Blogging the democratic revolution
Regime Change Iran has its weekly briefing of Iran up. Don’t miss it!
While the opposition has attempted to step up protests against the monarch, he has been relentless in cracking down. Some pictures are posted at Radio Free Nepal that I’ll reproduce here.
And over in the next communist regime, it’s wild caribou marinated in blueberries and other confections. It’s been quite a sybarite feast this weekend for the hemisphere’s communist regimes. Here Val at Babalu fills us in on the dinner menu in Havana from a Canadian trade mission. The excesses are Bourbonite. But alongside that, doesn’t it give you a funny feeling that this might be the decadent end? One day, these excesses will be as memorable as Marie Antoinette’s champagne and cake eating feasts. Read the whole thing here.
Judging from the Orange Revolution, it is known that for a political movement to be more likely to succeed, the opposition must be united behind a charismatic candidate. There is a new face for the Belarussian opposition front these days, who has recently appeared to challenge Lukashenko for the presidency in summer 2006. And it looks like he may be uniting two of the opposition parties. The Minsk-based “Narodnaya volya,” the biggest opposition daily in Belarus, carried a front page manifesto on 19 February of a new political movement called Will of the People (Volya naroda). The manifesto was signed…
Alek Boyd has one hell of a good news report and short analysis of the Boston “friendship” meeting with Chavista officials, who are conducting a propaganda offensive in the U.S. The details about grilled shrimp and duck quesadillas among the jeweled chavistas is priceless. But it goes well well beyond that to give us the scope of Venezuelan ‘active measures’ to manipulate perceptions in the U.S. It’s not normal stuff. There is one particularly wrenching encounter between a Russian woman who has known communism firsthand and has a perfect grasp of its underlying dynamic, and a Chavista official who keeps…
It’s Sunday, and you know what that means! Actually, not much. Except that I’m catching up on my blog reading. Which means you need to check out that latest of David McDuff’s series of posts Dragons and Democracy, part 10!
A lot has happened since the last update. Lahoud was already weak, but now he is even in the position of possible resignation. Karami is thinking of resigning again, and Hizb’allah’s hold is weaker as well. The most startling news over the past couple of days has been a car bomb, which is roundly being said to be a “goodbye present” from the Syrian services.
Husayn from Democracy in Iraq (is here!) has written a lengthy post relaying his thoughts on this important anniversary. Two years is about 730 days. In those days what have I seen. My eyes have seen more than I had ever hoped, more blood, more death and more pain, then I ever imagined or hoped I would have seen. In those days I have seen the worst of humanity, the animal that lives in all humanity, the ability of humanity to destroy at will others, and rob the life given to others by God almight himself. So you ask me,…
A terrorist attack recently occurred in the Qatari capital of Doha; and blogger Natasha Tynes was right in the neighborhood! How terrifying is that? Make sure to read her account. UPDATE: She has some post-blast thoughts up and will be updating with photos soon. PICTURE: Alright, the pictures are up.
A new day, a new anti-war protest! But given that they were wrong wrong wrong, I think it would be fitting to make fun of them. So here’s what I want you to do. Rules: Use the following photos and post in the comments section what you think the sign should say. It should be funny, and made to make fun of hippies/anti-war protestors/liberals/etc. The image starts out as “We apologize for…” and then you fill in the rest of the sentence. Prize: To the best caption goes a one week blogad. Have fun!
Last year, Castro threw 75 brilliant, thinking people – economists, journalists, leaders – into his dungeons. This wasn’t the usual garbage from him, it was a desperate effort to destroy a new generation of potential opposition leaders as he declines into his fading years. The U.S. embassy put up its Christmas display to let them know they are not forgotten, triggering a rabid reaction from Castro’s goons. But most of the imprisoned are still there. Val at Babalu blog doesn’t forget. He has a tribute to them here.
I was a little surprised by how much attention I got from an essay I wrote for Babalu Blog the other night on Castro’s wealth, but in retrospect his position on the Forbes billionaire’s list is an important news story as the the Cuban dictator begins to eye the vultures circling. He’s been on the Forbes list before but now the value of his fortune is suddenly sensititive as his grip on power slides, his party hacks begin to jockey for power, and Cubans begin to learn the true scope of how his vast wealth derives from their poverty. And…
An informative and disturbing essay from Bolivia here.
Remember the Venezuelan reporter whose house was raided and trashed by dictator Hugo Chavez’s security agents? We wrote about her here, here and here. She’s now being prosecuted. The interior minister is believed to be targetting Patricia Poleo because some think he wants to erase his role in a 1992 coup attempt from history, and she’s written about it. Alek Boyd has a summary here. In the middle of all this, there’s a grotesque picture of someone, accused by Poleo of being the interior minister himself, of posing over a dead body from the 1992 coup attempt here she wrote…
As we wrote here, Venezuela’s mayor of Caracas and some other offiicials paid a visit to Boston where they were met by starry-eyed officials, were dished heaps of praise, and were taken around town in the proverbial dog and pony show. The Venezuelan blogosphere, however, did more than just write words to reply this time, they also organized a counter demonstration, getting their word out to event-goers with a demonstration there and printing up a flyer. Details of the successful counterdemonstration are here and in the comments section here.
