Blogging the democratic revolution
I’ve stumbled across quite a few articles lately about growing support for far-right parties in France and Britain. Of course, while the numbers remain small (though larger in France), it is perhaps the biggest untold story of Western Europe because, for as much as these people preach tolerance, most Europeans I know — very educated people — absolutely hate the “pakis” and the “beurs“. These are exactly the sentiments that the far-right play on, so it is no wonder that they are most popular in white working-class neighborhoods, the same people who consider themselves truly French and British. Resentment against…
On April 25, Liberation Day in Italy, Italian communist demonstrators shouted “10,100,1000 Nassiryahs”. Today they must be celebrating. Three Italian heroes have been murdered in a terror attack in Nassiryiah today. They’re not only victim of terrorists. They’re victim of those politicians on the Left whose first concern is not to heal the frail and declining economy; their first concern is to put an end to the military’s humanitarian work in Iraq. The Italian troops in Nassiryiah had made it clear to Mr. Prodi that they strongly disagree with an immediate withdrawal. It’s not a coincidence that our troops in…
Ten thousand Belarusians gathered to commemorate the victims of the Chernobyl nuclear meltdown twenty years after the disaster. It was organized by the democratic opposition led by Alexander Milinkevich and was the first such rally since the end of March when protestors were brutalized following a peaceful gathering of tens of thousands. You can see a minute-by-minute log of the events at Charter 97. They had hoped to gather in October Square, the sight of the post-presidential election protests last month, but lines of riot police blocked all avenues to the square. Furthermore, the trains were ordered not to stop…
Egypt has been rattled by two sets of terrorist attacks in the past few days; one sequence of bombings in the resort area of Dahab three days ago, and today two suicide bombers blew themselves up near security forces. There is, for sure, no lack of purpose or symbolism that accompanies these attacks. It is an attack on the tourism industry, and by extension, any Muslim that is making disposable income and is enjoying life (as most of those injured were Muslims). It is also an attack on the Mubarak regime’s legitimacy. Attacking the tourism industry is a favorite for…
As oil prices hit $75 a barrel, the U.S. is right now caught up in an idiotic debate over supposed price-gouging at the pump. Congress wants to investigate oil companies over it. What they should be doing is asking why the U.S. is dependent for its oil on anti-American Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. We are dependent on him, he knows it, and he abuses us for it. It’s him who, along with his pals the ayatollahs, is deliberately trying to drive oil prices up to $100 a barrel, not the oil companies. That’s not all. Chavez harasses U.S. oil companies…
Yesterday, while we were having lunch or dinner or driving to work or whatever our peaceful pursuits may be, Fidel Castro’s barbarians assaulted Martha Beatriz Roque, the leading Cuban freedom fighter in an ‘act of repudiation.’ This is nothing more than to say a gang assault sanctioned by the state. Radio Mambi in Miami said she was on the phone with them yesterday when it happened, and the Cuban American Foundation has the transcript of what happened, as Martha Beatriz told it here. She said (sorry no time to translate but will later): “…me han dado tantos golpes, me han…
It had to be a day of remembrance of our liberation by the Allies. It has been a day of infamy. Nobody should expect communists or ex-communists to pay tribute to the American fallen soldiers. It’s still too hard for them to recognize that it was America and the Western Allies, and not the Soviet Union, that liberated Italy. They cannot yet forgive them the legitimate help America gave us in preventing Italy from becoming a Soviet satellite. But let’s come to yesterday’s sad events. In Milan, Leftist extremists shouted insults at the former Education Minister (of the Berlusconi’s gov’t,…
We always knew there was something wrong with Prime Minister Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and today that missing link got just a little bit more primal. Turns out his idea of democratic revolution is equal rights for apes under the law. That’s right, Zapatero’s gone ape for ape rights, and given that he’s lost the confidence of his human supporters one can probably surmise that he wants to empower a newer and far more loyal core constituency that sees things as he does. Here are the monkeyshines: The Great Ape Project is founded upon the genetic similarity between great apes –…
