Blogging the democratic revolution
Polls will close today at 3 pm, but the outcome won????????t be announced almost certainly until tomorrow morning (Italian local time). Acording to many analysts, a high turnout might mean the victory of Berlusconi. The analysts are saying that if turnout reaches at least 82%, Berlusconi has a big chance to be the winner. Yesterday at 10 pm the turnout was 66.7%. So, today it is possible to have a turnout at 17% and the total (66.7 + 17 ) will be more than 80 %. Polls bet in such a chance. Let????????s keep fingers crossed! I voted Berlusconi even…
It doesn’t look good for Peru. Source: Noticiero Digital Today is the first round of the presidential election, and Ollanta Humala, the pro-Hugo-Chavez leftist with a verified personal record as a human-rights violator, is leading in the polls in Peru with 29.6% of the vote. The result is based on an exit poll by Apoyo, a good polling firm. It gets worse. Alan Garcia, the lunatic leftist who ruled Peru during the 1980s and gave Peru 7000% inflation and a near-death experience with the Shining Path, as well as loads of trouble for President Ronald Reagan, is unexpectedly in second…
I’ve voted. Honestly, I haven’t waited so long before casting my vote. At 2:15 p.m. (local time) there were very few people that you could count them on your hand’s fingers. The Interior Ministry – which updates the percentage of voters on a hourly base – informs that at 12 p.m. the percentage of people who went to the polls is: 17,7% . On 2001, it was 21,6% . What does this mean? It might be that people will go to the polls later or tomorrow. Of course, what is quite clear is that there’s a strong feeling of disillusion…
The Italian general election will be held from tomorrow to Monday afternoon, when the polls will close and – later in the night – results (some say partial ) will be announced. This is a very important election which will mean a lot for the future of international alliance: a Berlusconi’s win would guarantee continuity with the strong U.S.-Italy alliance above all in the face of the war on terror. A Prodi’s win would mean a re-alignment of Italy with the Old Europe, with Spain and France as their worst representatives. And that means – in case Prodi is elected…
As I previously reported, the Student Movement Coordination Committee for Democracy in Iran (SMCCDI) needs urgent help in order to continue to exist and strenghten the fight against the Mullahs. You can make a donation of any amount or simply help spread the word asking to help. To know more on how to help, click here. I had also posted about the financial problems faced by the Los Angeles-based National Iranian Television (NITV), which is the most prominent opposition network broadcasting to Iran and helping Iranian freedom fighters by coordinating demonstrations and helping spread the opposition groups’ messages to the…
A new poll shows that Peru’s free-market, free-trade, pro-property-rights, anti-poverty, anti-Hugo Chavez candidate is BACK IN FIRST PLACE ahead of Peru’s polls this Sunday! If it’s accurate, this is great news! Lourdes Flores is once again topping Ollanta Humala in Peru’s presidential race, not a moment too soon. It immediately follows Flores’ willingness to confront and speak the truth about Hugo Chavez, the continent’s worst tyrant (see my post below), and stand up for democracy! Flores at her campaign rally in Lima yesterday. Source: Reuters, via Yahoo! EFE has the breaking story here: Poll: Flores takes lead in Peruvian presidential…
Peru’s free-market candidate for president, Lourdes Flores, is sliding in the polls ahead of Peru’s first-round presidential election on Sunday, but apparently has taken a strong cue from Felipe Calderon’s successful Hugo Chavez ads against Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico. Aggressively, she’s lashed out against the dictator in Caracas. She’s hammering him as “a danger in the shadows to all Latin America.” Will this win her back votes? We don’t know. But suddenly, Peru’s election is exciting again and it’s only got a couple more days until April 9’s first round. El Universal has the new item, so far…
