Blogging the democratic revolution
I can understand why the U.S. government has been hesitant to call shots on the events unfolding in Uzbekistan. Good information has been rare, and they are obviously waiting to see what political and strategic maneuvers to make. But come on, enough it enough. With every report indicating massive deaths in the hundreds, this is…
Tens of thousands of union supporters from El Alto, apparently, people even more extreme than Evo Morales, have begun roadblocks through Bolivia to shut down the country until it comes around to their point of view about developing Bolivia’s natural gas resources. And they’ve since raised earlier demands from a mere 50% royalties to full…
The wording of the election law amendment is vague on some points, but it appears that the women of Kuwait have been granted the right to vote and run in elections. The prime minister, Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah, said that he planned to name a woman minister. “I congratulate the women of Kuwait for having achieved…
Our good friend blogger Stefania in faraway Sardinia alerts us that Cuba’s brave civil society delegates, seeking to forge a free Cuba out of the ruins of Castroism, in a conference this week, are now being abused by Castro’s goons. My writeup on Babalu is here.
Word is out that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez was ranting and raving about this El Universal piece we linked this morning here. Chavez angrily cited it by name, calling it all lies. The piece itself was built around the first-rate research and writing of Gustavo Coronel, whose essay this morning we linked here. Coronel clearly…
Looks like ol’ Shirin’s figured out how the world works much better than the rest of us. American Revolution? Orange Revolution? Tulip Revolution? That’s just wrong! The best means to help create democracies in societies ruled by tyrannies is through negotiations, and if that fails, by resorting to the United Nations,” she pontificated. “This is…
Profoundly good analysis by Gustavo Coronel. A must read. Read it here. UPDATE: My own take here. UPDATE: Another good take from El Universal. (Man that must have been a beach to translate!)
Andy from Siberian Light is hosting this week’s carnival. Check it out for link-filled goodness reviewing democracy movements over the past week.
I’ve just posted to my own blog a piece on Pan-Arabist political movements in response to an email from an Egyptian reader who has just started a new blog to promote his. I post about 20% of my entries here on Publius Punditbut I’m not posting this one because (1) most of it doesn’t deal…
Sure enough, right outside the office of a foreign oil company, Brazil’s Petrobras, in the pro-trade city of Santa Cruz. A car full of dynamite. The news item is here. And an updated item with the broader picture is here. Here is what the Bolivian blogs say: BARRIO FLORES’ Eduardo says the bomb raises the…
Luis Tascon, the Venezuelan congressman who put signers of a recall referendum against dictator Hugo Chavez on a special Internet-accessible blacklist, has met a miserable demise. In this way, he would seem to parallel Joseph McCarthy, who died an isolated drunk. That said, the signers of the petition cannot be compared to McCarthy’s targets –…
It’s all over for the Islamofascists. They are now lying to their Syrian recruits to get them to drop suicide bombs. Nobody wants to join them. They stand for nothing. Young Sunni Iraqis are rushing to join the building of their new young nation. The heroes are obvious to them. The police, firefighters, army, businesses…
Before anything, make sure to read Nathan’s evening updates. Jim over at Gateway Pundit also has a great roundup with links to BBC video footage available. Earlier Saturday, people gathered in the same square that yesterday saw the bloody crackdown of Karimov’s regime. While the violence in Andijan appeared to have calmed Saturday, disturbances flared…
On Val’s Babalu blog, I wrote a long essay on the Posada Carriles case. It is a foreign policy issue, but now that Fidel Castro has made the claim that it’s a U.S. ‘credibility’ issue, there is a people-power dimension to it. People with access to mass communication would think so, and that is who…
I’ve been reading through this piece on RIA Novosti, the Russian news and information agency. To the effect of KGB intelligence gathering, they’ve made a large collection of articles written in the former Soviet republics before and after the V-E Day celebrations. In particular, what they’ve written against Russia. Until you get to the Central…
This is what happens when you let the state-owned media out into the world! They take pictures of all the lovely western women and post it all over their website. Hat tip: Danwei.
Egypt’s parliament has just passed a resolution which will set May 25 as the day the Egyptian population will vote to amend the constitution so as to provide for multi-candidate presidential elections. The resolution was endorsed by a huge majority of parliament, though this is because it was proposed by Mubarak and his party dominates….
This is extremely rare for Uzbekistan, where Islam Karimov really puts the boot down. It seems that 4000 people have taken to the streets to protest the trials of several loca businessmen accused of “extremist activities.” More than 4,000 residents of Andijon demonstrated for a second consecutive day in a row on 11 May (see…
Al-Jazeera has run an interview with Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir from Khartoum on its popular “Without Limits” program. I thought it was enlightening, and the main impression I took a way from it was that of a man in a very weak position. The issue wasn’t addressed directly (although the feed cut off a…
Val has important updates on Cubans’ efforts to forge a civil society from the depths of Castrodom. Note that they are doing it from Havana, showing a courage we can only marvel at. And in what will surely go down as a vote of shame, there were actual U.S. Congressinsects who voted against supporting them…
Tomas Sancio has a superb piece noting the strong and growing presence of Latin American popular culture into mainstream American culture. He takes a screenshot from a Web site to show his point. I am always fond of telling my Latin American friends that when they come to big cities here in the states, they…
“Fidel Castro asserted terrorist should be judged in Venezuela” goes one headline from one of those impartial and objective Cuban propaganda sources; another one reads “New York Times Urges US Government to Deny Asylum to Terrorist Posada Carriles”… The majority of the 176 Posada Carriles-related articles, indexed by Google News, originate from Cuban or Venezuelan…
Last week, Congress approved steep taxes on oil and gas as a compromise between the industrious free marketers of Santa Cruz province, and the Marxist nationalizers of cocalero kingpin Evo Morales, who gets his funding from the drug trade and from Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. Obviously, that was no solution. Santa Cruz province is threatening to…
U.S. Congress has just passed a resolution offering support and encouragement to Cuba’s brave civil society advocates, who, like the creators of the Declaration of Independence, are meeting in perilous conditions in Castro’s island hellhole to forge the beginnings of a new civil society, a new social contract, a new means of governance in what…
An envoy from the United States met with King Gyanendra yesterday evening to press for the restoration of civil liberties. As you may recall, the king imposed a state of emergency on February 1 and dissolved the parliament, leading to the arrest and detainment of hundreds of journalists, students, and political opponents. Constitutionally, the state…