…of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico. It’s a thing of beauty. The latest poll shows that the right-leaning free-market PAN party candidate’s lead is now E-X-T-E-N-D-I-N-G well ahead of AMLO’s. This is the third straight poll showing this awesome trend ahead of the July 2 presidential election. Here’s what’s cool about it: Tonight is the first Mexican presidential debate. Calderon can cream PRI dinosaur candidate Roberto Madrazo easily. AMLO, meanwhile, thinking his two-year-long lead was permanent, opted to sit this debate out. Now, the heavy TV exposure for Calderon against Madrazo is likely to extend his lead even further.…
Today Italy remembers the liberation from Nazi-Fascism. Neveretheless, those on the Left march to remember only the (communist) partisans. They have completely forgotten that, if it was not for the United States and the Allies, the partisans couldn’t end the work. It’s to be reminded, however, that most partisans were not communists; many were Christian-Democrats and Liberals, of course staunch anti-communist. Sadly, the Left is once again refusing to pay tribute to the Allies; to add insult to injury, some radicals almost surely are gonna burn the US and Israeli flags, while waving the Palestinian one, as occurred last year.…
People power wins democracy back for Nepal! Just before midnight yesterday, King Gyanendra went on national television and proclaimed to the entire country that he acknowledged the the power of both the political parties and the people, apologized for the death of fourteen protestors at the hands of security forces, and is reinstating immediately the parliament that he dissolved in 2002 before disbanding the institution completely just last year. This is a major victory for the people of Nepal! They went on a planned national strike exactly 19 days ago. Day by day it grew stronger until everything had shut…
Yoeleidys Sigler, daughter of Guido Sigler Amaya, a prominent political prisoner who pledged to never surrender to his jailers’ attempts to ‘re-educate’ him, has called for the immediate and unconditional release of her father. She says that she, her family and the neighbors alike are suffering very much and cannot bear the suffering anymore. Listen to Yoeleidys’ voice here. Our good friend Carlos Serpa Maceira, independent journalist working for the Lux Info Press Agency and the “Cuba-Miami Information Bridge”, informs us about the hunger strike of a political prisoner who was detained on 13 July,2005 , when he was participating…
Panama’s president has come forth with the long-awaited plans for the expansion of the Panama Canal. The $5.5 billion expansion would widen the canal so that bigger ships with more cargo and traffic can go through. Right now, a full five percent of all world trade goes through this canal and there can be a four-day waiting period for ships trying to go through (when there are boat-traffic jams). Panama makes about $1.2 billion a year on crossing fees, but to its great credit, its economy does not stop at those boat fees, but multiplies away into vast financial services,…
Peru’s detested spy chief, Vladimir Montesinos, who committed numerous human rights violations in the 1990s, is a man who belongs in jail. He’s there all right, but his networks of operatives are not. Instead, the unemployed spies and torturers have found a new sponsorship in the candidacy of Ollanta Humala. That tells us a lot about the kind of regime Humala is likely to institute, given that he intends to rewrite the constitution to consolidate power. Alek Boyd has the ominous report here.
Yesterday, April 21, 2006, the United Nations Environmental Program gave out awards to ???????the Seven protectors of the Earth.??????? These seven individuals are hailed by the UN as ???????the Champions of the Earth.??????? One of the seven ???????protectors of the Earth??????? and a United Nations ???????Champion of the Earth??????? is Mikhail Gorbachev! This coming week will be the twentieth anniversary of what is commonly accepted as one of the worst environmental incidents of all mankind????????the Chernobyl disaster. On April 26, 1986, while plant operators were conducting a safety test on Chernobyl’s Unit 4, it overheated and caused a hydrogen explosion.…
There’s less than 3% of the votes to be counted and unless something really unusual happens, Alan Garcia will be the second candidate in the runoff for president of Peru, by a narrow margin. Lourdes Flores is in third place, trailing Garcia by 84,832 votes. I hate Garcia’s guts. But not nearly as much as Ollanta Humala’s. The prime difference between the two men is that Garcia, leftist and irresponsible as he is, is nevertheless a democrat. When his term was up in 1990, and he’d made his big mess of the economy, he nevertheless left office. He didn’t entertain…
In the struggle to name a new election board that won’t be as discredited for its pro-Hugo Chavez biases as the last one, a supposedly transparent and fair process is being put into place and supposedly neutral observers are being chosen. This of course is not happening. The candidates are being asked whether they voted or not – a highly loaded question since only 18% of the voters voted in December and the rest of the electorate boycotted the election. If saying they stayed home on election day means they aren’t patriotic (read: Chavista) then the only people who will…
