Blogging the democratic revolution
I got a call from Beijing, Red China earlier this week from a friend who lives there. He told me he saw a growing willingness of the people from the outer cities to challenge the authorities. He also saw a growing willingness in the authorities to repress such people. The cops, he said, had it down to an art. He was in downtown Beijing on other business this month when he happened upon a large group of protestors, maybe 100 people, holding banners, passing out fliers and demanding justice for their dead killed in a police massacre last year in…
That’s the analysis of Academic Elephant in this well-thought out essay on how we should think about the growing power of the Fidel Castro regime. Should the U.S. lift a trade embargo on an increasingly aggressive regime, fortified by Venezuelan oil, like Cuba? Read the whole thought provoking thing here. And don’t miss Elephant’s special Contra Tyrannum feature, focused this week on Castro’s Cuba here or here.
This past week, the biggest and most economically critical city of all South America was beseiged by drug thugs from Brazil’s abysmal favelas. The ghetto barbarians, acting on orders from their leader, who’s somehow has a cellphone in jail, killed over 200 people, mostly cops. Imagine if New York City lost 200 cops in a week of drug violence? More ominous still, the violence wasn’t stopped by the cops or troops or anyone restoring order. It was stopped because the authorities made a deal with the thug called “Marcola” who had just got done killing 200 people, burning 80 buses…
Two big elections in the troubled Andean states in the next two weeks – Colombia and Peru. Will the voters go Chavista or seek something more economically viable? Will it be a lunge for the messiah-savior of leftwingery or a vote for reality? See what Boz has on the latest polls, as well as doings in Mexico, Panama, Nicaragua, Brazil and others here.
Glenn has found an important source on the doings in Syria, the benighted sub-Axis-Of-Evil tyranny. Intellectuals of all stripes are being rounded up by Syrian goons in the heaviest crackdown on dissidents in years. First in line for government oppression are those who have criticized the Syrian involvement in Lebanon. One by one, name by name, they are disappeared. It’s believed that the international lull in attention of Syria’s role in the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri is what’s emboldened the tyrants. That underscores the need to turn the heat up on Syria over its murderous practices.…
Via Real Clear Politics, I have found an exceptional essay by the excellent Fareed Zakaria on the problems Americans have perceiving the world’s vast move toward democratic revolution. Zakaria writes that Americans are pretty convinced that their country is the beacon of freedom. And with its visa lines and 12-million-strong illegal alien count, who is to argue with us? But he discusses how inside countries like Russia and Singapore, there really are a lot of people who support their existing governments, flaws and all. And part of the reason they do is that they have the memory of the world…
Looking out the window on an air flight to Miami, Ziva at Blog For Cuba can’t help but look over and across the vast blue Florida Strait for traces of all those thousands from Cuba who desperately tried to make their way to freedom, and died trying. Her haunting post is here.
In London, site of the cold-blooded Islamofascist train and bus bombings in 2005, terrorism is a serious subject. We already know that the London cops, having shot an innocent Brazilian in string of police errors, aren’t really up to the frightening task of countering such major-league terrorism, and the city is full of hundreds of thousands of home-grown Islamofascists and their imported mullahs who “love death.” What’s stunning is that, surrounded by real terrorists, the trivial mayor of this vulnerable city, should be so quick to label a Venezuelan blogger as a supporter of terrorism. We’ve never heard him go…
As part of a new, despot-pleasing goodie package, the European Union wants the United States to sell Iran new airplanes so that it can modernize its decades old fleet. They already fell for this once — back in 2005, the Bush administration signed an order allowing the U.S. to sell aircraft spare parts to the maligned regime as part of an earlier incentive design to halt uranium enrichment. Given that Presidenti Ahmadinejad has already refuted the offer before it has even been presented, doing such a thing wouldn’t make sense. The U.S. may not be officially at war with Iran,…
By Pedro Camargo Special to Publius Pundit De facto, Hugo Chavez is adding Ecuador to his growing roster of Bolivarian nations. He is close now with the final steps in place. Ecuador is following the Chavez nation-destroying playbook by ending its international trade and its own democracy. How did Chavez do this? Easy. He followed the Fidel Castro playbook. Harkening back to Napoleon????????s assault on Moscow, Chavez, as the Russian monarchy in the early 19th century knew, applied their best weapon: time and patience. Patience and time. In this case, time and patience has been propelled by oil profits out…
The discussion began here at Publius when A.M. Mora y Leon linked to a piece at the new Foreign Policy blog, commenting that whenever there are searches for sex material, the vast majority of them come from domain extensions that pertain to highly Islamist countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt. Just going through the top keywords in our statistics, “Iran”, “sexy”, and “women” are in the top ten. I’ve noticed that these words are generally used in the same search string. As good looking as Persian women are, they only seem to lose out in the search to one woman:…
Like a world-class military, Egypt’s judges are highly professional and technocratic — ardent defenders of the law. That’s why, over the past year, thousands of them have taken to defying the Mubarak regime which has, in turn, sought to corrupt and strangle the institution of the judiciary. They were prevented from overseeing the counting of the results during last year’s parliamentary and presidential elections. A Mubarak tool was chosen to oversee the case of opposition leader Ayman Nour. Two prominent judges were stripped of their immunities and put up for disciplinary hearings after correctly alleging that last year’s elections were…
