Blogging the democratic revolution
In keeping with Argentina’s dangerous direction leftward, President Nestor Kirchner fired several members of his somewhat moderate cabinet, including his economy minister, Roberto Lavagna, and replaced them with far-left extremists who are deep in the Hugo Chavez camp of Argentine politics. They are also economic morons, set to take power in what is South America’s third-biggest economy, accounting for about two or three percent of the hemisphere’s GDP. Analysts speculate that since Argentina’s October regional elections are over with Kirchner comfortably in the lead, this may be his time to make changes. I also suspect that President Bush’s refusal to…
Falsifying elections is a tough job, so you need just the right authoritarian government to do it. Armenia was another country on the list to do so this weekend, with a constitutional referendum that, despite polling places being nearly empty all day, reported a relatively high turnout. But given that the opposition simply boycotted the referendum, it wouldn’t be all that surprising if a “yes” vote actually did occur, from what I can tell, and the specific amendments — like giving more power to the parliament, granted the judiciary more independence, and giving diasporans citizenship — sound like the first…
Hey, why is only President Putin and his entourage of ass-kissers dancing? That’s because the first parliamentary elections in Chechnya since 1997 were held on Sunday, in what the dear leaders over in Moscow are hailing as the last legal step toward restoring the region. It’s all a flash-by cinematic sequence for those watching in the West, while on the ground the situation continues to deteriorate with democracy nowhere in sight. Officials are inflating turnout by the double-digits, the winning candidates were all hand-picked by the Kremlin, and it seems like the majority of voters were Russian soldiers. Doesn’t seem…
I managed to watch some of Al-Jazeera’s coverage of the trial of Saddam Hussein. While he was in power, it was known that he was a semi-literate thug, albeit an exceptionally cunning one. He was reportedly frustrated by his inability to converse with other members of the Iraqi elite on equal terms because he couldn’t speak grammatically. This was certainly on full display today. It is hard to say how it would have sounded to a native speaker, but I thought that he came across as mentally dishevelled, using lots of non-standard Arabic vocabulary. This would be highly abnormal for…
I have now posted my Middle East Week in Review news bulletin. News briefs for the week deal with issues in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Iran and Chechnya. Lots of election news this week, although some of it is “election” news. Democracy watchers may want to focus on the news on Qatar, for they are now announcing elections to parliament for the first time, pursuant to their 2003 constitution. The democracy news was less appealing from Palestine, where convicted terrorist Marwan Barghouti won a landslide victory in an internal Fatah primary; from…
Reuters has the first report here. The lock-em-up-and-throw-away-the-key candidate won over the bring-back-the-death-penalty candidate from the incumbent party. This is considered a suprise upset for the challenger who is said to be slightly more left-leaning, though I am curious about the name of his party ‘Liberal’ – which, internationally, means Libertarian. More to follow… UPDATE: A bit more from Boz here. UPDATE: Boz has a good roundup of the event here. And this interesting commentary here: After independence in the 19th century, most Latin American countries ended up with a two party political system. The two parties were nearly always…
This article will discuss the recently concluded Cairo conference of “national reconciliation” mostly as it was seen through the Arab media. The result is perhaps best summed up by Al-Hayat‘s headline on Nov. 22: “Cairo Conference: A Pass on American Withdrawal and Agreement on the ‘Legitimacy of Resistance’ and Rejection of ‘Terrorism’.” According to the same article, the final statement provided that Iraq sought “the withdrawal of foreign forces according to a fixed timetable, and the immediate establishment of a national program to rebuild the national security forces with regard to training, weapons and numbers on a peaceful basis, empowering…
– 15,000 people protesting incredible election results in Azerbaijan tried to set up a permanent demonstration, but we quickly beaten down. – Police in Egypt are arresting hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood members and preventing people who would vote for them from entering polling stations. Knife and gun fights are ensuing.
