Blogging the democratic revolution
As the Bush administration moves towards disengagement in the Middle East from those regarded as extremist — including Syria, Iran, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias in Iraq, Hamas in Palestine, and Hezbollah in Lebanon — the result has been a vacuum of power left from the absence of traditional diplomatic channels. In the post Cold War era, this meant typically working with, and in the least, involving the United States. But in recent months as American policy becomes more rigid and inflexible, Middle Eastern diplomatic channels have rerouted outside of Washington and back into the Middle East proper. In this…
Throughout most of the Cold War, prevailing wisdom in foreign policy suggested that international relations between governments and the study of comparative politics should remain separate. The leaders of the United States spent most of their time meeting with, negotiating with, and occasionally threatening leaders from the Soviet Union. Whether or not people were being sent off to the gulag or purposely starved made no difference. Those people had no power, whereas the Politburo did. This went on largely until the Helsinki Accords were signed in 1975, effectively tying America’s foreign policy to the Soviets’ treatment of its own citizens.…
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Source: AP, via Yahoo! News U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came out with strong and unambiguous language for Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, warning that he was trashing democracy and destroying his country. She went after him with a sledgehammer. Naturally, the Venezuelan thug will response with those weird kissing noises or perverse and undignified gibberings about his own sex fantasies, but that doesn’t reduce the power of the condemnation emanating from Washington. Rice warns that Chavez is a dictator, says he is wrecking Venezuela politically and economically and notes he is a menace…
During his 2005 State of the Union address, President Bush set forth a bold plan to to make the advancement of freedom and democracy the cornerstone of America’s foreign policy. Under liberal democracies, the Islamic terrorist and statist authoritarian threat would practically vanish from the face of the earth. Sure, there would be conflicts, but no liberal democracy has ever warred with another; and because democracies respond to the will of the people, there is no rich soil for terrorism to plant its roots. In that speech, he mentioned the word “democracy” seven times and “freedom” nineteen times when talking…
Do you ever wonder what power it was that made Ronald Reagan victorious during the Cold War? A new history book, compellingly reviewed by Herb Meyer, casts amazing insight on what really happened during Reagan’s great rise to crush communism – and the secret was, Reagan was a … union boss: Like Lech Walesa after him, and like Lane Kirkland who did his own share of communism crushing – and like Venezuela’s potential future leader, oil boss Carlos Ortega – union bosses, when they are good union bosses, have the incredible skills to enact great revolutions. Reagan certainly had them,…
Socialism, in various forms, ranging from democratic to totalitarian, is as natural as breathing in most parts of the world. From Indonesia to Tanzania, from Russia to Congo to Algeria, from Libya to Sweden to Canada to Mexico to Argentina, practically every nation out there has some variant of socialism. The odd thing is, the U.S. is the only exception. Socialism never really took off here, not even during the depths of the Depression, a detail that has baffled even socialists, including Stalin. Some theories given suggest that the U.S.’ lack of a feudal past is the reason why, and…
OK, it was a ratbag of a bill. It lumped in everything that possibly could be lumped in, good with bad. Excellent, friendly deserving nations, like Vietnam, Colombia and Peru, (in short, our equals), got much of what they needed. Nations ruled by disgusting, undeserving, ungrateful governments, like Ecuador and Bolivia got plenty too. Messes like Haiti got the golden goose handed to them. Offshore drilling passed. Everyone got something, in what was kind of the last congressional pinata before the Roundheads (Democrats) take over. But boy it was sloppy. All told, I am happier with things this way than…
Jeanne Kirkpatrick, 1926-2006 Source: Getty Images, via The New York Times The great Jeanne Kirkpatrick, who was the first to distinguish between totalitarian and authoritarian dictatorships, a key steps toward dividing and conquering the world’s tyrants and winning the Cold War, has died. She was only 80. Her work paved the way for democratic revolutions from the remains of the destroyed dictatorships and she will be forever remembered for that. She was the great President Ronald Reagan’s capable and effective ambassador at the United Nations, and her wisdom and counsel thwacked sense into the U.N.’s bureaucratic sybarites. One of her…
Vietnamese wave as the motorcade of U.S. President George W. Bush makes its way through the streets of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, Monday, Nov. 20, 2006. (AP Photo/Nghat Le) Vietnamese onlookers react to the arrival of U.S. President George W. Bush at Ho Chi Minh Museum in Ho Chi Monh City, Vietnam, Monday, Nov. 20, 2006. (AP Photo/David Longstreath) Vietnamese cheer U.S. President George W. Bush as he arrives the Ho Chi Minh City stock exchange Monday, Nov. 20, 2006, in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. (AP Photo/David Longstreath) A volunteer waits to get a glimpse from leaders dressed…
Milton Friedman, Democratic Revolutionary Source: John Petrie’s Milton Friedman Quotation Page The great Milton Friedman died yesterday in San Francisco. His ideas changed the world the most in our era. When we say ‘free markets,’ we think of him. I can think of no one whose ideas made more revolution and genuinely changed the world more for the better. He was the biggest democratic revolutionary of our age. Friedman won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1976. He brought forward free market ideas that were grounded in an Aristotelian understanding of human nature. Among his great ideas are that profit…
The mind of Hugo Chavez is like a compost heap. It’s full of layer upon layer of muck, and when he gets to spreading it out through what comes out of his mouth, you never know what will come up to the top. Greg Wilpert, a Chavista agent who edits a prominent Chavista Web site, wrote an amazing piece about Chavez’s relations with the West and his own view of himself for Political Affairs, the official magazine of the Communist Party USA. He had a long rambling chat with Chavez, who proves he’s congenitally unable to keep his mouth shut.…
