Blogging the democratic revolution
Ratko Mladic was the former Army Chief under Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. Along with Karadzic, Mladic is largely responsible for the campaign of ethnic cleansing of Croats and Muslims. Mladicwas indicted in 1995 by the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for genocide and crimes against humanity for his role in the…
It has been a week now since the united Seven Party Alliance, together with the Maoists, called for a nationwide strike. It’s still going strong. The crowds of demonstrators are growing and the country is finding it hard to function. The government especially. Protests are going into their eighth day with all segments of the…
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has grand designs on the Caribbean. He considers it his swimming pool, and its tiny community of nations his pool-rafts; places where he can swirl his oily mixed drinks and get himself a back rub, made in the shade. Well, the Caribbean states don’t care for this, and today they gave…
Algeria handed over $35 million to the Palestinian Authority. I don’t know that I’ve heard of such a massive waste of money since they came out with that whole “pay as you go” cell phone system. The West has refused to keep throwing money at the PA. And because Palestine is oh so important, the…
Nile Gardiner at the Heritage Foundation has an interesting piece about Prodi’s likely foreign policy: appeasement of terrorists and Middle Eastern tyrants; pro-EU and pro-U.N. policies at the expense of Italy’s alliance with the U.S. and Israel. Read the whole thing here.
Despite an increase in repression, the Cuban resistance movements are growing stronger and more popular than ever. In Isle of Pines, freedom fighters established a new Independent Library, named “January 28”.
This would be the first time that any party has managed to hold power for two terms. As previously discussed, the political parties don’t quite conform to typical expectations as understood in the US, nor even as they would be understood a hop, skip, and jump away in Italy. If you’re not familiar with the…
Latvia will host the NATO summit in Riga this November. Latvia joined NATO and the EU in 2004. However, the NATO summit aside, things may get very interesting in Latvia this fall if the Mayor of Ventspils, Aivars Lembergs, decides to run for parliament in the national elections in October. The last few days have…
Whatever will be the Supreme Court’s response after recounting the votes and regardless of how long will a likely Prodi’s government last, one thing is for sure: after 5 years of stable gov’t, Italy returns to political instability. In the last 60 years, Italy had 55 governments in 50 years. Prodi’s last administration changed prime…
OK, I have made a mistake. All is not lost for Peru’s best candidate, Lourdes Flores. She may still make the runoff. I misread one of Alvicho’s Off Topic posts on the electoral outcome. He had a headline up about the expat vote, but the tally he posted was for the Peruvian electorate as a…
Where were you on April 11, 2002? I was just getting on an airplane to Buenos Aires, Argentina to check out the crisis in that country. But I knew I would be flying over another nation – Venezuela – that was in an even more acute crisis, a military coup against Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez….
Miguel Buitrago at the excellent MABB blog, just got back from a conference in Turkey devoted to discussing world democracy movements. People from different countries got together and compared notes on the progress of democratic revolution. Miguel, who is from Bolivia, said that three other Bolivians also were there. Turkey’s prime minister attended along with…
The expat vote is coming in, the last frontier of vote counting in Peru’s hotly contested election race. As it happens, the Peruvian expat vote pretty much reflects the vote of the home Peruvians – most are going to Ollanta Humala, with the second-highest tally going to Alan Garcia, and free-market Lourdes Flores is left…
“Thought he died years ago.” That’s the remark my mother made this weekend when the topic of Fidel Castro was brought up for some reason or another and the conversation rapidly moved on to some other subject. Castro should have died years ago, of course, but that hasn’t happened. If he had any dignity, he’d…
I noticed this photo on the Yahoo! site, listed as one of the most frequently viewed and emailed. It’s interesting because at my workplace, the photo editor was struck by the strangeness of the photo, too, and called me over to look at it as something disgusting. He pointed out that the hackneyed peace symbolism,…
Now here is something we have been waiting for, Alvaro Vargas Llosa’s take on the wretched electoral situation in Peru, where a leftist Chavista, Ollanta Humala, is in the lead. Vargas Llosa’s got a new essay out, released just minutes ago, called ‘Peru – A Fox Guarding The Henhouse.’ It’s a good neutral analysis of…
I received an email from my friend Abu Khawla, coordinator of the Lafif Lakhdar International Defense Committee (Lakhdar is a Tunisian secularist and reformist who got a death fatwa by London-based imams). Below, I am reporting Khawla’s email as I received it. Hi friends I’m forwarding you a message I received from Professor Ikbal Gharbi-Zeitouna…
The great political thinker, Alvaro Vargas Llosa, has written a beautiful essay on the trouble with France and its unsustainable economic model. He touches on the French sense of fear and insecurity as one reason why the protests were so sudden and virulent. He also notes the irony of French students saying they want jobs…
There have been numerous Italian regions that, although had elected left-leaning administrations, have voted for Berlusconi this time. In Italy, the right is still very popular. And yet, with its usual dictatorial method rooted in its DNA, the Left claims victory only because of the votes of the Italian expatriates! In Italy, the Italians voted…
The largest outcry for democracy since Nepal’s king seized power last February continues for the fifth straight day. A four-day nationwide strike and general protest was called to start on Thursday and end on Sunday jointly by the Seven Party Alliance and the Maoists, but because of its success and unheard of amount of support,…
France has scrapped its proposed youth jobs laws that allows workers in their first two years of employment to be fired at will. The idea behind the bill, backed by Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, was to give employers more incentive to hire the young by alleviating their fears of getting a slacker they wouldn’t…
Last month Mikhail Gorbachev celebrated his 75th birthday. Gorbachev, the final leader of the brutal Soviet Union, was treated to a media love fest that proclaimed him the architect of the democratization of the former captive republics of his regime. ABC News called him, ???????The man who ended the Cold War and launched democratic reforms…
Yes, it will be. The Interior Ministry informs that Berlusconi’s CDL (House of Freedom) leads 49,8-49,1% at the Chamber of Deputies and leads at the Senate too! And the votes of the Italian expatriates have yet to be added, although sources say that Italians in Chile voted for CDL ! It will be a long…
Today, Mercer released its annual list of the world’s most liveable cities, based on quality of living. I Googled around and finally found a whole list of the study here. I stripped out all the non-Americas cities and just left in the cities that are in Latin America, in the Caribbean, or in U.S. cities…
You can call it a peculiar kind of poll, but today’s markets are betting that Lourdes Flores may well be able to win the presidential election in Peru. This candidate’s got to fight hard but apparently she can do it. That’s why markets in Peru are up today. The dynamics are curious in Peru. Roughly,…