Blogging the democratic revolution
The Dutch are deeply concerned about Venezuela’s renewed threats to take over the nearby island of Curacao as its dictator, Hugo Chavez, flexes his military muscles with an unprecedented arms buildup and condemns the Dutch for their colonialism on the island. Seeking to add more territory of his own, his stated aim is “regional integration,” which is an emerging term that bears more watching. One Chavista foreign ministry official explained it this week as the growing federation between Cuba and Venezuela, which he euphemized as “alternative models.” But his description of that “alternative” was very specific: the Cubanization of the…
Over 40 bloggers have mulled and mused about German-American relations in a new carnival feature put together by the secret diplomats who once ran Daily Demarche, that late lamented cool blog that exposed the seamy underbelly of pinstripe diplomacy. German-U.S. relations are currently seen in a tattered state over the Iraq War, but Germany is one of the U.S.’s largest trading partners, and the two nations have much in common as overachievers in many fields on the world stage. (How ’bout that German medal count at the 2006 Olympics!) Not only that, Germans are the largest U.S. ethnic group –…
Racial and ethnic violence is becoming more visible in Russia as some high profile cases have entered the news. There have been many explanations given for this rise of racial extremism. What tends to be missing however is the view that this is all connected to the general reconfiguration of Russian national identity. The first high profile case was this weeks sentencing of Alexander Koptsev, 21 years old, to 13 years in prison for attacking worshipers at a Moscow synagogue. On January 11, Koptsev broke into the synagogue with a knife. According to witnesses he began shouting ???????I will kill…
Abdul Rahman, the Afghan convert who risked death for ‘apostasy’, has been granted political asylum in Italy, where he arrived overnight. It would be great if he might be able to get in touch with us Italian activists once he’ll be living over here with the due protection. In the meantime, and totally off topic, I’d like you to read my op-ed at Tech Central Station, regarding the Italian election, which is just less than two-weeks away.
As many of you know, in the former communist countries have been created institutes to study the files of the communist intelligence services. In Romania, we have the National Council for the Study of the Former Communist Secret Service Archive (CNSAS). After 16 years from the Revolution against Ceausescu????????s regime, and the atrocious Securitate, we have today people who worked within the Securitate or closely cooperated with it, in key positions, in Parliament, Government, and the Presidential Institution. Ticu Dumitrescu, the man who has initiated the law which established the CNSAS should have finally been elected as President of the…
I don’t have an awful lot that I can add to this, but it needs to be noted. If I’d set out for the library a half-hour earlier one day, I’d have wound up either in or walking right past where the Aranykez bomb went off — it is a REALLY central location in downtown Budapest. We’ll have to keep our fingers crossed, but unless there’s some corruption issue going on, it’s hard to see what these yahoos would have to gain by threatening election violence.
Mass protests against a labor law making it easier to fire young workers have ignited throughout France. The law will allow employers to fire workers under 26 years old without cause. Over 700,000 people filled the streets of Paris alone, while estimates around the country top 3 million. Transportation, businesses, universities and other services have been paralyzed in a general strike. Pictures can be seen here. These mostly peaceful protests follow more violent actions by youths that began weeks ago. While the some may focus on the minor incidents of vandalism in hopes to disparage them, but the fact of…
Democratic opposition protestors who were arrested over the past week following historic demonstrations have gone on a hunger strike. They are rotting in prison cells after having their bodies battered and bruised by riot police for absolutely no reason; being denied even the most basic human rights. Twenty political prisoners in Belarus are on hunger strike, rights advocates have said, drawing attention to conditions at a jail where about 400 opposition supporters are being held. The rights defenders said on Tuesday that the prisoners are being held in crowded conditions, and are being denied water and the right to receive…
Starting with 2007, Mihail Kogalniceanu military base will serve as the general headquarters of the newly formed Eastern European Task Force. In this context, Romania and the Black Sea area will become one of the most important outposts for the American Army in Europe. The Romanian Ziua daily made two assumptions on this topic, 1) that US will invest in its bases from Romania around $60,000,000, 2) the American anti-missile shield might be located in Romania. The next project of the United States, as detailed by General James Jones will be the Caspian Guard. Its aim is to improve the…
Parliamentary elections held in Ukraine yesterday ushered in the resurgence of the Regions of Ukraine bloc, led by former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich. Pundits are mockingly calling it the ???????Blue Revolution,??????? and after seeing over half the results counted, one would be hard-pressed to deny that Yanukovich has adapted to the new environment and has become an adept politician on his own ???????? with the help of a few American PR firms and a campaign style similar to the old Orange one of 2004. He has changed positions, calling for Ukraine to join the EU and serve as a bridge…
I co-hosted two interviews on Belarus and Burma at Global Crisis Wacth/Clandestine Radio. The first, Belarus-related, starts from the minute ‘1 and had our dear friend Robert Mayer as guest. The second, Burma-related, starts from the 22’40 minute. Listen to them here I’d like to thank GCW/CR’s Nick Grace and Rich Lafayette for granting me and Robert the opportunity to speak on radio!
