Blogging the democratic revolution
In Cuba, people have two faces: the one they’re forced to show when they have to march and listen to the long Castro’s speeches, and the one they prefer to show when they are almost sure that the police don’t see them. Here is a young Cuban who derides Cuba’s daily life and so the regime. It’s a courtesy of the Cuban-American National Foundation (CANF) , that didn’t publish the name of the guy in order to protect him from the ire of the State Security and its paramilitary mobs. “Havana is the city of the long lines. Just imagine…
Eduardo Avila at Global Voices has an extremely good Bolivian blog roundup covering all the angles on Bolivia’s energy nationalization, an event that has rocked at least three continents this week. It’s an excellent glimpse on what the different Bolivian blogs – of all ideologies – are saying on this week’s biggest event. Read it here.
Who could have a fortune like that but an absolute ruler, a totalitarian dictator like Fidel Castro himself? The bearded beast is today worth $900 million, thanks to high commodity prices and some help from his little Venezuelan friend. Cubans go hungry, making less than a dollar a day, and freeze ice for lunch so that the meal tastes more like “food.” The obesity epidemic is nonexistent in Cuba and it’s not because of any accomplishment of Castrodom, let alone too many rabbit salads. It’s due to starvation living conditions. Castro, meanwhile, traipses around billionaire-style, isolated, alone, Gatsby-like, in a…
Daniel in Venezuela has taken more photos on the road from Yaracuy state to Valencia, and he’s noted the rising tide of human misery along Venezuela’s barren, decrepit highways. Instructure is crumbling while scavengers grow around the dumps in the rural landscapes. I saw this myself in Venezuela on my way through the countryside. It was bleak and saddening. This is Chavismo in action. He also saw a lot of nighttime horror in Caracas, and did not close his eyes to it. Nobody is reporting this. He wrote about it here. His unique photos are here.
International Workers’ Day, known to most as May Day, was originally invented by the labor unions to celebrate the Haymarket Riot of 1886 in Chicago that resulted in the institution of an eight-hour workday. Since then, it has been hijacked by radical communist groups bent on overthrowing the “evil” of capitalism. After the Red Scare, May Day was no longer celebrated by the masses of the United States, but elsewhere in the world it is an officially sanctioned holiday. Many communist subversives use it to bring their numbers out into the light, as you can see in Russia and the…
The trial of 9/11 conspiracist Zacarias Moussaoui has come to a dramatic end, with the jury deciding that he will receive life in prison instead of the death sentence. Zacarias Moussaoui, the only person convicted for involvement in the September 11 terrorist attacks, will be sentenced to life in prison on Thursday after a jury on Wednesday decided that he should not receive the death penalty. The decision to sentence Mr Moussaoui to life in prison without parole was a big blow to the Bush administration, which had argued his involvement in the attacks on the World Trade Center and…
Need some good news? Click on Boz’s poll roundup for the first bright item on Mexico’s election, where the good guy seems to be squarely in the lead. He’s also got new polls from Guatemala, Peru, and Colombia, plus a suspect poll from Venezuela’s own Hugo Chavez himself. The Chavez poll is interesting, Chavez is claiming he has the support of 60% of the voters. That’s actually a pretty low number coming from a guy like him, I would have expected a good 90% or so. Chavez may be ever so obliquely admitting that he is detested because he knows…
Alvicho at Off Topic notices a creepy similarity here. I dare you to argue with it!
