Blogging the democratic revolution
One heck of a campaign rally! 500,000 marched for Manuel Rosales, who’s challenging Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez for the presidency in Caracas Saturday Source, all photos: Globovision, which has more here UPDATE: OK, it’s not millions. It’s half a million. (My original headline said ‘millions’) But it’s more than expected and it’s still huge, at least as big as the Los Angeles illegal immigrant rally last March. Caracas only has 6 million people, so this crowd represents about one out of every twelve caraquenos. This story might speak for itself through its photos – what looks like millions of people…
American military personnel fighting in Iraq Source: Free Republic We don’t see too many American babes, but these girls, busy crushing terrorists and tyrants and bringing democracy to Iraq, will definitely do. Who said liberation had to be ugly? This photo montage came about when people at Free Republic started examining the faces of U.S. female soldiers who were among a Minnesota troop contingent that came up with a hilarious smackdown gag photo, directed at a certain French-looking swell of a politician named John Kerry who thought all U.S. soldiers were dumb. The photo they took (below), with their grinning…
Dropping off the map (figuratively) for awhile is Kyrgyzstan, the site of March 2005’s Tulip Revolution in which a few thousand people chased former President Akaev from office. The protestors are now back to the streets, in ever greater numbers than before, and they are demanding the reforms that were promised and since stalled by the newly elected President Bakiev. The center of the reform debate is the approval of a new constitution; either one which favors a strong executive or another which favors a strong parliament. Judging from all that I’ve read of the situation, it appears that Bakiev…
Thandar Shwe marries Zaw Phyo Win in “Myanmar” Source: Reuters, via Yahoo! News Now here’s a story that was given the proper treatment by Reuters! Burmese tinpot general and military junta leader Than Shwe put on a big lavish wedding for his daughter Thandar Shwe, with tiaras of diamonds, cascades of champagne, and a five-tier wedding cake. A video of it accidentally got out and it was more money on parade than anyone had seen in a long time in Burma. Classy Burmese, however impoverished, noted to Reuters that it was pretty darn vulgar, what with the yellow diamonds and…
Violence in Oaxaca, on Tuesday Source: Agencia EFE Venezuela dictator Hugo Chavez’s fingerprints are all over the leftist violence and insurrection going on in Oaxaca, Mexico right now. That’s not my conjecture but what’s running in the mainstream Mexican press. Like here. The past weekend, President Vicente Fox sent in the troops to the troubled region, where Zapatista ‘Otra Campagna’ far-leftists are battling PRI dinosaur leftists. It began as a teachers’ strike for higher wages but now has turned into a full blown insurrection, with neither group willing to give an inch. President Vicente Fox (of the center-right PAN party)…
The Taliban’s barbaric destruction of the centuries’ old Bamiyan Buddhas Source: Vers un Sens de la Vie Remember the 2001 brazen destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas? Right in front of the world’s face, the filthy, foul Taliban, led by the mascara-loving Mullah Omar, smashed this irretrievable masterpiece of human hands, an ancient artwork that inspired human minds throughout centuries, and then he vilely claimed it was all ‘sinful.’ So 1,000 years of culture, of art, of devotion, of miraculous expertise, a great window on the mysterious minds of our ancestors, was destroyed by this maggot, using western explosives to achieve…
Isn’t there a leftwing site somewhere that devotes itself to watching Fox News “so you don’t have to”? I think there is, and it’s an entertaining thing. Venezuela has its own TV-watcher, doing yeoman’s work, watching the Chavistas in action on the television – our own dear Daniel Duquenal of Venezuela News & Views. Daniel takes us through the latest Chavista television appearance on privately owned Globovision and entertains us with the Chavista performance of one Chavista operative named Calixto Ortega, trying to make sense of the world on that independent medium. Daniel advises us that Chavistas only go on…
Alek Boyd has been doing some fantastic reporting on the state of poor society in Venezuela, actually talking to people and seeing what it’s like in their often ignored world. Are you aware that Venezuela’s poor are poorer than any other western hemispheric nation’s poor? I mean places like Haiti, Nicaragua, Brazil and Bolivia? I sure wasn’t. But apparently, it’s true. And it’s not surprising. Take a huge oil economy that drives out all other trade. Couple it with unchecked illegal immigration, rendering millions of people without legal papers. Add onto it layers of socialism which preceded Chavez, which taxes…
