Blogging the democratic revolution
Following up on yesterday’s journalist poetry awards, Academic Elephant submits this Haiku loaded with meaning and insight (text by nutjob Arabist Juan Cole): Partition is the consequence of failed co- lonialism. Beautiful! If anyone else composes some news poetry, please send it along (or post it in comments). Oh, and while I’m on the subject of Cole, here‘s a recent post by Anton Efendi of Across the Bay that I meant to link to recently, dissecting the latest ass-headedness from Prof. Cole — it’s about the authenticity of the letter from Zawahiri to Zarqawi.
For those of you who have been here with Publius since the beginning, you may remember that I used to do daily roundups of the news in Lebanon during the Cedar Revolution. It’s been quite a while since then, but with the dissemination of the Mehlis investigation report (read my post on that here), a spark has been set anew in the country. The Lebanese blogosphere is quite active right now, so it’s important to highlight the awesome work and insight that’s being put out there. I’ve been watching From Beirut to the Beltway quite a bit, as it has…
Some jackass “journalists” desecrated their supposed profession: story here. Read the whole thing.
The Mehlis report was released today, and it was the historic bombshell that everyone knew it would be. It implicated Syrian and Lebanese intelligence chiefs and military generals, all the way up to members of Assad’s family. The commission was also extended up until December in order to allow for further investigations into more recent developments and leads. And, speaking of those leads, Mehlis deleted the names of some of those suspected of conspiring in Hariri’s murder for reasons not yet known, though I can imagine it has to due with following up with evidence by December. Here’s what happened:…
Here’s my sad nominee, from Reuters AlertNet: Just down the street a fading “USA Is Good” slogan was daubed on a wall, a reminder of the days just after Saddam’s fall in 2003, before American occupation, insurgents bombings, kidnappings and shootings dashed hopes. (Formatting mine. Credit: Michael Georgy, Reuters.)
Investor’s Business Daily has an amazing editorial today suggesting that oil prices have probably peaked. It cites significant trading activity showing that some very big players are selling oil stocks like a herd of panicked elephants, unafraid to take losses now – because they know the losses are going to be bigger later. It’s really interesting stuff because this paper knows how to read stock markets in a systemic way and implicitly forecasts very well. If this reading is correct, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is finally in for some very bad times. Right now he has held onto power not…
Aleksander Boyd at VCrisis has an great post about how he, as a citizen journalist, confronted power directly in the most amazing way I’ve ever seen anyone in the blogosphere do. It’s a great lesson in creativity for any democratic revolutionary anywhere in the world. From his exile in London, he learned of a London trade show on Biometrics where the top Venezuelan election official would be addressing a business audience of peers. He creatively figured out a way to get an invitation and managed to get a question about Venezuela’s fraudulent recall referendum asked – and answered – directly.…
Boz has a new collection of polls from around the Americas, and with more than a dozen elections scheduled for this hemisphere in the coming year, they are all worth watching. One of the most significant polls he’s found is on Mexico, showing that upstart-dinosaur Arturo Montiel Rojas, was running even with establishment-dinosaur Roberto Madrazo, meaning that he was mounting a significant challenge to the oldest of the old party guard. His sudden exit after a finance scandal today from the PRI primary race will likely hurt the PRI’s chances for the presidency when elections are held in mid-2006. The…
Mark Steyn has a new killer essay at the Spectator about the collapse of Russia and the spread of Islamic fascism. It’s worth reading if only for the, er, fowl pun partway down page one (there’s one that’s actually funny further down, but I won’t ruin it for you). Excerpt: Moscow has reduced Grozny to rubble, yet is further than ever from solving its Chechen problem. Moreover, the sheer blundering thuggery of the Russian approach has no merits other than affording Moscow some short-term sadistic pleasure as it exacerbates the situation. The allegedly seething ???????Arab street????????, which the West????????s media…
As parliamentary elections on November 6 near, hardliners within the Azeri government are feeling the heat and are cracking down on reformers within their midst. This has culminated in the firing and arrest of Economic Development Minister Farhad Aliyev and his brother Rafiq Aliyev, who is the owner of Azpetrol, the biggest privately owned oil company in Azerbaijan. In a surprise move, President Ilham Aliyev has fired Economic Development Minister Farhad Aliyev from his post. Law enforcement agencies sources have told EurasiaNet that both Aliyev and his brother, president of the Azpetrol oil company, have been arrested under suspicion of…
Matt Margolis at Blogs for Bush was invited to Congress to talk to and query congresspeople about their stances on issues. It’s a great new experiment in participatory democracy and they are inviting any of us to send them questions to ask the congresspeople. (They probably aren’t the only ones invited, so if you know of any left-leaning or centrist bloggers who are in on this and who also invite questions, send me the link at ammorayleon at gmail dot com and I will post theirs, too.) It comes on the heels of BBC’s ‘Ask Hugo Chavez’ Internet program coming…
Eduardo Avila of Barrio Flores has a good weekly roundup of news from the growing Bolivian blogosphere. Go see it for its different thoughts on the political situation, particularly from a new blog he’s found by a Bolivian indigenous blogger who’s now at university – he comments on academic corruption but seems to have a sort of insular mentality that may be reflective of what we might see later in the political arena. Eduardo’s also found original posts on Bolivia’s book exchange program, an interview with a Bolivian orphan in Cochabamba, and blog by a Bolivian rock star who’s annoyed…
Miguel Buitrago of MABB on Bolivia has a chart showing that the regions in Bolivia that receive the most and the least government spending. Guess which ones are the richest and which ones are the poorest? Go see here. For those who claim more government spending means more wealth, that the rich are only rich at the expense of the poor, that there is only so much to go around, that the economic pie is only a matter of slicing and not expanding, that redistribution from rich to poor is the only answer, there are going to be some surprises.…