Conservative PAN party candidate Felipe Calderon, who’s leading or nearly leading the polls in Mexico’s July 2 presidential election, is determined to drive home that his opponent, leftist Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, is a second Hugo Chavez. I wasn’t sure if he was going to do this – both Chavez and AMLO himself said that he shouldn’t do it, something that I read as signs of panic on both their parts, but I wasn’t sure if PAN saw it the same way I did. After all, PAN had pulled a television ad they ran for a week that had compared…
The four-day nationwide strike called by the country’s seven main political parties and backed by the Maoist rebels began today, with the entire country practically shutting down. Hundreds of security personnel in riot gear stood guard in the near-empty streets of Kathmandu Thursday, to thwart mass protests planned by an alliance of seven opposition parties. But small groups of pro-democracy demonstrators emerged on the streets during the day, prompting a second wave of arrests. Many opposition leaders and activists had been detained a day ahead of the strike. The government has vowed to crush the anti-monarchy protests, citing threats of…
Can a civilized nation tolerate a crowd of people who let themselves be led by the nose by sheikhs, dervishes and the like . . . and who entrust their faith and their lives to fortunetellers, magicians, witch-doctors, and writers of amulets? *** Countries may vary, but civilization is one and for a nation to progress, it must take part in this one civilization. The decline of the Ottomans began when, proud of their triumphs over the West, they cut their ties with the European nations. This was a mistake which we will not repeat. I have previously provided to…
Source: AFP, Reuters, via El Universal Protests have exploded across Venezuela against the murder of the three young Faddoul brothers, and against all crime, much of which is committed by the Venezuelan police. The three Faddoul brothers, John Bryan, 17; Kevin 13, and Jason, 12. The anger is cutting across class lines, because kidnapping, robbery and murder affect rich and poor alike. This is the first event ever that’s united rich and poor in Venezuela. The shantytowns of Caracas are some of the most dangerous places on earth. The wealthy and middle class, meanwhile, are regular targets of opportunity for…
Dictatorships are commonly thought of as authoritarian affairs, where crime is low and the trains run on time. Hugo Chavez’s dictatorship is exactly the opposite. A modern dictator, he has no need for archaic devices like secret police to come knocking on doors of dissidents to terrify them, as happened in the Stalinistic and Castroite days of old. It may come later, but right now, he’s got a more efficient means of controlling the population through terror by allowing for runaway crime across the country. Due to virtually absent law enforcement (except for “political” crimes), people area all terrified of…
Fausta has an excellent French news roundup on all the riots that have engulfed the key European state this week, with links to tons of news sources. Many of her items are taken from the French press, adding a better dimension to the picture than ordinary media usually do. Check it out here.
Source: AP, via Yahoo! Kuwaiti election volunteers in Salwa, Kuwait, during yesterday’s first-ever municipal election that allowed women’s participation. Draw your own conclusions.
Hi friends, as many of you maybe know, Italy will be holding national election on Sunday, April 9. These are very important elections, given that from it will depend the future of the Coalition of the Willing in the war on terror. If Berlusconi is re-elected, Italy will continue to be a strong U.S. ally. On the other hand, if former chief of the EU Commission, Romano Prodi wins, Italy will join the Spain-France-Germany axis. So far, all we know is that the outcome risks to be too close to call and there might be a run-off. It’s quite hard…
Alvicho at Off Topic has some interesting thoughts about the symbiotic relationship between resource-hungry China and resource-rich Latin America, a topic that too frequently gets drowned in the paranoia of anti-Chinese sentiment. The relationship doesn’t bother me, as a matter of fact, I think Latin American states, especially those run by demogogues and populists, could learn the facts of life about how the world works, from places like China if they can’t bring themselves to pay attention to sensible, successful places in their own neighborhood like Chile. Alvicho’s thoughts are here.
