Although Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez has managed to make himself eligible for re-elections indefinitely, he does of course claim to be a “democratically elected” both the chief of state and head of government.

It appears that he has gotten the majority of votes largely thanks to the unwashed electoral majority, but the fact remains that the better educated Venezuelans are largely in opposition to his de facto dictatorship.

Chavez has closed pretty much every media outlet, that was not going along with his policies and which have refused to broadcast his frequent, multi-hour speeches. Doesn’t that remind you of his hero Fidel?

In any case, one of the strongest, bravest and most determined members of the Venezuelan opposition are the students.

Here’s a little video, portraying their brave struggle.

Technorati Tags: chavez, struggle, students, Venezuela

From top left: Kue Bui for Newsweek; Andrew Hetherington / Redux; James Keyser / Time Life Pictures-Getty Images; Richard A. Bloom / Corbis; Ahmad Al-Rubaye / AFP-Gettty Images; Brendan Hoffman / Getty Images

Newsweek magazine has a very interesting and lengthy article, entitled “The Return of the Neocons” by David Margolick.

Here’s a short excerpt: “One prominent activist on the libertarian end of the party – who hates what he sees as their costly foreign – policy adventurism and the GOP electoral losses (i.e., the presidency and both houses of Congress) he attributes to them – calls them ‘parasites’: with little electoral power of their own, he claims, they have had to attach themselves to others, like George W. Bush. Comfortably ensconced behind a cloak of anonymity, he bristles, but also marvels, at their endurance and effectiveness, comparing them to ‘an infection that keeps coming back.’ “They’ve perfected this absolutely incredible thing: they announce who they are, how powerful they are, how influential they are, and get people to write articles about them,” he says. “But when their policies are perceived to have caused mass chaos, they don’t exist, they didn’t have anything to do with it, they weren’t there, and they get really snotty. And anyone who attacks them is anti-Semitic.”

Worth a read we think.

Technorati Tags: neocons, Newsweek, return

Considering the amount of coverage that the arbitrarily chosen 20^th anniversary celebration of the fall of the Berlin Wall received, one would think that it was purely, or at least mostly a media event.

As it turned out, despite the cold rain falling on November 9, 2009, it was more of a celebration of the human spirit, of the beginning of the end of communism in Europe and a call for action against continuing violations of human rights throughout the world.

There have been many discussions as to who actually contributed the most to the disintegration of communism.

Most knowledgeable experts underscore the huge contribution of Pope John Paul II, who has given the Polish people the encouragement needed to start the strike at the Gdansk shipyard and to found the Solidarity trade union in 1980.

The communist government has cracked down on Solidarnosc on December 13, 1981. Many activists were imprisoned, but the opposition remained very active, finally reaching the point in February of 1989 of forcing the Polish government to initiate talks with the opposition to defuse social unrest.

Here’s the rest of the timeline of events, leading up to the demise of communism in Europe:

1989

April 5: The Roundtable Agreement is signed in Poland, legalizing independent trade unions and calling the first partially democratic elections in June.

May 2: Dismantling of the Iron Curtain – the boundary between Warsaw Pact and NATO countries – begins as Hungary disables the electric alarm system and cuts through barbed wire on its border with Austria.

Aug. 19: The ‘Pan-European Picnic’ – a peace demonstration at the Hungarian town of Sopron on the Austrian border – turns into an exodus when Hungarian border guards hold their fire as 600 East German citizens flee to the West.

Aug. 24: Tadeusz Mazowiecki is appointed Polish prime minister, becoming the first noncommunist head of state in Eastern Europe in more than 40 years.

Sept. 10: Hungary reopens its border with East Germany, allowing 13,000 East Germans passage to escape through Austria.

Oct. 18: East German leader Erich Honecker is forced to resign.

Nov. 4: One million people rally in East Berlin during weeks of mounting demonstrations.

Nov. 9: The Berlin Wall falls.

Nov. 17: The ‘Velvet Revolution’ in Czechoslovakia erupts in reaction to a police crackdown on peaceful student protests in Prague. Days of mass demonstrations ensue.

Nov. 24: Communists in Prague step down.

Dec. 3: Soviet spokesman Gennady Gerasimov, speaking after a press conference between George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev, who were concluding a shipboard summit at Malta, declared: “From Yalta to Malta, the cold war ended at 12.45 p.m. today.”

Dec. 22: Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu is overthrown. He and his wife, Elena, are executed three days later after a summary trial.

1990

April 8: Hungary elects a non-communist government.

Oct. 3: Germany unifies.

Dec. 9: Poland elects Lech Walesa president.

July 1: Baltic states gain independence from the Soviet Union.

Dec. 25: The Soviet Union dissolves.

Technorati Tags: Berlin wall, Communism, fall, Germay, media, overkill, poland, Pope John Paul II, Solidarity, Walesa

One of the greatest symbols of capitalism, New York’s Empire State Building got lit up in red on Wednesday night, a day before the official 60^th anniversary of the Chinese revolution and the creation of the People’s Republic of China.

We realize that money talks and that China is holding trillions of dollars of U.S. debt, but this isn’t exactly a celebration of the Chinese people, their history, or their culture, but of their Communist party.

Human Rights Watch, a tenant of the building, put it quite succinctly:

“We want to make clear we have no objection to honoring China as a nation, a great civilization or a vibrant people. However, this date commemorates the rule of the Chinese Communist Party, a political entity that is responsible historically for many grave violations of human rights.”

There is no doubt that China has made enormous strides in the past 60 years – mostly in the economic and military direction, that Shanghai and other cities have huge clusters of skyscrapers and that it is developing, for better and for worse in leaps and bounds. At the same time, let’s not forget the tens of millions of human lives and suffering that this transformation has cost.

Let’s not forget the “Cultural Revolution”, the Tiananmen Square massacre and many other events, before we light up our landmark buildings in de facto celebration of these crimes.

Technorati Tags: anniversary, china, communist, Empire State Building, genocide, party, US