Blogging the democratic revolution
The death of great Italian journalist continues to reverberate, oddly intersecting the entry of the pope into the struggle against Islamofascism, and some great essays have been written about her and her legacy. I’ve been really moved by them and present a small roundup of the best of this writing: Victor Davis Hanson has a collection of resonant thoughts in a short informal essay, describing his sorrow at her death and why it has hit us all more deeply in this age of terror and Islamofascism. This is one I read several times. It can be read on Pajamas Media…
Major mainstream television networks in France and Brazil have both taken aim at the odious regime of Fidel Castro in Cuba. And I don’t mean something small. They’ve put out huge high-advertising long programs out, firing a unusual cannonade at the dictatorship. This has never happened before. These TV programs document Cuba’s long lines, miserable shortages as a way of life, bureaucracy, commissars, vaunted health care that is nothing but a failure, monstrous communist indoctrination that passes for “education,” secret police surveillance, jailing of dissidents, and complete lack of freedom. It’s realistic programming on Cuba that no one in either…
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s foreign advisory team, based at the Miraflores presidential palace, are deep into the task of getting him reelected for the third time, something they may succeed at, given Chavez’s manipulation of the electoral system. Yes, you heard right, foreign as in foreigner. Which sounds pretty disgusting. Shouldn’t one be a citizen of a country before one messes around with its campaigns? Not in Chavismo. That’s why the Chavista campaign team has such an unusual obsession with foreign affairs, something that Miguel at Devil’s Excrement notices. But it’s not all that unusual, in my opinion, it’s simply…
Venezuelan exile Alek Boyd went back to Caracas for a visit after several years living in England, and has asked us to flag his chronicles of his tour there, where he will be covering the campaign of Manuel Rosales. Sounds interesting enough. In his first dispatch, he writes a fair and accurate account of arriving at the airport there, speaking of the monumental Chavista signs, a dictatorship trademark, and the courteous, swift Venezuelan customs officials, something pleasantly surprising. But oh god, Alek’s language! And I don’t mean his command of English, which is fine, but his use of language to…
Oriana Fallaci, freedom fighter Source: Mlle Glass’ photos The great Oriana Fallaci, a clear-eyed journalist and universal freedom fighter for democracy, has died. We all knew she had cancer but this is very sad and affecting news. Her impact on world events cannot be underestimated. The Italian journalist went places no one else would go and saw through everything. No dictator could fool her. She exposed and clarified clowns like Khaddafi and others so that we could see what the real tyrannical enemy was like. At the end of her life, she denounced Islamofascism and extolled the value of civilization,…
While overall the testimony provided by witnesses of Saddam Hussein’s massacres has been damning, the overall “court experience” has been nothing less than a circus. I am not talking about the accusations by human rights groups like Amnesty International which accuse that the trial is well below international standards due to the inherent and legal bias against the defendant. Such things, like the fact that the tribunal does not have to find Saddam guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt,” are true, and were certainly existent in the infamous Nuremberg trials. However, what I am talking about is the fact that there…
As Mugabe’s Zimbabwe spirals further into turmoil — inflation over 1000% and 80% of the population underfed, underemployed, and living in poverty — you might think that such conditions would spur action in people to act against the government. They have tried, and they have tried again, but every single time they fail. This time a national strike was called involving some of the country’s largest labor unions, but at the last minute many withdrew as the government dispatched paramilitary units to arrest opposition leaders. Police arrested trade union leaders and blocked streets and the main square in the Zimbabwe…
A recent seemingly trivial news item has demonstrated how many people misunderstand racism and how explosive the topic is in our politically correct world. For the first portion of the 13th edition of CBS’ hit series “Survivor,” the contestants competing for the $1 million prize while stranded on the Cook Islands in the South Pacific will be divided into four teams: Blacks, Asians, Hispanics and Whites. A group of New York City officials have criticized the new format, saying it promotes divisiveness (they do think we all are the same!). They have asked CBS to reconsider its plans. The bizarre…
