bad again in Thailand. The Bangkok Post says the crisis is deepening. The opposition to billionaire Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, led by rival media tycoon Sondhi Limthongkul, is giving Thaksin till Saturday to resign or they will chase him out. About 50,000 demonstrators filled the streets Sunday, and another 25,000 filled the streets Monday. All credible analysts point to 1992-style violence, the memory of which is pretty grim. An old monk-general who led that 1992 People Power revolt against what was then Thailand’s tinpot generals, has recently resurfaced at rallies and people are starting to…
This would be a completely irrelevant toss-off post except for its potential significance. The MDF (Hungarian Democratic Forum) is raising some eyebrows with a couple pieces of news lately. It needs to, because as discussed before, the MDF is in a fight for its life when it comes to parliamentary representation. If it cannot make 5%, and that’s looking increasingly doubtful, then it’s out there with the also-rans. Which makes it significant that the MDF: 1. Has said they will neither enter into coalition with FIDESZ, nor support them with second-round votes. FIDESZ, whose proposals are increasingly self-contradictory, is no…
Take that, Hugo Chavez! Colombia has chosen freedom and prosperity over dependency, isolation and handouts! A free trade pact was signed this morning with the U.S.! It was one long hard tough slog in negotiations, but President Alvaro Uribe and the U.S. Trade Representative finally came to common ground after lots of give and take, as is right between two good friends. Today, Colombia now has access to the world’s biggest market, will get all the computers and technology and whatever it want from our markets, and we in the U.S. in turn will benefit from Colombia’s ever more competitively…
A Chavista women’s collective in a small city called Los Teques in Venezuela recently sent this letter to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and some of his key minions. If this is Chavista, then we are ALL Chavistas. Their fascinating statement highlights the growing popular opposition to the corruption, the thievery, the bureaucratization and the barbarism of the Chavez “revolution.” The women are not closing their eyes. Although these women say they still have faith in Chavez, they certainly have lost any such faith in Chavez’s underlings who are supposedly distributing the spoils but in fact pocketing them. Poor people do…
President Bush has once again renewed his moral support of the Iranian people and their aspirations to total freedom. This time, it seems, he’ll do more than merely talking about freedom; he pledged economic aid to the Iranian freedom fighters and those who risk their life by taking to the streets against the regime. It remains to be seen if these funds will be directed to genuine opposition groups rather than to ‘reformers’, who want to save a part of the regime. Indeed, to be effective, the funds should be directed to those student,workers and women’s movements that don’t have…
Our dear friends, Darsi Ferrer, his wife Yusnaimy and other freedom fighters are keeping to help poor Cubans by directly visiting them in their favelas.Dari’s wife, Yusnaimy, even risked to be thrown in jail along with two Czech women for talking to ordinary Cubans about their daily problems. Czech model Helena Houdova also contributed to this noble humanitarian effort. To see all the photos check out here (scroll down) and here To help Darsi’s humanitarian work, please contact him or his wife: Darsi Ferrer Ramirez: darsiferrerÉyahoo.com Yusnaimy Jorge Soca : yusnaimyjorgeÉyahoo.com Address: Calle San Bernardino 265 entre Serrano y Durege,…
The sweeping victory of Hamas in the Palestinian parliamentary election has the Bush administration and foreign policy experts on their toes. Isn????????t democracy supposed to be what frees the entire region from tyranny? That????????s how the meme goes. Yet fairer elections in Egypt gave one quarter of the seats to the Muslim Brotherhood, and now Hamas rules the territories. If we define democracy on these terms alone, then what we have on our hands is a political census that shows the possibility of many countries electing Islamic extremists to power. I seriously doubt the world wants to handle more than…
President Gloria Arroyo has announced a state of emergency in the Philippines following the thwarting of a coup plot. Somewhat ironically, today is the 20th anniversary of the original People Power revolution that overthrew dictator Ferdinand Marcos. MANILA (Reuters) – President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo declared emergency rule in the Philippines on Friday after the military said it foiled a coup attempt, but analysts criticized the move as unwarranted and potentially damaging to the economy. Talk of plots against Arroyo, who survived a crisis last year over allegations of vote-rigging and corruption, has been running high around this week’s anniversary of…
The blogosphere has been abuzz about the bombing of the al-Askari shrine in Iraq, one of holiest shrines in Shia Islam. Of course, news reports always labels shrines as one of the holiest shrines, but it’s definitely true this time. This one is at the top. The attack was so profoundly felt by Shia Muslims that it has led to attacks on Sunni Muslim mosques and believers all over the country in retribution. Some think this may be a precursor to civil war. Others think not. I think not. But many haven’t looked at is the politics behind the attack;…
Alek Boyd at VCrisis and Daniel at Venezuela News & Views alert us to a new Chavista propaganda offensive against some of the best reporting on Venezuela coming out these days. It looks like Venezuela’s attacks on the free press do not stop at its water’s edge, but extend to any media anywhere in the world that dares report the truth on Venezuela. In a spectacular article, The Christian Science Monitor sent a freelance reporter up to Venezuela’s mountain shantytowns and interviewed people about just how they felt about Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Not surprisingly, Venezuela’s poor have the same…
If it weren’t sketchy enough that this is the second opposition leader assassinated in Kazakhstan within the past three months, the head of the government intelligence agency has resigned. He did so because several of his officers were implicated in the murder and have confessed, or so the story goes! ALMATY, Kazakhstan ???????? Kazakhstan’s intelligence chief resigned Wednesday after several of his subordinates were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the slaying of an opposition leader. The opposition has said the Feb. 11 killing of Altynbek Sarsenbayev was politically motivated and was carried out by the special services. Nartai Dutbayev…