Andres Oppenheimer of The Miami Herald, in a public service, has done us all a favor by identifying the Dirty Dozen of the new congress, the creeps who would keep free trade from enriching and helping the nations of the Americas. These are the poverty-enforcers, the anti-Latin Americans, the rust-belt oppressors, hobbled by their own wilfull ignorance of economics (I can’t even excuse that ignorance, there is no excuse for that kind of unwillingness to know about the benefits of trade in this day and age). These are the dogs who would keep Latin America down, keep it out of…
U.S.-Mexico border walk, near San Diego and Tijuana Source: Alex Jones, via Dan Watman Even if you support the U.S. border fence with Mexico, you cannot help but feel deeply saddened by the very idea of a wall going up between two close nations whose citizens’ lives and cultures overlap eternally. A high Stalag-style fence to keep “intruders” out is a disturbing specter between friends Mexico and the U.S. It’s an ugly intrusion and an artificial marker of otherness. Sure it may be in the name of sovereignty, but it comes at the cost of unity. The concept of a…
It seems that the results of the 2006 congressional elections in the U.S. bode well for America????????s ability to influence Russia????????s political direction toward democracy, though they may come to late to be of much real utility. Not that the newly empowered Democrats will necessarily be vigorous in that regard (although they may prove to be) but because the election will free those Republicans who are inclined to do so, such as senators John McCain and Charles Grassley, to be much more active in opposing the Bush administration????????s policy of accommodation towards the regime of Vladimir Putin. President Bush, either…
The U.S. has a new congress and boy is it hostile to the concept of free trade. Sadly, the Republicans in power were just barely there on this issue and the Democrats to a lesser extent, but not exactly absent. Now, with a Democrat-dominated House and Senate, it’s going to be very tough to get trade treaties already signed ratified. At stake are the ratification of trade pacts with the remaining CAFTA states that haven’t got all their papers and regulations in order, with Colombia, and with Peru. Peru’s a really important one. This nation elected Alan Garcia on an…
Urrrrghhhhh! Wonder why. UPDATE: Chavez is just beaming at Rumsfeld’s resignation. Rumsfeld, you may recall, compared Chavez to Hitler. Alex Beech sent me some additional thoughts here: What Hugo Chavez Could Learn from Bush 08.11.06 ö There is no one celebrating the Republicans’ defeat today more than President Chavez, who said on Wednesday that the defeat was a “whipping that they’ve given the US president???????which means that US citizens do have a mind and a conscience.” Rather than celebrate, Mr. Chavez could learn a lesson about why many Americans switched their votes to the Democratic party on Tuesday throughout the…
U.S. voters go to the polls in Tempe, Arizona Source: AP, via The Guardian Today’s a big election day in the U.S. for the seats in Congress. At stake is whether the war in Iraq will continue to victory or a cut-an-run strategy, similar to that employed to end the Vietnam War, is implemented. Both houses of Congress are up for grabs. The Republicans are in power right now but the Democrats have good chances of winning both. For that reason, I’m on my way to the polling station which is about to close in one hour and twenty minutes.…
America is the strongest single country in the world, and in this position it has made many enemies of those who oppose such things as democracy and the free market. Kim Jong-il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Hugo Chavez, just to name a few. But these three especially are bent on the destruction or obsolescence America itself as well as what it stands for. It stands to reason then that such people would do anything possible to make this happen; from building nuclear weapons to clearly subverting American elections. Hugo Chavez is exactly the kind of man that would do such a…
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…
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…
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…
Courtesy of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, Sandalistas can now select five-star accomodations if they find themselves tiring of all the gunfire, fireworks and 6:00 a.m. blasted regatton that so livens up shantytown life. After all, there’s something for everyone in the world of Chavistadom! This new news item, which I have only a fragment of from EFE, only goes to show that Chavez is not even trying to pretend anymore that’s he’s down there with the people. He and his sandalista pals on tour from Chicago and New York and Los Angeles and Paris and London have gone upscale. They’re…
Panic has set in at Venezuela’s state oil company with the spectacular exit of 7-Eleven from the Citgo gasoline-station label. The PR damage is so bad that the entire brand may be a total loss. Indy gas station after indy gas station are yanking ties to the Venezuelan dictator-controlled oil company. This follows 7-Eleven’s verbally spectacular pullout, a U.S. consumer boycott, as well as Citgo’s own of pulling of the Citgo label from about 1800 stations that the Venezuelan energy company could no longer supply due to crumbling productive capacity. Which is a shame, because it was a good company…
There is something majestic about the power of the markets. No dictator, anywhere can control them. They do what they do, based on thousands of decisions by thousands of individuals, acting on a collective wisdom. No central planning can match this people’s verdict in reflecting the here and now, or the future. That’s a people-power Hugo Chavez repeatedly disparages and discounts even as he claims to represent the aspirations of the people. Today, it wasn’t George Bush who spoke but the People of the United States who issued a majestic market verdict on him. That was evident in action taken…
Adam Gadahn Source: AFP, via Yahoo! News Al-Qaida released a video of a local American, Adam Gadahn, inviting us all to ‘convert or die‘ to bin Laden’s perversion of Islam, following an introduction by al-Qaida monster, Dr. Zawahiri, who’s bin Laden’s Number Two. It’s not his first time in a bin-Laden video. He’s recognizable as the U.S. citizen who made a threat to blow up Los Angeles a couple years before. Now he’s hit the big time, a spot on a Zawahiri Internet broadcast. Since he’s a former heavy-metal dude turned Islamofascistist fanatic, his new identity must make him feel…