Blogging the democratic revolution
Miguel has some new developments on the Posada Carriles case that illustrates just how weird this case is getting. There’s all kinds of information the mainstream media hasn’t touched on yet, and should. Why does the government of Venezuela really want this guy back? That it does doesn’t make sense, so it’s going from bad to bizarre. Read the whole weird thing here.
Our dear friends in Central America are fighting for their survival. Carlos Alberto Montaner has an important essay out about what he saw in the eyes of Central America’s presidents as they came to Miami to plead for the DR-CAFTA trade bill. He warns that is this bill does not pass, it will be to “invite the Devil to supper.” He’s right. I was in Los Angeles when the President of El Salvador came through on the same mission. The mass media, including the LA Times ignored it, but the room full of Salvadoran immigrants who fully shared his passion…
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 Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez seek to appeal to with this extradition demand directed at the U.S. Those elites among them hate us as intensely as they hate the purple fingers of our friends the Iraqi voters. They know we support revolution. Hence, their hollow…
“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 funded sources. Fidel Castro’s and his toyboy’s ‘assertions and demands’ aside -as if words uttered by them had any relevance or weight- the US administration is faced with a dilemma; that of returning a long time collaborator to Venezuela in the know that revolutionary justice…
London 02.05.05 ö With the purpose of continuing with the previous article I shall comment today upon the main reason for Hugo Chavez’s sustained popularity in Venezuela; his ability to win political allies throughout the region and the foundations upon which his alliances are built. To begin with the unravelling of the Chavez phenomenon one must look out for the X factor, that ‘thing’ that makes him irresistible in the eyes of people. Ideological affinities and charisma aside I am of the opinion that Chavez’s ‘charm’ is the US Dollar. Having dismantled the meritocratic system that had governed Petroleos de…
Randy Paul has a short item on Miguel Inzulza of Chile winning the post as OAS Secretary General. He points out differences in media coverage on this somewhat mysterious issue. Why was it so controversial? Inzulza had been Hugo Chavez’s candidate, which is in itself a minus, because Chavez is the Foremost Troublemaker in our hemisphere. On the other hand, Inzulza is a Chilean, and with Chilean attitudes, apparently this was enough to convince Condi Rice to accept him as the U.S.’s candidate, too. If he’s good enough for Condi, I am going to bet he’s O.K., too. Now, with…
Alvaro Vargas Llosa, an author of The Complete Guide To The Perfect Latin American Idiot (it has a whole chapter on Castro worship) and now, Liberty for Latin America: How to undo 500 years of state oppression will be interviewed by Jim Lehrer of PBS. Alvaro Vargas Llosa is one of the world’s foremost experts on Latin America. Like Hernando de Soto, he’s a Peruvian, and he’s now at the Independent Institute, in Oakland. When people ask me where I learned about the place, I always point in his direction. He is one of the most brilliant and interesting intellectuals…
The Community of Democracies are meeting right now in my favorite city, Santiago de Chile, which I think is a fine country to hold such an event in. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is leading the U.S. delegation through this three day event from April 28-30. In the company of the democratic friends, she spoke of no less than the end of political tyranny worldwide. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Thursday it is the historic duty of the world’s democracies to eliminate political tyranny. She addressed officials from more than 100 countries at the Community of Democracies meeting…
Venezuela is the only country I know of whose Embassy employees in Washington are regularly commissioned to harass bloggers. Honestly, I don’t understand how this can be legal. We all get emails from them. They are worse than that, though – their crazed leftist “press” minions on the Internet, who have some sort of relationship with them, post bloggers’ home addresses, work places, phone numbers and e-mails on their sites. They also have called bloggers’ employers and attempted to get them fired. And of course they try desperately to find out who some of us are. This is all perfectly…
Daniel noted earlier the blatantly warped and somewhat arbitrary questions, but Mike Connor all the way out in Yushchenko’s Ukraine noticed it as well. They better watch out, or they might develop the same bad international reputation they’ve acquired at home!
You’d think Carlos Santana wouldn’t make a mistake about what’s hip and what’s out, but that’s just what he did at the Academy Awards last month, showing up in a big Che Guevara tee shirt. So old. So out. So out of it. And so damn despicable. Santana learned to play his instruments with Cuba’s famed Lion of the Bongos, Mongo Santamaria in the clubs of Tijuana after Mongo fled the horrors of the Castro regime. Santana knows very well what the Castro regime is all about. And he went and wore the disgusting tee shirt anyway. Val at Babalublog…
President Yushchenko of Ukraine’s Orange Revolution has arrived in Washington today and will be staying through April 7th. Time to roll out the red carpet! WASHINGTON, DC — The United States is getting ready to roll out the red carpet for Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko, the man behind a democratic movement that Washington would like to see spread to other parts of the former Soviet Union and elsewhere in the world. Yushchenko is to arrive in the United States Sunday and will be welcomed by President George W. Bush to the White House the following day. The trip, through Thursday,…
An amazing trend is beginning to show up, on all places, at Ivy League campuses. There, young people who were barely old enough to remember the collapse of The Wall in East Germany in 1989, have sensed a new something in the air and are making it their own statement. Attractive young Ivy League students, some of them sons and daughters of Cuban exiles, and others just interested in Cuba, are coming out and challenging the prevailing Che tee shirt logic of ignorance and stupidity. At Princeton, there was a big spontaneous demonstration against communism in Cuba. Other kids are…
Venezuela and the U.S. won their wars for independence against their respective colonial masters at about the same time. Six years ago, Venezuela, very quietly, was our number one overseas oil supplier. You never heard about any of this because – guess what – the U.S. and Venezuela have always been amigos. There’s never been a history of anti-American sentiment there. Until Hugo Chavez showed up. Swapping Venezuela’s longtime friendship with the U.S. for that of mendicant Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, bloggers have noticed a dramatic rise of anti-U.S. ravings from Chavez minions in Venezuela. This occurs on the same…
Alek Boyd is doing an extraordinary job exposing the Venezuelan communist networks that are infiltrating the U.S. through Venezuela’s oil cash. He’s uncovered another $180,000 that’s been spread around like butter today. I am in awe of his extraordinary work, miles ahead of the news and performing a valuable service to any American interested in learning how a dictator is influencing thought about him in the U.S. Compelling reading, read the latest installment here.
