Blogging the democratic revolution
Alan Garcia, probable winner, Peru presidency, and second-time lucky Source: Reuters, via Yahoo! … and his far-left Hugo-Chavez-style opponent, Ollanta Humala is trailing by about five percentage points. Assuming there are no surprises, this represents one of the greatest political comebacks of all time – the greatest comeback since …. Nixon. And it’s nothing to…
Hong Kongers hold a vigil to remember young people who died at Tiananmen Square in the name of seeking liberty for China. Source: Associated Press, via Yahoo! In Hong Kong, tens of thousands of people – some 44,000 – commemorated the 17th anniversary of the Tienanmen Square massacre in China. Even more bravely, some people…
Communism or capitalism? It sounds a little stark, but it might come down to that. Today’s the second and final round of Peru’s election for president and Peruvians today are heading to the polls. Peru’s presidential ballotSource: UPI, via El Comercio Peruvians voting in the Inca city of Cuzco Source: Reuters, via Yahoo! They will…
Today’s the Big One, Peru goes to the polls today. I’ll have something up on that in a minute but here is an important background topic I post as a sidebar: Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s political meddling in Peru during its election. At times, it’s been the central issue of the entire Peruvian campaign in…
I visited Yaracuy, Venezuela, a few months ago. It’s an agricultural state famous for its sugar and it looks like this: A Yaracuy sugar farm But the atmosphere was tense everywhere, for land wars were going on, and people were getting their farms confiscated. That wasn’t the only fear. Every day, I witnessed people worrying…
It’s happening in three countries of the Americas, simultaneously at this very moment: Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba. In at least two of the three cases, Venezuela and Bolivia, there’s a rapidly building case for civil war as productive land owners seek to defend their life’s work from the Mugabization of it all into smoking ruins….
The Big One, Peru, is ahead tomorrow. Will it a Chavez pawn take power in Peru? Voters go to the polls about it in just a few hours… Boz has the last and latest polls on that, and more polls from around the Americas in this key election year. Go see if Hugo Chavez really…
President Putin might want to watch out! A colored revolution may be brewing in his own backyard, as the protest babes advance on him. This babe, who represents the most decadent kind of freedom (my favorite kind), is setting up a youth group as an alternative to the many pro-government ones set up over the…
Elections to the lower house of the Czech Parliament, the Chamber of Deputies, begin at 2:00 PM on June 2 and end at 2:00 PM on June 3. The Chamber of Deputies is the more important part of the bicameral Czech Parliament. The Chamber of Deputies has 200 members, elected for four year terms. A…
Nazanin, a 17-year-old Iranian girl, who was attacked by an Iranian rapist thug in a Tehran park as her weaselly, masculinity-challenged ‘boyfriend’ ran away, was left to defend herself with a small knife, and in the course of that act, accidentally killed the vile bastard, who is now in hell where he belongs. But that…
Whenever Sandalistas gather in Caracas, the net result is a grotesque orgy of consumption, where leftwing political tourist after leftwing political tourist buys up Che t-shirts, Hugo Chavez barbie dolls, hippie bracelets, Castro bumper stickers, tapes of Chavez’s speeches, pot-leaf ski caps, fake Birkenstocks, Hugo-Chavez coffee cups, hammer and sickle posters, Allende backpacks and anything…
This hardly has to be said… but here’s another example of fanatical Islamists going nuts over humor. It’s just like the Danish cartoon controversy. Someone does a parody and suddenly hundreds of people are out on the streets causing trouble! The usual suspect, Hezbollah, is behind the latest street rioting in Lebanon, where a television…
Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez addressing OPEC this morning Source: Associated Press, via Yahoo! OPEC is holding its quarterly meeting in Caracas right now and sure enough, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez and his new best-friends-forever in the Iranian regime have sought hard to cut oil production to drive up prices and stick it to the Americans….
No more than three days ago, I wrote: On the political level, despite all of the killings, things have chugged along slowly but surely. Of these developments, however, the most interesting and perhaps the most important has always been the breakdown of the Shiite alliance as each party pursues its own interests in the new…
In all the societies of the Arab world in which there has been a serious push for democratic reform, success has been mixed, but in none of them has it turned out so disastrously as in Palestine. Israel’s unilateral disengagement from Gaza last summer and the Palestinian elections earlier this year brought to power the…
Vietnam is the latest in a string of countries to negotiate a trade pact and open up its markets to U.S. companies: Vietnam and the United States have signed a new trade deal which will open the Southeast Asian country’s markets in virtually every sector. It paves the way for Vietnam to enter the World…
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States embarked on a mission to assist the former Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact countries to establish democracies. The US saw as a key factor in establishing democracies that the emerging nations go through a period of transitional justice. One of the keys to transitional justice…
From the news: PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia (AP)–The Nonaligned Movement, the world’s biggest bloc after the U.N., emphatically backed Iran Tuesday in its nuclear standoff with the U.S., and condemned Israel for occupying Palestinian lands. Meeting in Malaysia’s administrative capital, the foreign ministers of NAM member nations also demanded that Israel accede to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty…
Fifteen years ago pro-democracy activists in Russia tore down a statue in front of the Moscow KGB Headquarters. The statue was a monument to Felix Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Cheka, the predecessor agency of the KGB. Back in 2002 the mayor of Moscow suggested that the statue be restored, which caused an uproar, and…
I don’t know exactly why but this manic photo caption by Castro-regime Cuban boat refugee Charlie Bravo at KillCastro absolutely cracks me up every time I read it. See what you think here.
The road to forming a new Iraqi government, from the elections in December last year to its actual formation no more than a week ago, splintering between the country’s different ethnic and religious groups has been everyone’s concern. Sunnis attacking Shiites, and vice versa. Even with the end of the insurgency, the development of death…
Twenty-four years ago, June 8, 1982, Ronald Reagan spoke to the British House of Commons. In that speech President Reagan said, in part, the following: We’re approaching the end of a bloody century plagued by a terrible political invention — totalitarianism. Optimism comes less easily today, not because democracy is less vigorous, but because democracy’s…
Source: Reuters, via Yahoo! I never thought I would utter such words. A long time ago, Alan Garcia was Peru’s pain-in-the-ass leftwing president, from 1980-1985. He was only 35 then, and apparently not the same person he is now. He’s grown up. And he’s turned his spectacular talent to be a pain-in-the-ass to the guy…
Polls have closed at 3 p.m. today. These elections were to elect governors of several Italian provinces,city councils and a regione, Sicily. First exit polls ( be cautious, we may recall how they were dead wrong in the recent political elections in Italy) are like the following: Election for the governor of Sicily: Salvatore Cuffaro…