A very brave independent Cuban journalist is on his 57th day of a hunger strike for the right to Internet access in Cuba. Guillermo Farinas Hernandez’s case has gotten little media attention, but it’s an important struggle for freedom of information inside news-starved Cuba. Castro knows very well the power of the Internet and its challenge to his brutal and increasingly tattered dictatorship. That’s why he’s repressing the brave ones who dare challenge his rule … not with guns, but with a hunger strike for free information. Guillermo’s, now in its 57th day, is showing no signs of stopping. To…
It was sometime in the 1970s. I was a kid in a public school in Southern California. I had to report a news article in front of my class on that day. My mother in her bathrobe and coffee that morning picked out the article and cut it out for me. I read it. I did not like it. Some blonde lady named Isabel Peron, had lost her position as president, in some country called Argentina. I had only heard of the country earlier by watching the Miss Universe pageant. But wow, a woman president! Except that she sounded incompetent…
I’ll never forget him. Fabrizio Quattrochi, the brave Italian man in Iraq who told his brutish Islamofascist kidnappers at the moment of his murder that he had no intention of dying with a hood on his head and tried to tear it off, saying he would show them ‘how an Italian dies’ struck a fearsome blow against the cowards perpetrating the war on terror. He not only exposed them as inhumanly evil, he ruined their crummy snuff-murder propaganda movie, which was the reason they killed him in the first place. His actions achieved the exact opposite effect of their evil…
Sunburnt and exhausted, I return from the biggest rally for immigrant rights in the history of Los Angeles. Five hundred thousand mostly Latino, mostly young, and mostly protest-babe-caliber people marched in the streets of This Proud Capital Of The Third World to demand a halt to various immigration control measures in Congress – like building a wall and making it a felony to help illegal immigrants – and, more importantly, to plead for opportunities for advancement and citizenship. There has never been anything like it. This is a seismic shift in the political landscape of the U.S.A How very unlike…
After Lukashenko gave the order to clear October Square of any and all protestors in the Friday twilight., it was completely cordoned off by riot police. Access to the square was denied. But thousands, at least twenty to thirty thousand, people showed up for the planned opposition rally and it was held in Yanka Kupala Square instead. Even more would have gone if there had been more space, and if they weren’t hampered from doing so. Democratic opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich called for the creation of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Belarus, part of the opposition’s plan to…
Is there anything fouler than Daniel Ortega? The former Nicaraguan strongman, dubbed by the great Ronald Reagan as “the little dictator,” is poised to seize power again in Nicaragua next November. Unlike the last time, when he shot his way into power, this time he’s trying to seize power via what may be a rigged election. The Sandinistas brought war and hordes of Sandalistas to Nicaragua during their decade-long illegitimate rule. They stole everything in sight, and confiscated people’s houses, even shanty-like houses of very poor people, such was their voracity. To this day, Daniel Ortega lives in a stolen…
Jorge Rodriguez, the chairman of Venezuela’s supposedly independent election agency, the CNE, has said he’d step down. Rodriguez is one hell of a shameless chavista, the man who brought us Venezuela’s empty elections I witnessed on Dec. 4 last year. He reduced confidence to such a low that virtually no one wanted to vote in them anymore. He added insult to injury by continuously repeating that Venezuela’s elections are all free and fair. In short, the guy is even more fraudulent than the elections he certifies. But they certainly do reflect on his leadership. Today, the net result of his…
Like it or not, THE story for the coming week is immigration in the U.S. This weekend, vast crowds of hundreds of thousands of Latinos will take to the streets in support of immigration rights for illegal immigrants. Given the negative sentiment in other, non-Latino parts of the U.S. (thank you Hugo Chavez, clown and strongman, for your contribution to gringo stereotypes), the demonstrations are bound to be controversial. Boz has some interesting poll numbers in a good roundup, with all the latest on that, as well as Mexico’s election, and polls from Peru, Ecuador, Brazil and other places around…
Perhaps the most irritating part about the entire Belarus affair right now is the lies that come out of the Russian media, and the two-faced and often misled reporting done by many news organizations in Europe. For the former, they tell a story completely dislodged from reality; so far off that you can’t really tell if they believe it, or if they’re just trying to hide their grin. For the latter, they either tell the story to the West and repeat the lies to the East, or are simply so lazy in collecting information that they end up benignly repeating…
From today’s Wall Street Journal editorial page, edifying news that Kyrgyzstan’s Tulip Revolution is still blooming one year later: ‘Island of Freedom’ By ROZA OTUNBAYEVA March 24, 2006 BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — As protesters in Belarus demand a rerun of last Sunday’s presidential poll, and the people of Ukraine enjoy their recently won freedom at parliamentary elections there this weekend, my country celebrates the anniversary of the first peaceful transfer of power in Central Asia. A year ago today, the era when not just the president of the country, but also his entire family, stood above the people came to an…
Somewhat I feel vindicated. In August last year I posted an extremely thorough piece of investigative blogging regarding Smartmatic; the e-voting machines vendor, which owns Sequoia, that has proven so useful to Venezuela’s wannabe dictator Hugo Chavez. The recent e-voting fiasco in Chicago comes to prove the hypothesis that one thing is to observe how rigged electoral processes in far away lands, which do not affect Americans, are overlooked, or simply ignored, by the mainstream media and an entirely different matter when similar problems corrode the transparency and outcome of elections in US soil. As readers of this site know,…
Lukashenko has finally given the order to storm and detain the protestors on October Square in the early Minsk morning. They have all been arrested. The square is compeltely empty. What does this bode for tomorrow, when a massive demonstration is supposed to be held?… Will is happen? MINSK, Belarus – Police stormed the opposition tent camp in the Belarusian capital Minsk early Friday morning, detaining scores of demonstrators who had spent a fourth night in a central square to protest President Alexander Lukashenko’s victory in a disputed election. The arrests came after a half dozen large police buses and…
I’m sure you’ve all heard that the Basque terrorist group ETA declared a permanent ceasefire with Spain a couple of days ago. They’ve waged a decades long campaign, killed hundreds of people, and have not furthered their interests one bit. Now it appears as if the train of thought in the ETA leadership has finally changed. Here is what they have been saying: MADRID, March 23 ???????? The governing party in the Basque region of northern Spain said today that the permanent cease-fire announced by the militant Basque separatist group ETA opened the way for the region to loosen ties…