The U.S. trade embargo against communist Cuba is frequently criticized, and with some good arguments, as an ineffective instrument against the Cuban dictator. But there’s more than one reason for this embargo, and Castro’s attitude toward paying his bills has a lot to do with why it’s in place too. Naturally, you ask yourself, why should anyone care whether Castro pays his bills? After all, if someone is going to be dumb enough to extend him credit and he doesn’t pay, why should it concern the rest of us? The reason is this: international trade is almost all insured by…
Warm weather has finally come to Ulaanbaatar, but the spring dust storms are just beginning. First I must say that the eleven staff and instructors at SIT-Mongolia and the fourteen other students I’m studying with are all amazing. Such different people but we all get along and everyone has a new perspective to offer on all the things we’re doing and seeing. My two weeks living with a nomadic Kazakh family in the Altai Mountains of Western Mongolia were phenomenal. Apart from being sick for a day, I was elated to be breathing in the most wonderfully clean air and…
On Thursday Nepal will succumb to a four-day nationwide strike in protest of the King’s seizure of the government over a year ago. He has arrested thousands of people and hundreds of journalists for protesting and writing about the theft of civil liberties in the name of crushing the Maoist rebellion. But the King has made no progress against the Maoists, and his disbanding of the legitimately elected parliament has decreased his legitimacy with the population. So much so that the situation has deteriorated to the point where civil society has taken side with the Maoists in order to force…
Breaking news… Source: ETNA The Thai prime minister announced he would quit after the messages from the streets and apparently because the King told him to. A shame, because just 14 months ago, he was very popular and I liked him in some ways. But amid public perceptions of shamelessness and corruption after a $2 billion profit-taking deal in Singapore, he dropped himself into this. The Thai people have gotten their message out loud and clear that a leader must be not just clean but above the very appearance of corruption. Leaders cannot hide behind legal technicalities as a basis…
Polls can be unreliable but this news is truly radical: Goldman Sachs, in its daily emerging market report, says: Grupo GEA Reports Calder????n Ahead of AMLO in the polls According to GEA (a consulting firm), in a poll conducted between March 18 and 21, Felipe Calder????n (PAN) overtook AMLO in the opinion polls. According to GEA, Calderon rose to first with 36% from 32% (in February); while AMLO fell to second to 34% from 41% in February. Madrazo remained in third with 28% (up 1%). According to El Universal, AMLO said that these polls showing him down reflect the desperation…
The Egyptian immam Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi made an appearence in Tizi-Ouzou, Kabylia (in the Tizi-Ouzou wilaya) today. Qaradawi, who has a television show on Al-Jazeera (esh-Sharieh wal-Hayat) and founded IslamOnline, recently debated Amr Khaled on the Dansih cartoon controversy (he took the “let us show rage” side of the debate), and openly supports suicide bombings, and jihad against Israelis. He believes strongly that “Everything will be on our side and against Jews on ÄJudgment DayÅ, at that time, even the stones and the trees will speak, with or without words, and say: ‘Oh servant of Allah, oh Muslim, there’s a…
Fill up your tank now, because oil prices are about to go higher. Three more international oil companies are out of the game in Venezuela, an unprecedented exit from an energy-hungry industry. They just can’t do business with a thug. Venezuelan dictator has sent his agents to seize control of the assets of two major companies, Total of France and ENI of Italy, in a confiscation move directed at their resistence to being forced in joint ventures that are nothing more than communist workers collectives run by Chavista political hacks. ENI calls it a direct violation of its existing contractual…
You might not have guessed this right off, but Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has been watching Ukraine’s Orange Revolution intently. This Sunday, for the first time, he made a statement about his fear and loathing of it. On his weekly Sunday television variety show, ‘Alo President’ he made this following remark, addressed to his opposition. El Universal reports: Ch????vez wondered where his rivals for next December 3rd presidential election are. He reiterated that his opponents are determined to denounce electoral fraud. He said the dissent, with US support, would establish a “pink revolution,” just like the “gringos” did in Ukraine.…
Not that they already weren’t, as Dawa party candidate and current Prime Minister Ibraham al-Jaafari only won by a single vote within the UIA due to backing by the Sadrists, but the barrier for removing him has been broken as several independent politicians have broken with the alliance and said that someone else should be chosen for the position. That’s the big news over the weekend. BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 1 ???????? A senior member of the dominant Shiite bloc called on Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari on Saturday to drop his campaign to keep his post, becoming the first Shiite political…