Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is now on his back foot. Can he be topped by a popular movement?
The Latin American socialist demagogue is now facing concerted resistance from opposition parties that formerly boycotted the political hyena. And as it turns out, Venezuelan democracy may have a little life left. Chavez' constant propaganda can't cover up the fact that the economy is in ruins (even as billions of dollars worth of Russian arms deals went through to help fight an American invasion no one thinks will never actually come). And Chavez' handouts to bribe the poor have not done anything to lift the poor out of poverty. He has only perpetuated a permanent unemployed underclass.
Now he's paying for it. Joel D. Hirst in the Huffington post reports on the startling change in Venezuelan politics:
Yesterday's National Assembly Election, with 66% voter turnout, saw the opposition's Table for Democratic Unity (MUD) gain 61 seats (with several more still being counted), a number that would have been significantly higher were it not for the 2009 reform of the electoral law.
Foreign Policy has an amusing photo essay up comparing dictator fashion trends, called The Devil Wears Taupe. As they point out,
Not all the world's dictators are clotheshorses, but as these leaders show, sometimes politics, power and polyester combine to make fashion magic.
There’s Fidel and Raúl Castro who “have for decades set the standard in dress for guerrillas-turned-autocrats”, Robert Mugabe’s “tie and pocket square always perfectly matched”, or Chávez’s “three favorite red outfits, ranging from dictator-classic to resort wear” to the platform shoes sported by Kim Jong-il to add those couple of extra inches needed when one's job is to keep the masses in perpetual fear. Whether you've got to get dressed to plan an election fraud, oversee a torture session, or give a 14 hour speech, you've got to get the style that says, "I control you" just right.
I see Islam Karimov, who usually wears a simple navy suit and red tie, didn't make the cut. Too Hilfiger pedestrian I guess... he lacks that certain je ne sais quoi in his wardrobe needed...More >>
A new report explores the growing radicalization of Britain coordinated by Islamic extremists, to the detriment of an otherwise liberal, diverse and tolerant society.
This is an open thread. Feel free to leave a comment below.
A small-scale war has broken out in Swedish political circles. The Sweden Democrats, espousing opposition to mass immigration - the most verboten of European political stances - have overcome a great many obstacles to scrape together a handful of seats in Sweden's recent elections, enough to hang parliament.
Well, of course. No one ever suggested that defeated British MP George Galloway was a card-carrying member of a terrorist organization (Do terrorists print membership cards?). But he is someone who has knowingly provided materiel support and funding for a terrorist organization, namely Hamas. The issue comes up once more as a Canadian judge irrelevantly declares comments by a Canadian government official on the admissability of Galloway onto Canadian territory: "The result, in my view, was a flawed and overreaching interpretation of the standards under Canadian law for labelling someone as engaging in terrorism or being a member of a terrorist organization."
But the case for Galloway's support of terrorists is well-documented, helped by his own public statement in 2009. Here's the quote from Galloway as he hands over bags of...More >>
The debate regarding anti-Zionism’s anti-Semitic overtones is as ever applicable and is as ever strenuously contested. On a British University campus, I regularly experience screaming denials of bigotry from not just British Islamists and their morally anaemic far-Left supporters, but also from persons considered - or at least self-perceived - to be moderates.
For a while now, I have taken what I consider to be a reasonable and positive perspective: if one ignores the unquestionable suffering and the consequent emotional and rational incentives of the Jewish people to provide themselves with the optimism, prosperity and success of the self-reliance and security of a homeland, then one can reject Zionism - or Jewish nationalism - but only on the absolute condition that one also rejects Palestinian nationalism. To choose one over the other is a consummate hypocrisy that assumes absolutely no rational premise or a desire for peaceful resolution.
One particular NGO, which any rational yet uninformed observer would expect to take an enlightened and progressive position, would be ‘War on Want’ - a registered British charity which received just under half...More >>
Earlier this month, I wrote about the sexual violence that occurs in societies which radically repress and restrict relationships between consenting adults. Another consequence is the strange acrobatics one must perform to circumvent the system in place, or to legitimate their actions within the purview of the system.
For instance, in Iran, sex before or outside of marriage is prohibited by law. Indeed, the accusation of an extramarital affair can lead to a 'stoning to death' sentencing by the revolutionary courts. So the rule is serious. But there is another rule, called sigheh, legally known as a "temporary marriage". It's a term used for what most places would simply call sexual intercourse between two people who are not co-habitating marital partners. Sigheh does not even need to be registered and can last as little as five minutes, or up to 99 years. In other words, it's good for a quickie, or for a long-term relationship without a wedding. As Elaine Sciolino writes, "Sigheh legally wraps premarital sex in an Islamic cloak."
So in the same Islamic Republic which obsessively prizes virginity,...More >>
Some decent reporting from Independent contributor, David McNeill, travelling under cover in Pyongyang. Unfortunately, both McNeill and the paper's copy editor seems to have missed an important error right in the lede:
Pyongyang is the showcase capital for a Stalinist experiment gone horribly wrong.
Shouldn't that be "a Stalinist experiment gone horribly right"?
After all, in North Korea, you've got a cult of personality, brutal totalitarian repression and an economy thoroughly wrecked by state controls, allowing the state to punish dissent with a simple withdrawal of ration cards (in the event that party officials are too lazy to do the paperwork that would consign the doomed individual to the gulag).
Some, like Vietnam and Singapore, have asked the United States to keep a big military force in Asia to counterbalance Chinese power. "America plays a role in Asia that China cannot replace," Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong told the Wall Street Journal last week.
This is an open thread. Join the conversation and leave a comment.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is now on his back foot. Can he be topped by a popular movement?
Foreign Policy has an amusing photo essay up comparing dictator fashion trends, called The Devil Wears Taupe. As they point out,
A small-scale war has broken out in Swedish political circles. The Sweden Democrats, espousing opposition to mass immigration - the most verboten of European political stances - have overcome a great many obstacles to scrape together a handful of seats in Sweden's recent elections, enough to hang parliament.
Well, of course. No one ever suggested that defeated British MP George Galloway was a card-carrying member of a terrorist organization (Do terrorists print membership cards?). But he is someone who has knowingly provided materiel support and funding for a terrorist organization, namely Hamas. The issue comes up once more as a Canadian judge irrelevantly declares comments by a Canadian government official on the 
The debate regarding anti-Zionism’s anti-Semitic overtones is as ever applicable and is as ever strenuously contested. On a British University campus, I regularly experience screaming denials of bigotry from not just British Islamists and their morally anaemic far-Left supporters, but also from persons considered - or at least self-perceived - to be moderates.
Earlier this month