An international panel ruled that the Mexican government cannot prevent former foreign minister Jorge Castaneda from running for president as an independent in 2006. Castaneda is a former NYU professor who, although distinctively left-leaning, is on the DEMOCRATIC left, and more to the point, is not a muddlehead. He wrote the first scathing biography of Che Guevara to his great credit and for that, Castro has never forgiven him. If I were Mexican, I might not vote for him because of disagreements on ideology but I would appreciate the chance to vote for him as one candidate among many. I…
There’s been some buzz created with regards to the auditing of votes in Iraq due to ‘unusually high turnout.’ In fact, it was the top story on Google News the other day, though I’m not really sure why, given that the biggest effect it will have is delaying the results only a couple of days. Here’s the basic rundown: Iraqi election officials say it is too early to suspect problems during Saturday’s constitutional referendum, as workers continue to review ballots. Officials say workers are still auditing results for about 12 Shi’ite and Kurdish areas which reported unusually high totals of…
Colombia’s constituional Supreme Court has ruled that Colombia’s President Alvaro Uribe can run for re-election as president again! Earlier on, Colombia’s Congress had voted to change the constitution to allow Uribe to run for a second term, and now the Court has given the green light. There’s one more ruling awaited in November, but, like that first CAFTA victory we won in the Senate, this is a great first step and fantastic news! President Uribe currently has an 80% popularity rating among Colombia’s voters and is likely to win reelection, ensuring a continuation of his policies. There is no finer…
Boz has a fascinating collection of polls from around the Americas in several countries signalling the political temperatures in assorted hot spots like Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru and others, all put together in a clean roundup of news. Don’t miss the weird Argentine soccer poll at the bottom. Well worth a click here.
The U.S. needs to get its act together on certain things. Like this, that Glenn Reynolds has noticed here.
Francisco Toro has an interesting item about the growth of the ‘ni-ni’s in Venezuela’s political system. These are the people who are neither for Chavez nor for the opposition to Chavez. They are sort of fence-sitters, or, as Francisco suggests, the political center. As a group, they are growing, and new parties like Venezuela de Primero (he has a link) are trying to cater to them. With an election approaching on Dec. 4, this trend will be well worth watching. Read it here.
Yesterday’s The Messenger (an english-language Georgian daily) covers the formation of a new political party out of smaller opposition groups, primarily the Conservatives and the Republicans. This new party shares in the heritage of the Rose Revolution, although it now finds enough room for disagreement with the ruling National Movement: Several leading members of both the Conservative and Republican parties originally were members of the pro-government party but broke away over the last 20 months, disenchanted by the policies of the government. “I can say for sure that we are a revolutionary opposition, in that we supported the Rose Revolution.…
When your country becomes a totalitarian regime, you often preserve your identity through exile. This is largely because all institutions have been shattered in your country and there is virtually no possibility of democratic resistance to tyranny. Every institution is politicized in a communist regime. It’s shocking to think about this matter of exile in a historic context – all through this ages, exile on a vast scale is relatively rare – but under communism it’s a perfectly accepted reality. Of 13 million Cubans worldwide, 2 million are in exile. And this, under conditions of extreme totalitarian control. If emigration…
One of the rarest things on the blogosphere is a non-Sandalista, non-foreigner-financed, non-foreigner opinioned, non-angry-Latin-intelligentsia Colombia blog that’s by a Colombian about marvelous Colombia. I have had yet to find one – until now. Unfortunately, you bring up Colombia – even to a Latino audience in the states – and the first thought they have about Colombia is about drugs. It happened to me during a Spanish presentation I was giving. I discussed the strong Colombian banking system and was horrified when the first question from the audience was ‘is it full of drug money?’ And these people weren’t only…
The day of solidarity with Belarus on Oct. 16 that I talk about was an outstanding success, even moreso than I thought it would be. Over 100,000 people lit candles in their windows all around Belarus on Sunday in a form of protest yet unseen in this country, where protestors are roundly beaten and arrested. More than 100,000 citizens of Belarus have taken part in the Day of Solidarity on October 16. The action has been supported in many Belarusian towns and in many countries of the world. In this connection representatives of the civil society of Belarus proposed continuing…
Miguel Octavio has some utterly repulsive photos of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe in the throes of love. Look at those two embrace! What’s hard to believe is that Mugabe, one of the world’s foremost creators of famine and hunger today, was so much as allowed in at this United Nations conference in Rome. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had assured earlier that these kinds of obscenities at the UN – which do hurt its credibility – will stop. Well, they are not stopping. They are going on at full blast. Investor’s Business Daily has an excellent news…
Jailed Abimael Guzman, the Pol-Pot-ian Marxist terrorist leader of Peru’s Shining Path, which terrorized Peru for 20 years, gave Peru corrosive, confidence-killing hyperinflation, and murdered no less than 35,000 to 70,000 people, mostly from among the poorest of Peru … was a bigtime writer of fuzzy love poetry. The story is here. You know how repulsive that news is. Saddam the human shredder was into writing romance novels, this freak was into sentimental poetry. Somehow, it makes the monsters even creepier. What’s disgusting is that there are still certain kinds of people on the international left who defend him or…