Blogger Alek Boyd has done an amazing job unravelling the the tangled web of dictator Hugo Chavez’s financial network in the U.S. Linking shell corporation to shell corporation, he’s well on the way to putting together a comprehensive picture of these enemies of the U.S. nesting and operating in our own country. The Chavista network is being exposed. Read the whole thing here and see a telling photo here. P.S.: Eva Golinger looks just like one of those World War II enemy women – Eva Braun? Tokyo Rose? if you ask me.
Alek Boyd has one hell of a good news report and short analysis of the Boston “friendship” meeting with Chavista officials, who are conducting a propaganda offensive in the U.S. The details about grilled shrimp and duck quesadillas among the jeweled chavistas is priceless. But it goes well well beyond that to give us the scope of Venezuelan ‘active measures’ to manipulate perceptions in the U.S. It’s not normal stuff. There is one particularly wrenching encounter between a Russian woman who has known communism firsthand and has a perfect grasp of its underlying dynamic, and a Chavista official who keeps…
As we wrote here, Venezuela’s mayor of Caracas and some other offiicials paid a visit to Boston where they were met by starry-eyed officials, were dished heaps of praise, and were taken around town in the proverbial dog and pony show. The Venezuelan blogosphere, however, did more than just write words to reply this time, they also organized a counter demonstration, getting their word out to event-goers with a demonstration there and printing up a flyer. Details of the successful counterdemonstration are here and in the comments section here.
Jennifer McCoy, who led the disastrous Carter-Center-sanctioned destruction of democracy in Venezuela, is now trying to defend herself to Venezuela’s bloggers. A little spin control, I suppose, in light of just how deeply the Carter-endorsed fraud in Venezuela’s recall referendum has sunk into American consciousness. This shows the power of Venezuela’s tenacious bloggers in getting the truth out when the media first wouldn’t. The media has largely changed its line of course, so now the Carterites are on the defensive, but still defending the indefensible.
In Caracas, Venezuela, a controversial mayor there is a guy who once chased a potbanging protestor around with a broken booze bottle at Caracas airport. Well, he’s now in Boston to instruct the Ivy-Leaguers at the august institutions of Harvard and MIT. He’s a real charmer. Read the whole thing here, and here.
Congressman Bill Delahunt of the U.S. wrote a rosy piece for the Boston Globe this week, touting the glories of Chavista Venezuela. Everything he said looked like it was lifted from the playbook of the Venezuelan Information Office, the propaganda arm of the Marxist Venezuelan regime. Venezuela’s Gustavo Coronel corrects the record in an eloquent essay here.
Cubans and Cuban-Americans who oppose tyranny have an unusual problem in the United States: It’s not just that they are shut out from all participation in American culture, such as films, books and television. It’s also that they are openly abused and derided by the most powerful cultural exporting machine the world has ever known – Hollywood. This juggernaut has not only slammed the door on Cuban-Americans but hurled rocks at them from the window. Val Prieto at Babalu blog has seen a new example of this cultural attack on Cubans in the U.S. in an American television show that…
I personally relate the IRA in many respects to Hizb’allah and Hamas: a bunch of thugs who use coercive intimidation and commit crime because they can’t do policy in a democratic society. Here’s an article on the debate between Labour and the Tories. And while Blair is obviously on the winning side, I believe he is on the wrong side when it comes to dealing with the IRA. Luckily, Sinn Fein is recently getting the cold shoulder from Washington. ÄWorld NewsÅ: WASHINGTON, March 14 : The U.S. government told Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to avoid fundraising during his U.S.…
Val Prieto at the excellent Babalu Blog is performing a public service by holding the New York Public Library accountable for its Castro worship. They’ve done it before, selling Che Guevara wristwatches, and he’s forced them to stop. But they are at it again and he isn’t going to let their dewey-eyed effort to legitimize the hemisphere’s most brutal tyrant go uncriticized. Be sure to click on to see Val’s lashing little note about the Library’s elementary ignorance of Cuban culture in its advertising. (Remember, this is a library, repository of learning, maybe these people should open up a book…
Recently proposed in the Senate and the House is the ADVANCE Democracy Act. This bill, as it suggests in the title, would make the spread of democracy and liberty official U.S. policy. To advance and strengthen democracy globally through peaceful means and to assist foreign countries to implement democratic forms of government, to strengthen respect for individual freedom, religious freedom, and human rights in foreign countries through increased United States advocacy, to strengthen alliances of democratic countries, to increase funding for programs of nongovernmental organizations, individuals, and private groups that promote democracy, and for other purposes. This bill is huge,…