Blogging the democratic revolution
As Jesse Jackson visits Venezuela’s strongman Hugo Chavez at the presidential palace this weekend, with timing that suggests a plan to denounce what he calls the ‘Rumsfeld-Robertson connection’, outside in the streets – violent protests have engulfed Caracas in a sign of Chavez’s tightening grip on power. El Universal has the story in Spanish here…
Larry Kudlow has an important essay on the one economic force stronger than oil and all the tyrants who ride in on it: The Federal Reserve. He warns that the Fed doesn’t quite get it on interest rates – it’s obsessing over mortgage prices and risk management instead of commodity prices and the yield curve…
Hey everyone, I’ll be moving up to Boston on Monday to start going to school again, so there will no longer be any posts on the weekends. What this means is less burn out and better quality posting during the week. So what I’ll do, every weekend, is put a post on the top linking…
Every reason about why Iraqis are divided over the constitution, from Islamic law to oil distribution to Saddam’s tighty whities, has been beaten like a dead camel in the desert. And almost all of these controversial issues have been worked out, getting down to nit-picky arguments about words like a and the. Important words, no…
More thoughts on Pat Robertson’s public recommendation that Hugo Chavez be assassinated from Venezuelan bloggers: Tomas Sancio in Venezuela, in an open note to Robertson, notes Chavez’s many incompetences and says he’s incapable of being the ruthless dictator who could use assassination. (I strongly differ with Sancio here – all the dictatorships I have seen…
Boli-Nica reports that Abimael Guzman, the chief of Peru’s Sendero Luminoso, the monstrous Shining Path terrorists who murdered nearly a hundred thousand people, mostly poor people, throughout Peru in the last quarter of the 20th century, is finally facing justice in a civil court. Boli has a picture of Peru’s freakish Pol Pot (an ex-philosophy…
Alexandra Beech has a fantastically insightful essay debunking a truly lousy piece by airheaded Washington Post columnist Marcela Sanchez, who claims Hugie Chavez is just a teddy bear in the region capable of stabilizing it. Well, yeah, the way graveyards tend to be stable places I guess. But Alex shows the reality much better –…
Oh man, this is really gross – Hugo Chavez is bed with Marc Rich, the most corrupt speculator of all, a guy who makes George Soros look like a sweet little daisy. Rich is the ultimate sleaze in the world of capitalism, in bed with every dictator and criminal out there. I know a lot…
Venezuela’s revolution is complex because it has two sides claiming to hold the revolutionary mantle. The reality is, only one does, the one that does the democratic housework, not the one that spends the night painting the town – with red graffiti. What do the real revolutionaries do? They build the case for democratic revolution….
El Salvador’s soldiers have served the effort to spread democracy through the world with great distinction. Not only are Salvadorans always there when a tyrant is in need of dislodging – side by side and doing heavy lifting with the U.S., they are well-known for their courage and heroism. Salvadorans do what they do not…
Presidents Kocharian of Armenia and Aliyev of Azerbaijan, two countries tangled in constant conflict, are due to meet face to face at a CIS meeting today and will likely discuss relations between the two countries. In particular, the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh. Secretary Rice made sure to call them both up and put her word…
This piece was beautifully written by D.J. McGuire at the China e-Lobby, which is “dedicated to exposing the abuses of human rights, threats to American security, and attacks on general decency committed by Communist China, and to influencing American policy to ensure these egregious acts do not go unopposed.” Make sure to check him out….
Al-Hayat is reporting that the editor of the independent newspaper Al-Wasat was kidnapped by armed men driving a government vehicle at about 6:00 a.m. on Aug. 23. He was bound, beaten, and threatened with beheading. Then they told him that he might want to “remember his children.” What did this journalist do to deserve this?…
Daniel Berczik remember’s that yesterday was Ukraine independence day, which doesn’t bode well for we who didn’t remember at all. So to make up for it, in an ever-increasing desire to raise the level of discourse here at Publius, here is Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s hot daughter dressed down in black leather during the festivities….
According to a Chinese government report, income disparity and government corruption will cause instability throughout the entire country by 2010 if action isn’t taken. This would certainly coincide with anecdotal evidence of increasing large protests, in both size and frequency. China’s rapidly widening income gap has reached dangerous levels, risking social instability by 2010 if…
I was afraid this might happen. By suspending parliament and taking absolute power, Nepal’s monarch has effectively isolated and turned civil society against him. Now, it seems that the seven main political parties from parliament, which represent some 95% of the population, will be staging joint protests with the Maoist rebels against the king. Not…
It seems that my post on sexy Saudi swimwear has turned into something of a blogospheric debate. Our good friend Stefania over at the Free Thoughts blog posted on the swimwear as well, and it triggered some disagreement with Egyptian blogger Miss Mabrouk, who says that we were being culturally insensitive and the real issue…
Rumors are flying around Rangoon like mad, as word is going around that Than Shwe, the senior general of the military junta that rules Burma, has been possibly deposed by his number two. Everything is unconfirmed, but Burmese state media has not yet discounted any of the rumors, and Than Shwe isn’t to be seen….
In my post yesterday, “Perspective on Islam in Iraq’s constitution,” I argued that Afghanistan has near similar wording in its own constitution and that the mainstream media didn’t harp on it in January 2004. Afghanistan has also not turned into a religious police state like Iran since then. So why is the media barking lunacy…
“Twenty-five years ago next Wednesday — 31 August 1980 — unemployed Polish electrician Lech Walesa struck a major blow to Soviet communism when, after leading a strike at the Lenin Shipyard in Gdansk, he announced the official birth of the Solidarity independent trade union. Solidarity went on to play a central role in the demise…
A young Mexican politician, Gabriela Cuevas Barron, 26, is fighting the onslaught of Hugo Chavez-style communism in Mexico by opposing the candidacy of leftwing PRD presidential contender Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. She continually exposes his sorry record – the bribes, the payoffs, the padded invoices, the neglected police services, the welfare handouts, and the corruption….
‘Christian’ televangelist Pat Robertson generated unprecedented headlines about Hugo Chavez in the blogosphere and in the U.S. media Tuesday when he publicly called for the assassination of the Venezuelan dictator. Technorati listed it as its top search on the blogosphere. Google listed it as its top story worldwide in all categories and ran it as…
I’m going to make this short and sweet. Bill Roggio posts the latest excerpt from the Iraq constitution and believes that the threat of Islam being a main source of legislation, thus creating an Islamic state like Iran, is overstated by the media. Here is the excerpt: The political system is republican, parliamentary, democratic and…
Samarkand may be showing itself to be the new hotbed of civil unrest after the Andijon massacre back in May. Protestors took the to streets after the government gave them only one week to clear out of their homes in preparation for a highway project. And more, the government offered them next to nothing in…
If you’re sick and deranged like me, you’ve been refreshing Iraq the Model every five minutes to see the latest updates on the National Assembly meeting. It looks as if they have delayed the vote on the draft itself for three more days so that the parliamentarians will have time to read it over, discuss…