Herbert Meyer, a brilliant thinker and a leading architect of the demise of the Soviet Union during the Reagan years, has written a dazzling essay that will forever change how you view this Age of Revolution we are chronicling at PubliusPundit. Meyer’s analysis about how revolutions start and why they will continue is not only strikingly original but logically compelling. It’s grounded in experience and a deep understanding of human nature – a powerful wisdom. This is the kind of essay you are going to refer back to as long as you live. I’m tempted to put in an excerpt…
Jennifer McCoy, who led the disastrous Carter-Center-sanctioned destruction of democracy in Venezuela, is now trying to defend herself to Venezuela’s bloggers. A little spin control, I suppose, in light of just how deeply the Carter-endorsed fraud in Venezuela’s recall referendum has sunk into American consciousness. This shows the power of Venezuela’s tenacious bloggers in getting the truth out when the media first wouldn’t. The media has largely changed its line of course, so now the Carterites are on the defensive, but still defending the indefensible.
Castro apologists – in the media, in Hollywood, in education, in every corrupted institution of America are always bleating about the ‘virtues’ of ‘free’ Cuban health care. Sure, Cuba may be an odious tyranny whose citizens would walk across a bed of landmines to flee or climb aboard a leaky tire raft headed for the high seas to escape … but it’s still got all that free health care. They parrot this line all the time. Val Prieto at Babalu blog shows firsthand evidence with photos the condition of Cuba’s best hospital. He’s got powerful commentary giving context, too, and…
Tomorrow will mark the second anniversary of Operation: Iraqi Freedom. Glenn over at Instapundit said it, I think, better than anyone. WAR CRITICS want to mark the anniversary of the war — there will be an “antiwar protest” at my local mall tomorrow and there are all sorts of events planned worldwide — but a proper way of marking the date would be with a mass apology to the Iraqi people, and to George W. Bush, for taking the wrong side at a crucial moment in history. Sackcloth, ashes, and signs reading: WE WERE WRONG, SORRY WE TRIED TO BLOCK…
The fourth straight week after Friday prayer? Interesting. Hundreds of men and women shouted slogans against the Egyptian government and clashed with security forces Friday in a protest against the mass detention and alleged torture of relatives suspected in last year’s Sinai resort bombings. Some 500 protesters demonstrated after Friday prayers outside the al-Rifai mosque, one of the main mosques in the north Sinai town of El-Arish, shouting, “Freedom, freedom.” A large force of riot police surrounded the protest and dispersed the men, beating some with electric prods and batons. Ten men were detained, police officials said. The men dispersed,…
Josh Landis has a response to the coup rumors up at his site. It starts off like this: “I spent most of my day trying to deny that a coup had taken place in Syria.” That is how the US military attach????, David Jesmer, accounted for himself yesterday when he came to dinner with a lively crowd. I was gratified he didn’t bring his bullet-proof vest. If anyone is interested in how a blogger’s hoax can cause a stir, the Syrian coup alarm is a good starting place. Here is the email that greeted me as I began my morning…
Earlier today the Palestinian Authority and several Palestinian terrorist organizations, including, most prominently, Hamas, wrapped up their meeting in Cairo with an agreement to extend their ceasefire with Israel until the end of this year, assuming Israel meets a variety of conditions. As I watched the press conference and statements by leaders of the various organizations on Al-Jazeera earlier, the most oft-repeated demands were “and end to Israeli aggression” and “freeing of the prisoners” – the latter a reference to terrorists which currently inhabit Israeli prisons. The Islamist daily Al-Quds Al-Arabi phrased the united position this way: ÄQuoting Amr Sulayman,…
Given that I recently posted an entry, Jordan’s Civil Society Crackdown, which was somewhat critical of Jordan, I thought that it would be appropriate to link to a transcript of an interview with Jordan’s King Abdullah from Middle East Quarterly, posted on Regime Change Iran, since it shows his strategic insight. He talks about a variety of subjects in the interview, including how to combat militant Islam, and I can assure you that Abdullah is not one of those Arab leaders who says one thing in English and another in Arabic. He also discusses at length the threat that Iran…
In Caracas, Venezuela, a controversial mayor there is a guy who once chased a potbanging protestor around with a broken booze bottle at Caracas airport. Well, he’s now in Boston to instruct the Ivy-Leaguers at the august institutions of Harvard and MIT. He’s a real charmer. Read the whole thing here, and here.