With the nationalization of Bolivia’s energy resources, the two biggest victims in this are socialist Brazil and socialist Spain. Franco, I am still waiting for you to give us word from Spain on this Bolivian travesty, so in the meantime, consider Brazil: Evo Morales is determined to play approximately the same tormenting role to Brazil that Hugo Chavez plays to the U.S. – that of underdeveloped big energy supplier that revels in politicizing the energy supply and seeking very high prices. Bolivia is actually better positioned than Venezuela for that nuisance role, because natural gas, which Bolivia exports to Brazil,…
There’s something kind of creepy I notice once in awhile when I look up which keywords are bringing in traffic at Publius Pundit. Whenever some group of indecent words comes up, like ‘nude, Ugandan, women’ or ‘naked, Iranian, babes’ or ‘Swedish, sex, slaves’ – more often than not, the person doing the search is flagged from some country like Iran, Saudi Arabia or one of the oppressed Gulf states. What a horrible distinction to be known for! But much as I like those countries and wish for the best for them, much as I wish democratic revolution on them, I…
After the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan over a year ago, the country has pretty much dropped off the radar. Beside working on reforms in the structural institutions of the country, and President Bakiyev wanting the U.S. to pay more for the Manas air base, not much is going on. Until lately. Bakiyev hasn’t proven himself to be anything like the democrat or reformer people hoped he might turn out to be. Organized crime rules the country, not the people. In place of last year’s opposition (now in power) and the clan regime of Askar Akayev (now out of power), there…
Uruguay has broken free from the Chavez orbit. It’s exiting Mercosur, the trade bloc that is a good idea in concept, but in reality not so good for a little state like Uruguay. It’s dominated by Brazil and Argentina, and while Brazil is never a problem, Argentina is. It’s also got Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez in as a brand new associate member, something that makes the air pretty hard to breathe for civilized Uruguay. Chavez has stated that he intends to make Mercosur his vehicle for influencing events around the Americas. Well, not on Uruguay’s dime. Uruguay is a lovely little…
I got back from the La Brea evening protest. This was the second one that wasn’t the early morning’s coercive boycott, but instead a real show of presence for the immigrants who feel most strongly affected by coming Congressional efforts to deal with immigration. It was endorsed by Cardinal Mahony and Dolores Huerta, and reportedly drew about 400,000 people, versus the morning action, which only drew about 200,000. There was probably some overlap of protestors. But by and large, it goes to show that more immigrants want peaceful dialogue and change, not ‘revolucion’ and confrontation endorsed by ANSWER and its…
Right after signing a hellish pact with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and Fidel Castro of Cuba, Bolivian President Evo Morales signed a decree nationalizing the natural gas fields of Bolivia. Color this country gone as a serious energy player now. Morales sent in troops to take over the assets of companies like BG, Total, Petrobras and Repsol-YPF. Exxon Mobil, too was hit. He did it on communist day, which is May Day. Obviously, he’s pretty confident that the Western aid spigot will always be running for him. And obviously, he’s pretty sure that what happened to his mentor, Fidel Castro,…
???????America is a nation of immigrants!??????? ???????America is the melting pot of the world!??????? America is whatever we want it to be. It is once in a blue moon that we discuss American politics here at Publius — the much looked-over world of frozen separatist conflicts, democratic movements, and Hugo Chavez keeps us pretty busy. But today is a bit different. Today is May Day, and Mexican immigrants are out to demonstrate for the right to be just as American as anyone else. Today is different because America is facing a challenge to its democracy that it rarely encounters. There…
Italian communist groups helped kill 3 Italian soldiers in Nassirya I reported about here. An article on L’Opinione reports (in Italian) that anti-globalization and communist groups based in Italy, among which is the infamous “anti-imperialist camp” (that collecting “Euros for the Iraqi resistance”) coordinated with Islamic terrorists in Iraq to attack our troops in Nassiryiah. The Italian intelligence heard phone conversations in which the red fundamentalists instructed the Islamists about how and when to kill our soldiers. It seems that the attack was organized in order to pressure Mr. Prodi to speed the pullout from Iraq. And of course all…
Blogging live from Los Angeles – on a too tight schedule and deadlines, deadlines, deadlines. Here’s what is going on on this Day Without An Immigrant: 1. Highways very quiet, no blockages, but traffic rushing through as if everyone expects some and wants to get to work first. The Santa Monica freeway (10) is especially this way, the San Diego freeway (the 405) is less so. 2. At work, none of the cleaning crew have shown up. Even the ones who told me (en espanol) that they would be here … are not. Must be 30 people missing. 3. Cardinal…
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez this week threatened to blow up all of Venezuela’s oil wells, should the perfidious yanquis be so insolent as to attack. He does this partly to whip up paranoia in the shantytowns, but generally, even his own supporters are not fooled. The other reason he does it is to whip up fear in the international oil markets and thus drive up the price for his ever-diminishing oil production. He’s on record as saying he wants oil at $100 a barrel. The oil markets are a bit slower to catch on to Chavez’s B-S than the shantytown…
Here are the photos showing the Cuban patriot Martha Beatriz Roque after being beaten up by plainclothes paramilitary mobs inside her own house in Havana, Cuba. More below,the thugs put propaganda banners behind her house’s door comparing President Bush and the patriot Luis Posada Carriles to Hitler: Below, Bush appears as saying “Long Live Martha”. Per se this phrase is not at all a scandal, but the Castroite thugs use it as a way to accuse Marha of being a “US agent”. See all the photos here, including the flowers sent to her by the embassies of some European countries.
