Blogging the democratic revolution
Two big developments on the truly revolutionary idea of free trade extending from the North Slope all the way to Tierra del Fuego. Colombia is on the edge of signing a free trade pact with the U.S., according to Rob Portman of the U.S. Trade Representative’s office. The pact, if they can reach the finish line, is Colombia’s ticket to the first world and a stinging blow to the hideous anti-free-trade regime of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, who has destroyed much of his country’s private sector, branding it an enemy instead of a job- and value-creator, and driving it out…
Rumors flying for months about a military coup in the Philippines may just have turned out to be true, as an investigation has led to the finding of 16 officers planning to overthrow the government. MANILA (Reuters) – The Philippine army has questioned at least 14 lieutenants and sergeants linked to a plot to unseat President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, a general said on Wednesday, adding he was confident no coup attempt would ever succeed. Lieutenant-General Hermogenes Esperon, head of the army, said authorities had identified about 16 junior officers who were planning to carry out a coup. Two of them…
Putin has okayed the return of the Sarospatak Library, seized by the Nazis and then by the Russians in WWII. Of course, this raises some eyebrows over the larger repatriation issues, even if the Russian official media feel the need to demonstrate that no new repatriation precedents are being set with the move. Given this, it’s no big surprise that Hungary has agreed to pay the Russians for “storage costs” that Putin’s buds can then turn around and tout as a foreign-policy success. So, what’s going on? A couple of things, as I see it. One, Putin is getting set…
This is not a piece of news, however some may find it interesting.The Truth and Justice Alliance ????????D.A has introduced a new fiscal policy to eliminate, or at least reduce the tax evasion, corruption and eventually poverty. The rate of 16% applies to both personal and corporate income. To my knowledge Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Russia, Serbia and Slovakia have already established a flat tax. ???????How is it that such a change appeared in a country characterized by the slow pace at which it has left communism behind? After the fall of communism, in December 1989, the Social-Democratic party inheriting…
The prominent Cuban dissident Martha Beatriz Roque, leader of the Assembly to Promote the Civil Society, is harassed by Castroite mobs led by the State Security on a daily basis. She was released from prison back in 2004 for health problems, yet since months she is again a prisoner; the only difference is that now she’s prisoner at her own house! Agents of the Castroite terrorist police and mobs are denying her to leave the house and if she does, they’ll kill her. As she spoke at Radio Mart???? from her house in Santo Suarez neighborhood, Havana, a big ‘repudiation…
Iran is dangerously close to producing a nuclear weapon and igniting a region-wide arms race. It could be within a couple of months or a couple of years. Nobody knows exactly how much time is left, but the day that Iran goes nuclear is one that many hope will never come. The thought of a government run by Islamic extremists who want to ???????wipe Israel off the map??????? should send chills down the spine of anyone who lives in the free world. Fortunately, there is time left. The breaking point is when Iran actually produces the weapons. Until then anything…
Alek Boyd has another bombshell on the details of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez’s family fortune and all its offshore accounts. Using the offices of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, Chavez has a sprawling network of bank accounts spread through Panama, Europe, Brazil and other places, amounting to billions of dollars in ill-gotten wealth. What, you may ask, does this have to do with revolution? The answer is, a lot. It was vast corruption on a Plutus-like scale, in billions, that brought down the Marcos and Soeharto regimes in Philippines and Indonesia, both of which triggered massive moves to the streets to…
Is Venezuela running out of oil? This Bloomberg article certainly suggests it, and if so, it’s an earmark of a communist regime. There’s no such thing as a communist regime without shortages. Russia the breadbasket ran out of wheat. Cuba the sugar king ran out of sugar. Vietnam the rice bowl ran out of rice. China the Middle Kingdom ran out of everything. And now, Venezuela, with the largest oil reserves in the Western Hemisphere, is having trouble with its oil production, enough so that the energy-saving measure of natural gas substitution has been introduced to the domestic population, which…