The big but unsurprising news out of China is that — golly gee! — the government tried to cover up the huge chemical spill in the Songhua River that has closed down water supplies for nearly four million people in the city of Harbin. The International Herald Tribune reports on the timeline of events and how the government was finally forced to act. Similarly, the Washington Post describes the political fallout caused by the coverup. Environmental destruction due to the fast pace of industrialization and lack of regulation has been a big issue on the minds of the Chinese people…
This Sunday, Nov. 27, Honduras holds its presidential election. This is an important election because it’s seen by some analysts as the bellwether of how the all-important next 13 months of elections go in Latin America. Will Latam swing further left or move right with these elections? Honduras is expected to give some sort of indication. But to read Boz’s writeup – and he’s the only one I know covering it (and doing a nice job) – along with all his links – suggests that this isn’t some great argument about Left and Right, it’s more a conglomeration of local…
Costa Rica is the one nation that has yet to ratify the CAFTA free trade pact with its Central American neighbors and the U.S. Six other nations have, including Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and – after a bruising domestic battle – the U.S. But Costa Rica has not. The fact that Costa Rica’s a more advanced economy, like the U.S., might have something to do with it. The three weakest economies of the CAFTA alliance – Dominican Republic, Guatemala, and Nicaragua – passed the pact with the highest margins of victory, signalling their knowledge that free trade…
Hugo Chavez is meddling in more than just Bolivia. He’s got a northern front and that’s the U.S. Using the good offices of willing dupes like Congressman Bill Delahunt and Congressman Jose Serrano, he’s delivering cheap oil through their offices in return for their support in U.S. Congress. Next time Hugo Chavez invades a small country or throws a dissident in jail, he won’t have a thing to worry about in Congress because he’s got his own U.S. Congressmen in the bag with cheap oil. It’s a truly disgusting subversion of democracy and democratic revolution, both in the U.S. and…
Christian Science Monitor has some hagiography on Hugo Chavez’s own house organ, Telesur, insisting that it’s — no, really — full of professional journalists. It cites as proof the Telesur chief, the creepy, rat-like former Chavez shill and spokesman, Andres Izarra, a man who was suddenly forced to leave CNN a few years ago, and on very murky grounds. The one who, when he was Chavez’s shill, used to read off journalists’ names at Caracas press conferences to say just how much he didn’t like their reporting. That one. Extolling Telesur’s questionable leadership is something Telesur tried to do when…
It looks like the courts in Chile may finally be getting their man once and for all. General Pinochet, who overthrew the Soviet-funded communist government and served as president until he stepped down in 1990, has been charged by the court for abused of human rights during his rule in which more than 3000 people were killed. SANTIAGO, Chile (Reuters) – One day before his 90th birthday, former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet was under house arrest on Thursday and facing tax fraud and human rights charges in his toughest legal situation yet. On Wednesday, Pinochet was placed under house arrest…
The rift between Poland and Belarus continues, with the leading Polish newspapers blacking out their front pages to protest censorship in its less democratic neighbor. Could you imagine the papers here in the U.S. taking such a stand? WARSAW, Poland – Poland’s two leading newspapers blacked out large sections of their front pages Wednesday in an eye-catching protest against media repression in neighboring Belarus. The main pages of Gazeta Wyborcza and Rzeczpospolita looked as if a censor had taken a black marker to them, with most text and photographs crossed out. Amnesty International, which led the protest, wrote at the…
Pajamas Media hosted another one of its blogjams, where in this case the editorial board members discussed ways that the company could be more “bloggy” and overall revolutionary in its approach to media. Well, after reading the whole thing, I have one big suggestion that I think the editorial board should take into account when revising how it provides content. Since I wasn’t part of the blogjam, it’s going here. Don’t takes news from Xinhua, which you may or may not know, is the official state news and propaganda agency of the Chinese government. Google News does it, and it…
Garry Kasparov, writing for Newsweek International, calls President Putin out on the misnomer that he is a true ally of the West in the war on terror, and even less so committed to building a democratic society. And he really nails it. The embattled George W. Bush isn’t going to pick a fight with Mr. Putin on matters of democracy and economy when these days everything is secondary to the war on terror. Here we come to the most dangerous delusion of all????????that a strongman in the Kremlin is good for security and necessary for stability. What started as a…