The U.S. government launched a federal probe of Smartmatic, the Venezuelan voting machine company affiliated with the Venezuelan government, whose machines were instrumental in all the electoral fraud committed in Venezuela since 2004. The company claims the probe, first broke by the Miami Herald on Saturday, was all their idea but ahead of U.S. elections, under unfavorable media spotlight, I do not believe them at all. Following its role in the recall referendum that entrenched Hugo Chavez in power, the company has since taken its kooka-profits (in the neighborhood of $120 million) from the crime against democracy, and bought up…
Following a disputed but highly publicized report that North Korea apologized to a Chinese envoy for its nuclear test, the hermit kingdom has decided to rejoin 6-way talks regarding its nuclear program. China, the United States and North Korea agreed in talks Tuesday to resume the six-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear programs “at a convenient time in the near future” after a break of almost a year, a Chinese Foreign Ministry statement said. Christopher Hill, U.S. head delegate to the six-party talks, told reporters after meeting with his Chinese and North Korean counterparts that while the precise date needs…
Recently, there was a Zogby poll that came out, claiming Hugo Chavez had a commanding lead over his opposition. Who paid for it is unknown, but Alek Boyd has a new item up indicating that the signs point to Hugo himself. After all, hasn’t Hugo set up phony polling firms of his own, for the express purpose of ginning up his poll numbers? Alek has exposed that he has on that, too. KA has an item showing it here, and so does Alek. Image-conscious Chavez has a long history of phony polls. Enter John Zogby. Turns out Zogby has a…
Doctor Zin at Regime Change Iran has found a megatrend piece that’s so arresting it can’t help but make you stop and think. World oil prices right now are dropping like a stone. If they go below $50 a barrel and stay there, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Russia’s Vladimir Putin are in for hard times. They won’t be able to maintain their political popularity because in all case, that popularity is derived from pork-barrel spending and government handouts. If they lose popularity, will that make them more, or less, aggressive against their own internal opposition and the…
Recently, two Russia blogs we admire, Sean????????s Russia Blog and Vilhelm Konnander????????s Weblog, have leveled harsh charges of anti-democracy at Kazakhstan, charges that unfortunately tell only half that country????????s story and fail to give a fair sense of the broader geopolitical context. The charges were apparently prompted by a recent comment by U.S. President George Bush while hosting a state visit by the nation????????s leader that Kazakhstan was a ???????free country.??????? Sean and Vilhelm argue that Kazakhstan is run by a dictator who should be actively confronted, rather than supported and encouraged, by the Bush administration. To be sure, Kazakhstan…
Lula By A Light Year – Brazil’s Lula landslides to reelection Source: AFP, via Yahoo! News Brazil’s incumbent President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva has cruised on to an easy victory in Brazil’s runoff election. He’s got more votes than he did last time and the total ballots aren’t even fully counted. With 94% of the tally counted, the final score was 61-39, a very strong showing. See for yourself at Brazil’s official election site here. Randy Paul at Beautiful Horizons has some excellent analysis, along with some translations from the Brazilian local press about why this has happened. It…
Our own dear Stefania Lapenna has published her first column for Townhall on the details of Cuba’s rising democracy movement. Cuba’s democrats realize deeply that there can be no ‘reform’ of Castro’s dictatorship in Cuba, there can only be change – more specifically – peaceful revolutionary change. That informs their tactics and as Castro withers, hurtling toward the ash heap, Cuba is seeing the rise of Cuba’s new democrats. It’s beautifully written and an absolute must-read here. (Click on and see how cute and Italian Stefania looks in her picture!)
ANSWER Coalition anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan Source: Susan Forrest, Indymedia Los Angeles Today I went to the antiwar protests, over in Hollywood, to check out the scene. Compared to other antiwar rallies, this was small. It might have been put together hastily – I did not learn about it until yesterday. Still, ANSWER tends to attract many more people than this and they did have Cindy Sheehan as their headliner. Without prejudice, I estimated there were only about 650 people at this one – I’ve been to the last three and this was the smallest of all. The ANSWER procession…
Sean Gleeson suggests ten ways to do it and it’s one of the funniest things I’ve read in a long time. Check out his hilarious post in this link here.