Source: Daniel’s Venezuela News & Views What do 70,000 unsolved murders look like? That’s what Venezuelans tried to show today in a unique and passionate protest in Caracas. The most visible legacy of Hugo Chavez’s regime is murder. As the entire governmental infrastructure becomes politicized, one hard hit section is the police. Bad cops, so long as they are Chavistically loyal, are the ones hired, while the ethical cops get thrown out. Not only that, the government is focusing its resources on prosecuting political, not criminal, cases. That leaves the cops who could make a difference out of luck. Lastly,…
The spectacular decline in the visual appearance of Caracas, Venezuela, once one of South America’s smartest cities, continues to be noted. Caracas under the Hugo Chavez dictatorship is getting that telltale ‘Havana‘ look, as a result of the same types of policies that made Havana the heap of rubble it now is. We’ve recently noted this slideshow from The Real Cuba, and now Daniel at Venezuela News & Views, fresh from an eye-opening trip to Caracas, notes the decline and rubbishification of Caracas – as well as its new signs of massive Stalinist propaganda – in an informative and interesting…
For the 45,873th time, communism has failed. Forced confiscations of once-productive farms have left Zimbabwe a hollowed out shell of itself, its people hungry and starving, its government without revenue, and its infrastructure a smoking ruin. How many times do people need to learn this? Is there ever such a thing as learning from others or the past? Does everyone on earth need to learn everything the hard way individually? How anyone could support communism after this is beyond stupid. It can only be evil. Hugo Chavez of course has yet to learn. Anyway, Zimbabwe’s government has “invited” farmers of…
Boli-Nica has a tremendously important piece about the role of the Internet is having on burning down Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s lead in Mexico’s presidential election to be held on July 2. Well, we here certainly don’t like the guy! But more importantly, Boli points out how Mexico’s bloggers are warning, criticizing, exposing and ridiculing the supposedly untouchable AMLO, whittling down the leftist demogogue’s once-powerful presidential lead, which is now down to 3 or 4 points at most and still falling – with a good long three months for it to fall farther. Mexicans can’t stand this kind of nonsense,…
Cuba’s state-controlled press has just reported that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez is proposing a new federation of “autonomous” nations in one big Bolivarian union. It’s a massive show of self-aggrandisement (for who would rule such an entity but Chavez himself?), but also an incredible call to regess to the failed past. Chavez has dressed it up in the aggrieved language of preserving indigenous identity, something that makes sense from his point of view because he is most likely to entice into this the supporters of leaders like Evo Morales of Bolivia and Ollanta Humala of Peru, who have no knowledge…
I downloaded Pajamas Media’s first podcast directly to my 1 GB flash mp3 player, and listened to it on the way home from work. Wow! I think it worked out really great. Austin Bay hosted Glenn Reynolds, Tammy Bruce and Eric Umansky, and they discussed Iraq, Iran and more. I thoroughly enjoyed it: familiar blogs crackled to life, and it felt as one must have felt on first hearing a radio broadcast, although the sound quality was — slightly — better. It’s interesting and exciting, and I would gladly recommend it. Invisible Ämp3’sÅ Crackle with life Bright ÄtransistorsÅ bristle With…
Russia took over the rotating chair of the Group of Eight (G8) Presidency on January 1, 2006, and therefore Russian President Vladimir Putin will host the G8 summit in St. Petersburg in July 2006. Putin has made it clear that he wants ???????Energy Security??????? to be the number one topic of the summit, and it appears that he will get his way. The Russian government wants the summit to be a success and wants to pull it off without any public disputes, however, the US, behind closed doors, is making it clear that Iran must be on the agenda????????threatening that…
The Shia-led United Iraqi Alliance, which is the largest bloc in parliament and is therefore constitutionally obligated to nominate for approval the prime minister, has decided within itself to scrap Ibrahim al-Jaafari as its candidate for the post and has instead voted to nominate someone new. His name is Jawad al-Miliki. No comment yet from the Kurdish, SUnni, and secular parties. BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s ruling Shi’ite Alliance nominated Jawad al-Maliki as its new candidate for prime minister on Friday in an effort to end four months of political paralysis over the formation of a new government. No immediate reaction…