The State Duma, in all of its scary Soviet decor, has completed its first reading of a bill that seeks to essentially halt the abilities of NGOs operating in Russia. It will forbid foreign funding, force them to register with the government, and allow the authorities to monitor every last activity that these organizations undertake. Most dreadfully, it will allow the government to brand any of them as an extremist organization, paving the way for politically motivated closings. It’s Yukos all over again, but instead of focusing on oligarchic opposition, the authorities are now focusing on civil society opposition. This…
Eduardo Avila of Barrio Flores has this week’s Bolivian blog roundup, in what I suppose I could call ‘The Special Sandalista Edition’ as it is chiefly focused on the writings of foreigners writing about Bolivia, and some of them, who shall be nameless, are knee-deep in Sandalista do-goodery that is utterly unsalable in their home countries. But that’s not the only kind of foreigner who blogs about Bolivia – there are all kinds – normal humanitarian workers, Lonely Planeters, curious outsiders, people working in the country. For a Bolivian, it must be a really fascinating experience to see their country…
Miguel Buitrago has uncovered new polling numbers in Bolivia as the elections close in there in less than a month. He’s got terrific insights and observations about the narrowing lead of Evo Morales in the election, along with some anomalies we might not have expected, like the fact that Morales is doing well in Santa Cruz, a place we expected the opposition to take, and that Oruro, a very old traditional – and beautiful – mining town, expected to be a Morales stronghold, apparently is up for grabs. Miguel suspects the government (I think that means non-Morales forces) to likely…
During the old days of the Soviet regime, one of the most salient features seen of the public under communism was the telltale sadness in the faces of the people. I remember asking a Soviet diplomat about this during the days of the Cold War and recall his defensive lying – ‘The people are contented,’ he insisted. Then I saw the sadness in his face too as he spoke to me. Someone else I recall said that people in Soviet communist regime always look like they are about to cry. It is the same story in Cuba. The Real Cuba…
Markets exist to distribute resources most efficiently. Rejection of them inevitably leads to huge, Soviet-style inefficiencies, all the way up to the violation of human nature itself. But in the end, markets, which chase out the inefficient in favor of the efficient, always triumph. Francisco Toro has a fascinating little essay about the economic principle of creative destruction applied to the dictatorship of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, who in fact presents a vastly better technical model of how to be a political leader than his older opposition. It’s an intelligent and well-argued essay well worth reading here.
Miguel Octavio presents new evidence that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez continues to persecute his political opponents through the use of a blacklist called the ‘Tascon List.’ This blacklist was derived from the public signatures of all the Venezuelans who signed the recall referendum petition against Hugo Chavez, something they legally had a right to do. Chavez “won” the recall referendum anyway, and like a captured weapon, he then used the petition signature list as a blacklist and an instrument for politically motivated revenge, something that truly destroys faith in democracy. Miguel’s post is well worth reading here.
Olavo de Carvalho is a brilliant Brazilian intellectual who keeps closely focused on the origins of the far left movements that exist in Latin America and why they are so insidious. Aleksander Boyd at VCrisis spent some time with him, and a terrific, deeply thoughtful exchange of ideas between the two revolutionaries followed. Carvalho attributes the new traction for nondemocratic leftism in the Americas to the writings of an Italian intellectual named Antonio Gramsci. In the ruins of communism’s demise in Eastern Europe, this Italian’s stock has risen, because his approach to Marxism is quite new and different from the…
There is something very eerie about black markets flourishing imperviously in a place like Fidel Castro’s Cuba. It’s one of the world’s most repressed places, with only North Korea more hostile to the perfectly human activity of trade, there demonized as ‘capitalism.’ But such trade markets do flourish in Cuba, on, of all things, the elusive Internet. Yet other than in North Korea again, there is no country where Internet access is more tightly controlled than Castro’s island carcel. Somehow, they flourish anyway, giving us a window into the holes in the Castro police state, holes that allow the human…