Blogging the democratic revolution
Howdy everybody, Hope you are all enjoying the coming of spring (or fall, depending on your hemisphere), wherever it may find you. I’ve been in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, for almost two weeks now. Though the temperature is around 10F when I walk to school, Mongolians think the daily high of around 16F (-8C)…
A political storm had been heading over Iraq with the bombing of the al-Askariya shrine and the sectarian tensions that rose out of it. The Shia United Iraq Alliance used the occassion to push forward with it’s plan to nominate current Prime Minister Ibraham al-Jaafari for the position again, despite the wishes of every other…
Venezuela was fighting like a lone jaguar in OPEC meetings today to urge the cartel to cut oil production so that prices would stay high. Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez needs those high prices to bankroll his fake ‘revolution’ and finance his external meddlings abroad. His so-called revolution is an increasingly ravenous one, and an expensive…
A newspaper office in Los Teques, a small city south of Caracas, was bombed in a multiple molotov cocktail attack that was politically motivated. There were no injuries. The paper, La Region, had done too much reporting on the state of Venezuela’s abysmal health care, led by Cuban agents. Angry fliers were left at the…
Take that, Hugo Chavez! Bright Singapore and lovely Thailand have already negotiated pacts to drop tariffs, challenge China’s export juggernaut, and make lots of money for themselves through trade with the U.S. Now splendid Malaysia is planning to do the same. Malaysia in particular is an important partner because it’s a good democracy and a…
Venezuelans are fleeing their country. When we last looked at the matter, about 300 Venezuelans sought asylum in the U.S. Now, that figure has since grown fourfold, and over 1000 Venezuelans are seeking asylum in the U.S. a year later. The figure is only for 2004, so god knows what it will be for 2005,…
Tens of Iranian women protested again outside the “Azadi” (Freedom) stadium in Tehran. From SMCCDI: The protest took place following the brutality used by Islamic militiamen and plainclothes agents who were sent to remove the female spectators that were attending the 2006 Gymnastics World Cup tournament. Iranian women are banned from attending games involving males…
Boz has the past week’s poll numbers (sorry I didn’t see it earlier!) showing the state of the presidential Horse Races in Mexico and Peru, along with an item showing that Ecuador’s reverting true to its political form. The whole thing, with these and other polls, is here.
Simultaneous bombs exploded in a crowded temple in one of the country’s holiest cities. One of the entire religion’s holiest cities, no less. In a country where rival ethnic and religious groups have frequently clashed for years, the bombing raises the prospect of reprisal sectarian violence. It is holding together for the most part, but…
Last Thursday, an elite squad of government commandos known as Black Mambas stormed The Standard Group, the second largest media organization in Kenya. They disabled transmission equipment at the Kenyan Television Network and burned thousands of copies of the next day’s issue of The Standard newspaperl; both deemed to favor the political opposition. Completely disregarding…
You gotta see this hilarious post from Mark in Mexico about Hugo Chavez’s 100,000-strong quasi army of reservists from the shantytowns that he’s assembling to fend off a U.S. “invasion.” With his great sense of detachment, Mark shows how illogical it is, how unlikely it will be to incentivize anyone to join it, and just…
A Serbian rebel leader convicted of crimes against humanity was found dead in his jail cell, having apparently committed suicide. It was not revealed how Milan Babib did it, just that he did. Milan Babic, the Serb leader of a rebel republic in Croatia and one of the key figures in the Balkan wars of…
Oil-rich Zulia state in western Venezuela, right under the radar, is seeking autonomy or possibly independence from Venezuela. There are now growing calls for it, from an independence group called ‘Our Course.’ Situated near Lake Maracaibo, the rightwing stronghold on the Colombian border is the only state that’s never been mowed down by the forces…
Worker unions at major state electricity and water companies are preparing to hold an informal strike against the government to force Prime Minister Thaksin to resign. They threaten that, should Thaksin resist, unions from other major state companies will go on strike as well. BANGKOK (Reuters) – The heads of government electricity and water unions…
Glamorous Pamela over at Atlas Shrugs scored an amazing interview for her blog – an interview with UN horsewhipper John Bolton. She’s got the first two parts up and will get a third part up later. This goes to show the changing nature of blogging and how blogging is now beginning to supercede the news….
Miguel Octavio has a couple of new pictures up showing the extent of Chavista vulgarity. Chavez’s so-called Bolivarian “revolution” has come to this here.
Bubba and Junior, some of the oilmen down in Lou’siana, are getting a little disgusted about a certain Senor Chavez of Venezuela, and it might just be about to affect bidness. Seems one of Citgo’s top suppliers, Evans Oil, is preparing to dump Venezuela as a supplier and move on to other sources of petroleum….
Tens of thousands of demonstrators are gathering in Royal Square in Bangkok at this very moment, calling from Prime Minister Thaksin to resign over a deal that sold off Thailand’s largest telecommunications company to a Singapore firm that netted his family $1.7 billion in profits due to the use of tax loopholes. The protest could…
With a presidential “election” just over two weeks away, things are worse in Belarus than they usually are. The opposition is gearing up for the fight of its life, uniting behind a single candidate for the first time. President Lukashenko, on the other hand, is ready to kill them if he has to. Or at…
The SMCCDI Movement reports that U.S. Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA) has had a direct conversation with the Iranians in Iran through a popular Los Angeles-based Iranian satellite TV: In part of the Sunday Q&A program and responding to an Iranian woman who asked “why the US is staying idyll in reference to the plight of…
As I’ve been saying all along, the only ones who really stood to benefit, and those who really took advantage of the al-Askariya shrine bombing, is Moqtada al-Sadr and his counterparts in Iran. Now, a preliminary investigation by the deputy governor of Saladin, where the Shia holy city of Samarra and the shrine is located,…
The rising star of Moqtada al-Sadr has been the subject of much recent speculation: how his bloc became the biggest in the Shia UIA alliance, how he controls one of the most extremist militias in the country, and how he has become one of the most important politicians in Iraq’s development toward democracy. And also…
She’s a model. Miss Czech Republic 1999 to be exact. She also has a charity for impoverished children that operates in nine different countries. Talk about a heart of gold and the hair to go with it, eh? This woman visited Cuba, the real Cuba, to get a sense of whether or not her charity…
Michelle Bachelet of Chile has just kicked Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez where it hurts again, and this isn’t the first time. Awhile back, the Venezuelan dictator said he wanted to ‘hug’ her and was met with stony silence. She’s been even more assertive on other fronts with him as well. Today, she’s somehow gotten the…
It’s started. Leftist barbarians in El Salvador are burning tires and hurling explosive devices into the faces of police as their way of resolving their disagreements over the implementation of CAFTA. They are always free to not trade with us if that is their wish but they just can’t leave others alone who choose differently….