In my view the strongest force of all . . . was that unmistakable sense of unanimity among the peoples of the world that war must somehow be averted. The peoples of the British Empire were at one with those of Germany, of France and of Italy, and their anxiety, their intense desire for peace, pervaded the whole atmosphere of the conference, and I believe that that, and not threats, made possible the concessions that were made. I know the House will want to hear what I am sure it does not doubt, that throughout these discussions the Dominions, the…
While the United States pays tribute and mourns the September 11 terrorist attacks on its homeland, it must be remembered that there are people in this world who are even now actively plotting acts more deadly and terrible than anything before. They want to see America brought to its knees and are doing everything they can to see this happen. The not-so coincidence of Khatami’s speaking tour on this symbolic day as well as video releases by Al Qaeda are things that are to be expected. However, something that is not being widely reported on is the opening of the…
The mainstream media decided to ignore the big anti-Khatami rally that took place in front of the Washington National Cathedral while Khatami was delivering his taqiyya on September 7. Worst, the few media that reported it, have falsified the truth by telling that the protestors were only “50”, while in reality they were about 1,000, Iranians and non-Iranians alike. Read the report here. I have also found it very hard to find photos of the rally. Mainstream media, however, were quick to post pictures of the pro-illegal immigration rally as well as Khatami’s speech. Hence, I ask you to post,…
When I heard about the protests planned against Khatami’s speech at Harvard, I knew just the guy to contact. I emailed Jesse Sage over at HAMSA and he filled me in on all the information. Khatami was to speak at 4:00 p.m. so the protests would start around three. We arrived in Harvard Square outside of the Kennedy School of Government just before then, and people were already gathering by the dozens. It wasn’t just the people I knew from HAMSA and the Iran Freedom Concert Coalition, either. There were many, from pro-Israel Jews to Americans concerned about our security…
Source: AFP, via Getty Images Bolivia is on fire. The fiery democratic revolutionary babes of Santa Cruz are no more. Anti-communist protest turns violent in eastern Bolivia Friday Source: AFP, via Getty Images Now, it’s angry citizens of The Media Luna – four provinces, led by Santa Cruz, fighting to the last man against the brutal expansionary communism of Evo Morales’ Bolivia. This is going well beyond peaceful demonstrations to the first stages of insurgency and maybe war. Revolutionary war. They are fighting tyranny. They’re fighting with axes, fists, and cudgels, in an action that began with a general strike…
Things appear to be going from the frying pan to the fire in Russia. As if the recent news of Russia????????s internal human rights strife was not bad enough, now horrifying anti-democratic events appear to be unfolding in the former Soviet slave state of Georgia. The Moscow News reports that Georgian police uncovered an attempt to destabilize and unseat the government of elected President Mikhail Saakashvili. It reports: Nearly 30 people were arrested in Georgia on suspicion of plotting a coup against the government, officials said. They say those detained are supporters of Igor Giorgadze ???????? the fugitive former head…
Just last year dictator-in-chief Robert Mugave ordered Operation: Take Out The Trash, bulldozing tens of thousands of makeshift homes that Zimbabwe’s people were forced to live in due to his policies. The operation displaced over 700,000 people, leaving them without a place to live. He promised the international community that reparations would be made and that all of the people driven from their homes would be given new housing. One year later, this has not happened. Amnesty International sent a team of researchers into Zimbabwe to get the story. They found that out of all the homes destroyed, only a…
Pajamas Media has an especially hilarious post by The Manolo discussing the styles and fashions of different dictators. He finds that Ahmadinejad may be lacking: Briefly and remarkably, the President of the Iran wears the same khaki windbreaker, wrinkled trousers, cheap oxford shirts, scruffy beard and wild eyes favored by the aging high school chemistry teachers everywhere. Yes, in his youth he was the firebrand who would shake the very foundations of the society, but today he is content to expound upon his paranoid conspiracy theories while exercising his petty autocratic powers over the dull kids who sit in the…
In a moment where the forces of dictatorship and tyranny seem to be pushing back against democracy, the common thread that has successfully aligned nations such as Iran, Russia, Venezuela, China, and Sudan have been the supply and demand of energy. While it is encouraging that the relationships forged seem to be more based on Machiavellian pragmatism then aligned ideologies or long term goals, problematic occurrences and diplomatic realignment have debilitated the West????????s efforts to act against undemocratic forces. Increasingly, the ability to act as a geopolitical actor has been taken away from the United States and the UN as…
