Blogging the democratic revolution
I co-hosted two interviews on Belarus and Burma at Global Crisis Wacth/Clandestine Radio. The first, Belarus-related, starts from the minute ‘1 and had our dear friend Robert Mayer as guest. The second, Burma-related, starts from the 22’40 minute. Listen to them here I’d like to thank GCW/CR’s Nick Grace and Rich Lafayette for granting me…
A very brave independent Cuban journalist is on his 57th day of a hunger strike for the right to Internet access in Cuba. Guillermo Farinas Hernandez’s case has gotten little media attention, but it’s an important struggle for freedom of information inside news-starved Cuba. Castro knows very well the power of the Internet and its…
It was sometime in the 1970s. I was a kid in a public school in Southern California. I had to report a news article in front of my class on that day. My mother in her bathrobe and coffee that morning picked out the article and cut it out for me. I read it. I…
I’ll never forget him. Fabrizio Quattrochi, the brave Italian man in Iraq who told his brutish Islamofascist kidnappers at the moment of his murder that he had no intention of dying with a hood on his head and tried to tear it off, saying he would show them ‘how an Italian dies’ struck a fearsome…
Sunburnt and exhausted, I return from the biggest rally for immigrant rights in the history of Los Angeles. Five hundred thousand mostly Latino, mostly young, and mostly protest-babe-caliber people marched in the streets of This Proud Capital Of The Third World to demand a halt to various immigration control measures in Congress – like building…
After Lukashenko gave the order to clear October Square of any and all protestors in the Friday twilight., it was completely cordoned off by riot police. Access to the square was denied. But thousands, at least twenty to thirty thousand, people showed up for the planned opposition rally and it was held in Yanka Kupala…
Is there anything fouler than Daniel Ortega? The former Nicaraguan strongman, dubbed by the great Ronald Reagan as “the little dictator,” is poised to seize power again in Nicaragua next November. Unlike the last time, when he shot his way into power, this time he’s trying to seize power via what may be a rigged…
Jorge Rodriguez, the chairman of Venezuela’s supposedly independent election agency, the CNE, has said he’d step down. Rodriguez is one hell of a shameless chavista, the man who brought us Venezuela’s empty elections I witnessed on Dec. 4 last year. He reduced confidence to such a low that virtually no one wanted to vote in…
Like it or not, THE story for the coming week is immigration in the U.S. This weekend, vast crowds of hundreds of thousands of Latinos will take to the streets in support of immigration rights for illegal immigrants. Given the negative sentiment in other, non-Latino parts of the U.S. (thank you Hugo Chavez, clown and…
Perhaps the most irritating part about the entire Belarus affair right now is the lies that come out of the Russian media, and the two-faced and often misled reporting done by many news organizations in Europe. For the former, they tell a story completely dislodged from reality; so far off that you can’t really tell…
From today’s Wall Street Journal editorial page, edifying news that Kyrgyzstan’s Tulip Revolution is still blooming one year later: ‘Island of Freedom’ By ROZA OTUNBAYEVA March 24, 2006 BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — As protesters in Belarus demand a rerun of last Sunday’s presidential poll, and the people of Ukraine enjoy their recently won freedom at parliamentary…
Somewhat I feel vindicated. In August last year I posted an extremely thorough piece of investigative blogging regarding Smartmatic; the e-voting machines vendor, which owns Sequoia, that has proven so useful to Venezuela’s wannabe dictator Hugo Chavez. The recent e-voting fiasco in Chicago comes to prove the hypothesis that one thing is to observe how…
Lukashenko has finally given the order to storm and detain the protestors on October Square in the early Minsk morning. They have all been arrested. The square is compeltely empty. What does this bode for tomorrow, when a massive demonstration is supposed to be held?… Will is happen? MINSK, Belarus – Police stormed the opposition…
There was once a time when I predicted roughly when Mugabe????????s regime might collapse. During the Presidential election of 2002? Maybe in the MDC????????s final push? Perhaps he would just die of a heart attack? So far Mugabe has proved myself, and most probably every Zimbabwe watcher wrong. Yet could 2006 be Mugabe????????s last year…
I’m sure you’ve all heard that the Basque terrorist group ETA declared a permanent ceasefire with Spain a couple of days ago. They’ve waged a decades long campaign, killed hundreds of people, and have not furthered their interests one bit. Now it appears as if the train of thought in the ETA leadership has finally…
A plastic-explosives bomb went off in downtown La Paz, Bolivia, today, killing two people at a hotel. An American and a supposedly Uruguayan woman were arrested. Police say they have confessed to doing it. The event is strange in itself. Miguel B. at MABB noted (well, until he changed his post!) that this hasn’t happened…
The ongoing protests in Belarus since Sunday leave much to be desired; that is, if you’re expecting a colored revolution immediately. Sunday saw well over 10,000 people rallying in October Square, about half that on Monday, and slightly more on Tuesday. You really can’t help but be down on it — the chances are slim…
Martha Beatriz Roque is a former political prisoner in Cuba and is the leader of the Assembly to Promote Civil Society, that gathers several hundreds of pro-regime change Cuban opposition movements inside the island. Since a couple of months, she is literally held as a prisoner in her own house. Daily acts of harassment plainclothes…
Glenn at Instapundit has gotten some amazing information about France that you don’t see in the mainstream media, along with a couple incredible pictures. There’s a vast youth counterprotest full of beautiful young people who are standing up against the bandana-swathed firebomb-hurling losers who would burn the city down, all for the right to not…
A thousand or so Belorussian freedom fighters camped out in October Square all night without much food, tea, or things to keep them warm. Because the police wouldn’t let anyone help or join them. They survived the below-freezing temperatures and the threat of a bloodbath. These protestors swore to be there for good and they…
In just a couple of hours, we will see if democratic opposition candidate Alexander Milinkevich’s call to the people for street protests against an obviously fraudulent election will pan out. People are to meet at October Square in the middle of Minsk at 6:30 p.m. wearing smiles first and foremost. They will call for a…
After a flawed — to say the least — referendum in 2004 to allow for unlimited consecutive presidential candidacies, Dictator Alexander Lukashenko is running for the third time for president again today. People will go to the polls, voting without freedom of conscience or the knowledge that their vote is even tallied. The regime is…
Venezuela’s Viaducto 1, a key bridge on the only highway route that links the vast city of Caracas to its international airport on the northern coast has collapsed down a deep Andean ravine with a huge crash. Holding my breath, it was this bridge I rode out of Caracas across on my last day there…
Via RealClearPolitics, I read a fascinating essay by Ruben Navarrette on the strategy of protests, which, in one case he says are hurting their own cause. His lede says it all: It used to be that protesters took to the streets to build public support for their cause. Now they do it to show their…
Today, March 18, 2006, marks the third anniversary of the “Black Spring”, o Primavera Negra, when some 75 peaceful Cubans were detained by the state security and later sentenced up to 30 years in Castro’s jails for the only crime of speaking out their mind and saying openly that they want free elections and democracy…