Right under the news radar, the U.S. and Colombia are hashing out their last differences for the free trade pact that will create confidence and prosperity on an untold scale for already star-performing Colombia and will enrich and enliven the U.S. with the bright and brilliant side of Colombia from its private sector, not its ugly drug and crime side, which will be destroyed. It’s a great occasion for joy and it might even happen by the end of this week. There’s one nation watching this, one that already has a defacto free trade pact with the US due to…
Every dictator dreams of consolidating power into the ‘dictator for life’ designation and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is no different. Today he’s announced he’s set to change the constitution to his liking, which would mean he would no longer be limited to two terms, but to as many as he wants. As many unlimited terms, with unlimited power and nonexistent accountability as he likes. It’s Chavez’s dream. Given his way of running elections on a Chavez-wins platform, that means dictator for life. Miguel has a translation of newspaperman Teodoro Petkoff’s reaction here. Petkoff writes: Chavez is ???????studying??????? the possibility of…
Finally, investigations are being held into the existence of Shia-led death squads in Iraq. Apparently the U.S. military caught some policemen about to execute a Sunni, and when questioned about it, they admitted it as if nothing were wrong with it. The incident has prompted an official investigation, though that it has not happened yet is absolutely astounding. The so-called “death squads” are formed by members of the different Shia militias, like Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army and the SCIRI-linked Badr Organization that was trained by Iran for about twenty years. These squads have targeted, and still target, Sunnis and kill…
Peruvian police have just rubbed out the “military” chief of the vile Shining Path guerrilla gang, which in the last year or so, has been making an unwelcome if sporadic recrudescence. It’s the most significant loss for the terrorist group in years. The dead thug, who ate his lead breakfast up in the coca country known as Tingo Maria, called himself “Compadre Clay” I suppose after the landmines he probably laid. He was known to police as Victor Aponte Sinalagua. Gone. The genocidal Shining Path is reponsible for 30,000 to 70,000 deaths beginning from 1980 through 1992, and probably many…
The “unholy alliance” at work again. A disgusting pro-terror rally was held in Rome on Saturday. It was organized (guess who) the communists and the Greens . Among the hate-filled slogans shouted were : “10.100,1000 Nassiryahs” (yes, they wish the terrorists to kill Italian soliders again and again!), “what pacifism, what non-violence? true peace passes through resistance by giving money to the Fedayeen” And, echoing Ahmadinejad and Bin Laden:”With the palestinians, until victory over the Zionist imperialist oppressors” They couldn’t declare the rally over without burning U.S. and Israeli flags! You know what’s the irony in all this? First of…
The municipal government in Volgograd has decided to close down a local newspaper for printing a cartoon showing Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed, and Moses watching a crowd of clashing people while saying, “We never taught them to do that…” The mayor of the city is quoted as saying that the paper was shut down in order to prevent inter-religious strife; meanwhile, the prosecutor-general is looking to file charges. Jim Hoft wonders if Russia is just being PC or crushing dissent. I’d say both. But more than anything it is being opportunist. Volgograd is in the south-west of the country, has a…
Rene Preval has been declared the new president of Haiti following mass demonstrations and accusations of fraud. Well, not just accusations, but a garbage dump full of ballot boxes. So in order to prevent large legal complications that would further decrease the legitimacy of the rule of law, the interim government and electoral council decided to allow Preval’s victory by removing blank ballots from the count. Haiti’s interim government and the electoral council have declared Ren???? Pr????val the winner of the presidential election, ending frantic negotiations to stop violent street demonstrations in the impoverished Caribbean nation. Mr. Rene Preval “Ren????…
Miguel has parts II and III on the vast, tangled, family fortune of the Hugo Chavez family of Venezuela, none of it acquired honestly. So much for the “revolutionary” man of the people! He’s nothing but a two-(billion)-bit chorro. Read it here and here.