Well, as we approach nearly 2 months since Ukraine’s first democratic elections of the century, the political wrangling continues. Any Kiev watchers will be familiar with the daily news stories coming out from Our Ukraine, Yulia Tymoshenko’s Bloc, The Party of Regions and the Socialists in regard to coalition building talks. Every evening a brief Google news search highlights constant backstabbing, foot-stamping and occasionally outright lies passed on to the international media. Today, one such story emerged from the oh so reliable ITAR-TASS. For the busy, a brief summary: Our Ukraine (Viktor Yushchenko’s pro-European, Liberal Bloc) and the Party of…
But not exactly in the way you might think. The Venezuelan dictator vowed to recall Venezuela’s ambassador to Peru if Peru’s voters DARED cast their ballot for Alan Garcia instead of his favored Ollanta Humala in next month’s second-round presidential debate. It’s so insane, so guaranteed to backfire, so likely to rally the Garcia vote, so likely to hurt Humala that it makes me think Chavez is on cocaine. Peruvians don’t particularly care one way or another about diplomatic relations with Venezuela. What they do care about is some foreign dictator trying to dictate how they will vote through various…
Chavista mismanagement (and thieving) has left Venezuela with a $2 billion oil shortfall on its contracts. The country literally DOES NOT HAVE ENOUGH OIL to supply all the nations it’s signed contracts with to supply. Therefore, it’s buying $2 billion in oil from Russia to avoid penalties, not the least of which is its claim to be an important oil superpower. It’s nothing to be surprised about, given that socialism ALWAYS produces shortages. That’s been a lesson to the world for about 80 years. The example this travesty parallels most closely is from 30 years ago, when the Soviet Union,…
Even though the Maoists had vowed to continue a blockade of the capital following an announcement by King Gyanendra that he would reinstate parliament, but it was obvious that they had jumped the gun and gone a step too far. They have since retracted that statement (I believe because they simply didn’t have the military means or support in the capital to carry it out), and announced that they will commit to a three month ceasefire. The Seven Party Alliance has announced that the parliament will do the same. The Maoists main demand is the election of a constituent assembly…
Imagine a country where you have to get permission to protest, and when the authorities give it to you, they snatch it right back. Then they arrest you and sentence you to 15 days in prison for an “unsanctioned rally.” The same thing happens to your colleagues; some of them are even beaten! What country is this? I’ll give you one guess: it starts with “B” and ends with “elarus”. The democratic opposition in Belarus held its first rally since tens of thousands of people protested in March following a fraudulent presidential election handed to current Dictator Alexander Lukashenko. It…
After suffering an ‘act of repudiation’ by the plainclothes paramilitaries on the Castro’s payroll, Dr. Darsi Ferrer – director of the Center for Health and Human Rights “Juan Bruno Zayas” – was detained immediately after leaving the U.S. Interests Section in Havana,from where he sends us via email his reports. Ferrer called the independent journalist Jayme Leigonier via phone and said that the police are gonna take him to another place, but so far nobody knows where he has been taken. Darsi is currently desaparecido. UPDATE: I’ve just got an email from Darsi , who sent in the report written…