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) is perfect spring weather – not too hot and not too cold. The 12 American and 2 Japanese students I’m living with disagree. Today is International Women’s Day, so there is no school. Yesterday our language instructors gave us roses and cake in honor of…
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 political bloc in the new parliament. In essense, they said that they are the only group fit to rule the country right now and their choice for prime minister is constitutional and must be respected by the other parties. Well, a few people disagreed. The…
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 beast that must be fed. But nothing was going Venezuela’s way. U.S. crude stocks soared higher than anyone expected. U.S. refining capacity use dropped to 70%, down from about 98%, signalling slackening of demand. And every single nation on earth was pumping as hard as…
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 scene of the crime, calling the reporters, in explicitly Castroite language, “miserable,” and declaring that they deserved the death penalty by ‘people’s tribunals.’ (Recall that Cuban dictator Fidel Castro likes to use the word ‘miserable’ – an odd word, really – on his enemies.) Venezuela…
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 Muslim-majority country that’s full of smart people who know the advantages of free trade. They’re Asians and don’t do stupid counterproductive things in the name of nationalism, socialism, fundamentalism, or anything else that fails. Malaysia in particular will be a beacon to other Muslim states…
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, but real estate agents in Miami and Houston and Calgary probably have a pretty good idea. The U.S. immigration chief in Miami says that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez is forcing them out, due to his tightening grip on power. People can’t live in conditions like…
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 while the Islamic regime grants access to females of other countries in order to back its international relations. And today, a group of frustrated citizens gunned down a regime’s intelligence officer.
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 nobody knows what could happen next. Hey, wait a second, this isn’t Iraq? And it isn’t the al-Askariya shrine in Samarra? I’ll give you one guess, but only if you don’t look at the post’s category tags. That’s right. India. Known as the largest democracy…
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 the law. That’s what happens when there is nothing to check the government’s power. And this is Kenya, one of the better African countries when compared relatively to many of its neighbors. Now, everyday Kenyans and civil society advocates are protesting against these actions in…
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 what the Venezuela they are “defending” from evil gringos really looks like. Read the whole thing here.
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 the 1990s, committed suicide in prison, the U.N. war crimes tribunal said Monday. Babic, who was serving 13 years for crimes against humanity, was found dead Sunday evening in his cell at the U.N. detention center in Scheveningen, a suburb of The Hague, said a…
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 of Chavismo. Its governor is anti-Hugo Chavez, and its people hate the Thug more than almost anyone in the country. Its autonomy move resembles that of natgas-rich and very rightwing, market-oriented Santa Cruz province in Bolivia. But the desire to break away from an unbearable…
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 backing a campaign to oust Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra threatened on Monday to call informal strike action this week unless he quits. Union chiefs at three state power and two water firms would be urging members to take holidays from Tuesday to join the…
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. Who wouldn’t want to read an interview with John Bolton? What newspaper ever tried this? It took Pamela to do it! What’s more, from Bolton’s point of view, why wouldn’t he like to talk to her as a friend – he reads her blog and…
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. Venezuela’s cheap and Venezuela’s convenient, but that’s getting to be secondary, given one little problem: The oilmen are right peaceable people and don’t care much for Hugo Chavez’s raving anti-U.S. lunatic rhetoric these days. They know how their customers feel about these things and are…
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 gain to hundreds of thousands, even higher than other protests that have been ongoing in the past several weeks. Even the Dharma Army, a foundation of monks tens of thousands strong that helped topple the 1990’s military dictatorship, has joined in and is vowing not…
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 least beat them and fire in their general direction. The formidable br23 blog reports in more detail than Reuters ever could about the arrest and beating of one of the opposition candidates, Alexander Kazulin. The details are simply hard to imagine. Afterward, the main opposition…
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 Iranians?”, Curt Weldon stated: “You’re no more left alone; the American People, the US President and the US legislative power are behind you and are hearing you… Republicans and Democrats are coming together in order to call for an end to tyranny in Iran… Our…
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, has yielded that the perpetrators of the bombing was most like… dun dun dun… Iran! The deputy governor of the Iraqi province of Saladin, where the holy city of Samarra is situated, said preliminary investigation was pointing to Iran????????s role in the bombing of the…
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 one of its biggest threats. Avowedly ready to stage an uprising should Iran give the order, some military commanders must be wondering why the hell they didn’t get rid of him a long time ago when they had the chance. Now his prominence is being…
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 could help people there. What she found made her squeamish. Not only did she find tens of thousands of people living in shantytowns, children starving in the streets, and HIV-positive workers forced into psychiatric wards, but that the Cuban secret police didn’t want anyone to…
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 message to the clown that he’s not to try to upstage her during her historic presidential inauguration on March 11. Chavez is to take no ‘awards,’ make no ‘speeches’ and pander to no local leftists who might want to ‘honor’ him. If he wants that,…
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. That’s why they’re creating an atmosphere of terror through their incendiary devices and seeking to ruin the business climate for everyone. That way, they can all sit in the mud together with no free trade and wonder why the hell they are poor. Agencia EFE…