Via Real Clear Politics, Donald Rumsfeld has presented his thinking on the new kinds of challenges the U.S. faces as it fights the long hard war on terror and seeks to win the hearts and minds of the Arab world in spreading the idea of democracy. He lays out all the angles on how this is playing out in democratic revolution – through technology and the power of ideas here. This happens to coincide with what we’ve been seeing on the State Department’s Web site, debunking all the flying-saucer theories put out by leftists and assorted ignoramuses and tinfoil-hat wearers…
Dying to know the deal on Peru (hint: to watch a Marxist sink?) Want to see what kind of garbage Telesur is up to? (hint: maybe this explains why Uruguay asked to have its name taken off the masthead?) Want to see something cool out Mexico? (hint: the good guys are continuing to rise). Boz at Bloggings by Boz has the week’s poll numbers from around the hemisphere in this election year right here. Meanwhile, a note: One of the polls cited by Boz, on Venezuela, has been identified with documents as a government-controlled polling entity by Alek Boyd. Check…
I’ll be in Washington, D.C. from Saturday night to Tuesday morning. Anyone in the area want to have lunch/coffee?
In a beautiful statement, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called on the world to stand up for Venezuela’s battered democracy. Rice appealed to the governments of Austria, Spain, Brazil and others to get up off their duffs and face facts and start saying something to defend the last tattered remains of Venezuela’s democracy. To date, they’ve not done a thing. But now the time for hiding, hunkering down, pretending there’s no problem, and turning one’s head is long, long gone. Rice specifically cited Hugo Chavez’s monstrous Sumate trial against Venezuela’s battered civil society democrats, something that is the biggest…
Eduardo at Barrio Flores has an item you’ve got to see to believe – some Bolivian minister is publicly saying he wants coca – that’s right, COCA – fed to schoolchildren, given its nutritious qualities. Ummm, tasty, delicious, crispy, chewy … coca leaf! If you thought it was white-trash heaven to fill the baby bottle with Coca-Cola, wait till you see these Bolivian green Cheerios! Cripes, this is what we call the slippery slope, first coca would be made legal, now it will be fed to children. Heck, it should be required chewing for everyone, given this guy’s mentality. Dogs,…
Miguel found something on VCrisis that I’d missed, a remarkable consultant report outlining the ownership structure of a string of state-owned companies controlled by the family of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez along with an analysis of the potential of these entities for money-laundering. The network of what the Chavez family controls, in food processing and other fields is striking and tangled. This explains a lot about why the Chavez government is so obsessed with food production, price controls, driving the private-sector to its knees and military control. It’s not just a bid to let Castro take over, although that’s part…
As hearings begin on Capitol Hill over Google’s kowtowing to the repressive Chinese regime, China itself is cracking apart INTERNALLY over its Google censorship. Party officials have taken on other party officials and they are all slashing at each other at the top levels of Chinese government. Christian Science Monitor has the story here. Pamela at Atlas Shrugs is doing some terrific, tremendous blogging about this Google controversy. Read her latest in full here. Rebecca McKinnon at RConversation has news from Capitol Hill and further background here and here. Or go here and just keep scrolling.
Protests in the Middle East are rarely both large and spontaneous at the same time, although often it will appear that way. The same holds for the printing of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohemmed in a Danish newspaper, in which it appeared that many of the Muslim protestors took the same streets, bought and burned hundreds of readily available Danish flags, and were ready and willing to torch European embassies. All at the same time. Obviously, it has come to be shown since then that incitement and organization had been prepared for some time by a Danish imam, followed by…
More photos here. The failed state of Haiti, which has only been able to maintain minimum order because of UN occupation and a transitional government, held its first presidential election on Feb. 7 following the exile of former President Aristide. The frontrunner Rene Preval, favored by the country’s impoverished masses, was winning handily with well over 50% of the vote while his nearest contender barely broke ten. His lead quickly diminished mysteriously and accusations of fraud began to fly. The shit hit the fan as violent protests in support of Preval began to break out. No election is perfect, not…