Boz at Bloggings by Boz has a good new set of the latest poll numbers, all of which give a good reading on the political temperature through the hemisphere. It’s a mixed bag this time. Or let’s just say there’s something for everyone. In good news, rightwing banana king Alvaro Noboa is continuing to kick Openly Chavista Rafael Correa in the keister. In more neutral news, Lula is likely to win in Brazil, and a Zogby poll shows that Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez still holds a strong lead over his challenger, Manuel Rosales, something I have a hard time believing, but…
When I say ‘Bolivian Infighting,’ which is what is going on over there, I don’t mean it figuratively – it turns out Evo Morales’ MAS party acolytes, or ‘Masistas,’ are literally fighting each other in the streets over who gets the government bureaucrat jobs. In other words, who gets to wear the Hush Puppies and become a Lifer. Can you imagine? This goes to show where the perceived value is in Bolivian society – with the government sector, not the private sector. And it tells us a lot about just how oppressive it must be to be in Bolivia, because…
First, some words from France’s resident tough guy, Nicolas Sarkozy: I would like to say one thing, in what is my conception of the Republic, security is the responsibility of the State, I am against militias, I am against the private ownership of firearms, and I????????m trying to make you think about that. If you are assaulted by an armed burglar, he????????ll use his weapon more effectively than you anyway so you????????re risking your life. If the criminal is not armed and you are and you shoot, your life will be ruined, because killing someone over a theft is not…
Not long ago, I worked with a group fighting for East Timor’s independence. It was a rare time I actually had something to do with the political process instead of just watched. I organized demonstrations and painted signs and argued in meetings with UN officials. I fervently wanted East Timor’s independence from Indonesia. It was in 1998 and 1999. Once upon a time, East Timor was part of a global Marxist National Liberation Movement that threatened to communize third-world countries into hammer-and-sickle republics based on an outdated German philosophy that failed every time it was ever tried. The real game…
Last Wednesday, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro may have slipped into a coma. On Saturday, his sycophant, Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, flew into Havana (scroll down), possibly to bid a final farewell to his Cuban master. And Brazil’s President Lula da Silva made a slip of the tongue last weekend, saying ‘when Castro was alive…’ forgetting no one had announced that The Beast was dead. Meanwhile, Otto Reich reports that news agencies are getting visits from Castroite government functionaries regarding coming funeral arrangements, including seating, best camera angles, visas, how-tos ahead the coming spectacle…where guerrillas, tyrants, and Sandalista suckups will gather…
PostGlobal hosted by the Washington Post poses a question for its readers that I think many here would find interesting to discuss: Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas has said bread is more important than democracy, and he may be preparing to try to dissolve the Hamas-led Palestinian parliment. Does a leader have a right to bypass democratic institutions to ensure his people are fed and secure? What we see now in the Palestinian Territories has been long coming ever since Hamas won the parliamentary election last year. Every attempt has been made — from cutting off funding to airstrikes to internal…
Vyacheslav Mizin and Alexander Shaburov are a pair of Russian artists who produce work such as the image above under the name ???????Dark-blue Noses??????? (???????????????????? ?????????????????). They have represented Russia at the Venice Biennale and shown widely in Russia and internationally. The Matthew Bown Gallery of London scheduled a show of their work for November 9th through December 2nd and last week the gallery????????s owner, Matthew Bown, traveled to Moscow to meet with the artists and select works for the exhibition. When he appeared at the Moscow International Airport last Friday with the above image in his possession (as well…
Amid escalated confrontation with Russia and no perspective of things getting better there Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili is apparently trying to guarantee himself and his ruling United National Movement (UNM) from surprises due to a possible Moscow involvement. Saakashvili asked the parliament to cut his term by several months and hold parliamentary and presidential elections simultaneously early in 2008. By uniting two election campaigns Saakashvili, who????????s widely expected to stay for the next term, hopes to help his party win a clear majority in the parliament while his popularity will be still high. This is exactly what the opposition doesn????????t…