My eyes are practically filled with tears of joy on this news. Something our Salvadoran and Honduran and Nicaraguan friends have been PRAYING for for years has really happened … A-G-A-I-N-S-T … A-L-L … O-D-D-S!!!!! If there is a such thing as miracles, this is it. Thousands of undocumented workers from war-torn El Salvador and elsewhere in Central America have had their temporary protected status in the U.S. extended. President Bush hinted at it in his state of the union message but I was not sure what he would do. News reports continuously said that Bush would let this bill…
Two big developments on the truly revolutionary idea of free trade extending from the North Slope all the way to Tierra del Fuego. Colombia is on the edge of signing a free trade pact with the U.S., according to Rob Portman of the U.S. Trade Representative’s office. The pact, if they can reach the finish line, is Colombia’s ticket to the first world and a stinging blow to the hideous anti-free-trade regime of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, who has destroyed much of his country’s private sector, branding it an enemy instead of a job- and value-creator, and driving it out…
Rumors flying for months about a military coup in the Philippines may just have turned out to be true, as an investigation has led to the finding of 16 officers planning to overthrow the government. MANILA (Reuters) – The Philippine army has questioned at least 14 lieutenants and sergeants linked to a plot to unseat President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, a general said on Wednesday, adding he was confident no coup attempt would ever succeed. Lieutenant-General Hermogenes Esperon, head of the army, said authorities had identified about 16 junior officers who were planning to carry out a coup. Two of them…
Putin has okayed the return of the Sarospatak Library, seized by the Nazis and then by the Russians in WWII. Of course, this raises some eyebrows over the larger repatriation issues, even if the Russian official media feel the need to demonstrate that no new repatriation precedents are being set with the move. Given this, it’s no big surprise that Hungary has agreed to pay the Russians for “storage costs” that Putin’s buds can then turn around and tout as a foreign-policy success. So, what’s going on? A couple of things, as I see it. One, Putin is getting set…
This is not a piece of news, however some may find it interesting.The Truth and Justice Alliance ????????D.A has introduced a new fiscal policy to eliminate, or at least reduce the tax evasion, corruption and eventually poverty. The rate of 16% applies to both personal and corporate income. To my knowledge Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Russia, Serbia and Slovakia have already established a flat tax. ???????How is it that such a change appeared in a country characterized by the slow pace at which it has left communism behind? After the fall of communism, in December 1989, the Social-Democratic party inheriting…
The prominent Cuban dissident Martha Beatriz Roque, leader of the Assembly to Promote the Civil Society, is harassed by Castroite mobs led by the State Security on a daily basis. She was released from prison back in 2004 for health problems, yet since months she is again a prisoner; the only difference is that now she’s prisoner at her own house! Agents of the Castroite terrorist police and mobs are denying her to leave the house and if she does, they’ll kill her. As she spoke at Radio Mart???? from her house in Santo Suarez neighborhood, Havana, a big ‘repudiation…
Iran is dangerously close to producing a nuclear weapon and igniting a region-wide arms race. It could be within a couple of months or a couple of years. Nobody knows exactly how much time is left, but the day that Iran goes nuclear is one that many hope will never come. The thought of a government run by Islamic extremists who want to ???????wipe Israel off the map??????? should send chills down the spine of anyone who lives in the free world. Fortunately, there is time left. The breaking point is when Iran actually produces the weapons. Until then anything…
Alek Boyd has another bombshell on the details of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s family fortune and all its offshore accounts. Using the offices of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, Chavez has a sprawling network of bank accounts spread through Panama, Europe, Brazil and other places, amounting to billions of dollars in ill-gotten wealth. What, you may ask, does this have to do with revolution? The answer is, a lot. It was vast corruption on a Plutus-like scale, in billions, that brought down the Marcos and Soeharto regimes in Philippines and Indonesia, both of which triggered massive moves to the streets to…
Is Venezuela running out of oil? This Bloomberg article certainly suggests it, and if so, it’s an earmark of a communist regime. There’s no such thing as a communist regime without shortages. Russia the breadbasket ran out of wheat. Cuba the sugar king ran out of sugar. Vietnam the rice bowl ran out of rice. China the Middle Kingdom ran out of everything. And now, Venezuela, with the largest oil reserves in the Western Hemisphere, is having trouble with its oil production, enough so that the energy-saving measure of natural gas substitution has been introduced to the domestic population, which…
Right under the news radar, the U.S. and Colombia are hashing out their last differences for the free trade pact that will create confidence and prosperity on an untold scale for already star-performing Colombia and will enrich and enliven the U.S. with the bright and brilliant side of Colombia from its private sector, not its ugly drug and crime side, which will be destroyed. It’s a great occasion for joy and it might even happen by the end of this week. There’s one nation watching this, one that already has a defacto free trade pact with the US due to…
Every dictator dreams of consolidating power into the ‘dictator for life’ designation and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is no different. Today he’s announced he’s set to change the constitution to his liking, which would mean he would no longer be limited to two terms, but to as many as he wants. As many unlimited terms, with unlimited power and nonexistent accountability as he likes. It’s Chavez’s dream. Given his way of running elections on a Chavez-wins platform, that means dictator for life. Miguel has a translation of newspaperman Teodoro Petkoff’s reaction here. Petkoff writes: Chavez is ???????studying??????? the possibility of…