(To hear the interview in .mp3 format or download it to your iPod, click here or right-click and choose “save target as”.) Since Alexander Lukashenka became president of Belarus in 1994, he has used every avenue possible to repress political opposition to his rule. He has jailed politicians and activists, shut down NGOs both major and minor, destroyed the independent media, and ensured that no man but he will win the so-called presidential election that is held every five years. Some of his biggest opposition, however, comes from university students who crave opportunity in a country whose government regulates the…
Hugo Chavez is so detested by average Venezuelans that he’s reduced to passing out great big bottles of rum at his campaign rallies. Voters quaff these booze bottles full of liquor, pirate-style while they think it over. Evidently Chavez thinks this raises the odds of voters checking off his name on Venezuelan election day, Dec. 3. Naturally, this has attracted street drunks to Chavez rallies and fostered a new social phenomenon – Dancing Drunks for Chavez. Miguel has the must-be-seen-to-be-believed photos in this post here. More seriously, one commentatator on Miguel’s site notes that weird dancing public drunkeness is often…
On September 3rd a disturbing number of negative developments in the area of human rights and democracy have were reported in Russia. First, Human Rights Watch issued a report detailing how Russian prosecutors railroaded two former detainees at Guantanamo Bay that the U.S. foolishly released to Russia’s clutches when Russia claimed they were terrorists. The sham trials that resulted were pathetic spectacles of the classic Neo-Soviet variety, based on “confessions” that were beaten out of the suspects. HRW stated: “Police in Russia frequently use torture and ill-treatment to extract confessions.” It concluded that torture is so omnipresent in Russia that…
Deep sea oil rig, Gulf of Mexico Source: National Aeronautics & Space Administration Today, a quiet revolutionary time bomb was presented to Hugo Chavez. He has no idea what it is or what it means. But this gift means it’s all over for the brutal Venezuelan tyrant in the next few years. He won’t be bothering us anymore. He won’t be bothering anyone anymore. He’s finished. Treasure was discovered in America’s Gulf of Mexico waters today, black gold so vast and so deep and so surprising and so recoverable that overnight, America’s energy reserves have just increased as much as…
Remember that the background on this subject was given on Part One. In this part we consider rulers who should be taken out of power, but whose crimes are less in the area of international terrorism and more in terms of the damage they have done to their own people. If we take seriously the idea that all peoples should have basic rights (a la UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights), then there certainly are rulers, usually called ???????Presidents???????, who have done much more harm than good for their fellow countrymen. ***** Fidel Castro So much has been said about…
A new UN report about the cultivation of drugs in Afghanistan finds a “staggering” increase of 60% compared to last year. The overall volume of production has risen from 4100 tons to 6100 tons, according to the report. The UN anti-drug chief rightly urged the Karzai government to crack down against the warlords and corrupt police and administrative officials warning that a continuity in the trend could threaten democracy in the country. This increase in the cultivation is not a new phenomenon in Afghanistan. Since 2001–when the Taliban put a highly successful ban on cultivation–drug production has been steadily increasing.…
The shocking news was reported by RIA Novosti on August 30th that Russia????????s most prominent and well-respected newspaper, Kommersant (???????the Merchant???????), had been sold to Alisher Usmanov (pictured below), the owner of the Metalloinvest and Gazprominvestholding holding companies, the latter a subsidiary of Kremlin-controlled Gazprom. Usmanov is an Uzbek-born oligarch who has served six years in prison for fraud. RIA also reported that ???????Gazprom Media, the division of the state-owned energy giant, has in recent years taken control of once independent television station NTV, its satellite division NTV+, regional broadcaster TNT, Echo of Moscow (Ekho Moskvy) radio station, broadsheet Izvestia…
Another domino falls. Another symbol, if not the representative of Russian independent media, has been scooped up by a Kremlin ally. The business daily, Kommsersant was sold this week for $300 million to Alisher Usmanov. Usmanov is the owner of Owner of Oskol Steel Mill, the Ural Steel industrial complex, the Lebedinsky Iron Ore Mining and Processing Facility, and Mikhailovsky GOK (he and his partner Vasiliy Anisimov acquired the latter in the beginner of 2005. Ranked the 25th richest man in Russia and the 278th in the world by Forbes with a net worth of $2.6 billion, the 52 year…