With the new advent of new “revolutionary tourists” tramping through the shantytowns of Caracas on guided dog-and-pony “reality tours,” Venezuelans, the latest zoo animals for these gringos, are aghast. Here these unkempt, arrogant, Che t-shirt-wearing Sandalistas are, well-fed and staying in Caracas’ five-star hotels, getting out to get down and dirty among the ‘real people’ and imagining that they know what’s going on. The problem is, being tourists, they see a tourist-eye view of things regardless of how many Che t-shirts they own, and refuse see what’s really going on. At all. They see what they and their tour guides…
I guess many of you knew Nickie Goomba. He was an Italian-American blogger who had helped create the logos of my blog as well as the blog of other well-known bloggers, such as Big Pharaoh and Sandmonkey. I was shocked today for learning that he has passed away just 3 days ago. It seems he was suffering from cancer. He suffered so much. Now he lives with God and is watching us from a much better place than this world he loved anyway. Please, send your condolances to Nickie’s wife Maria here. I have no words. Nickie wanted to live,…
Well folks it seems that since Hugo Chavez’s officials can’t get to me, given that I live in a full fledged democracy where freedom of expression truly exists, Ken Livingstone, his ‘social democrat’ comrade in London, has taken issue directly with me stating “Aleksander Boyd is a supporter of terrorism against Venezuelan democracy” (sic) Äremarks start around minute 16Å. Mayor Livingstone went further yesterday and read to London’s assemblymen from some articles written and posted by me in this website, where I argued that once all democratic tools had been sequestered by a criminal State the only recourse left to…
In a war, the first casualty is truth. So, show trials for ideological deviation have begun in Venezuela. This is characteristic of all communist regimes as they consolidate power. Eventually, the truth is the target. Now in the seventh year of Chavez’s regime, there are new orthodoxies Chavez wants people to accept, ones that ring contrary to their own experience and understanding. And there are signs he’s not going to trust them on their own to accept it. These new truths will be enforced. With the destruction and rubble and crime and deterioration Venezuelans see all around them, the regime…
The New York Times is reporting that the Bush administration is considering holding negotiations for a peace treaty with North Korea. To many, this will be a shock. After years of six-way talks to try to convince them to abandon their nukes, it comes to this. However, if you read Publius, this may not be so surprising. It is part of a new, huge diplomatic effort underway by the Bush administration in collaboration with other regional powers to show certain rogue regimes (i.e. North Korea & Iran) that they do not have to fear invasion. This is actually the next…
The Financial Times describes the gang riots that have taken Sao Paolo by storm: Life in S????o Paulo returned to something like normal by the middle of this week after prison riots and attacks on police and property orchestrated by organised crime left 132 people dead and 53 injured between Friday night and Tuesday morning. But many wondered what kind of normality it was. The handling of events by authorities, and especially the way they were brought to an end, suggested a lack of control amounting to a crisis of governability. Although for the families of the victims the impact…
We are getting a lot of keywords today looking for news of Ecuador. I will have a roundup ahead, I do think the conditions are there for democratic revolution because that government has just jumped the shark. Here is one news editorial to start and after I get back, I’ll have a proper roundup. Big stuff happening there.
I have previously remarked on Algeria????????s growing ties to the Islamic Republic of Iran, and President Bouteflika????????s fiery rhetoric towards France on the issue of colonial apologetics. Both of these issues is contrary to Algeria????????s national interest, though on different scales. The first is an issue of independence in foreign policy, which has been a hallmark of Algerian foreign policy since independence. That is, how to balance relationships with international heavy hitters, be they First, Second, or Third World nations, while still maintaining flexibility on the world stage. Today this issue is similar to Algeria????????s domestic politics; will Algeria side…
…that Hugo Chavez says he wants to sell to Iran. Miguel has the funniest take ever on this topic, with ‘ewwww, gross!’ photos! You got to see it here.
As you might have heard, the United States resumed diplomatic relations with Libya, one of the most totalitarian countries in the world. To even begin trying to account for how this matches up to the stated “Bush Doctrine” of promoting democracy, and how it will benefit the people of Libya, boggles the mind. It does go to show, however, that the world is a complex place and the administration isn’t single-mindedly ideological when it comes to foreign policy. The reasons for this move therefore have little consideration for democracy, and everything to do with how the attainment of nuclear weapons…
The Peruvians, in the midst of their heated presidential campaign, are having a grand old time lampooning Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, who has continuously meddled in their election – promising $3 billion in sewer upgrades for instance if Peruvians elect his promised candidate, Ollanta Humala. As you might imagine, it’s sunk Humala’s candidacy beyond repair. Nobody likes that kind of open voter bribery. It’s patronizing, for one thing. And it’s boosting the campaign of Humala’s opponent, Alan Garcia. It all comes down to Hugo Chavez fundamentally not understanding anything at all about Peru. Peruvians are people who have authentic pride…
He’s done it! Hugo Chavez has finally joined the club! He’s a made man! He has status. A leader of a pariah state! It’s an elite club but considerably cooler than that Hated Country Club of Caracas that he’s trying to turn into a shantytown, and dammit, he finally made it. Chavez got the U.S. to yank all weapons sales to him, amounting to $34 million in mostly cargo parts with the prestige of being recognized at long last as dangerous. For Chavez, this is a big promotion. He’s not just a clown anymore. He’s dangerous. Now he thinks he…
For many of us, we are just bloggers. We blog, taking alter-egos, saying all the things we’d like to say in the regular world but don’t, and then return to our normal lives, happily anonymous. For some bloggers, it can get to be quite a contrast indeed. Proto-blogger Matt Drudge, a humdrum Hollywood gift shop clerk, quietly lived a second life no one knew about – as the biggest voice on the Internet, with the capacity to shape news, all because of his grasp of technology and ability to connect to others. But some people are stepping out beyond even…