In Hugo Chavez’s 21st Century Socialist Venezuela. El Universal has a superb roundup of the year, documenting the continuous stream of expropriations defacing Venezuela as its democracy slides into tyranny. Read it here and here.

From Venezuela’s government propaganda, a news organ called Venezuelan Global News reports meat shortages in Caracas, calling attention to a problem that obviously is being discussed in the streets by Venezuela’s poor, a topic Venezuela’s private-sector media, or at least the mainstream English-language media, may have missed. This is the first I have heard of this shortage.

The meat reportedly in short supply is pork legs, used in the making of Venezuelan Christmas hallacas (we’d recognize that as a tamale over here), a traditional Christmas food.

Although I had not seen any reports of pork shortages in the press, the government made a big production of denying the reports, insisting there was adequate pork supply, “at least in some popular markets,” not a very assuring statement. But amid these shortages that the government insists do not exist, it also addressed the issue of prices, and it had much more to say. Here, for instance, is what they had to say about meat producers:

…most times, the price difference lies in the producers, not in the final merchants. Undoubtedly, this indicates that the slaughterhouses take advantage of the occasion to increase the costs.

All the problems in the past have been overcome.

???????You can find all the products for the Christmas dinner in Mercal????????s shelves, even pork legs. There was a rumor in the supermarkets that there were not pork legs, but during our investigation, we could confirm that there was pork leg supply, at least in some popular markets. The pork leg????????s price should not exceed 5,000 Bs (without bone) and 4,000 Bs (with bone), that is, USD 2.32 and USD 1.86 respectively.

This year, the problem is not about finding pork legs because there is pork leg supply in the country. The problem lies in the price; for instance, supermarkets usually increase the prices of the pork leg and other ingredients of the Christmas dish because of the comfort they provide.

Some vegetables used for the stew of the hallaca ???????? such as paprika, onion, sweet peppers, among others ???????? experienced an increased of 30% in comparison with last year. Thanks to the investigation, we could confirm that the prices in municipal markets and supermarkets are in accordance with the price regulation: 2,200 Bs (USD 1).

Notice that the government also blamed businesses and not government price controls for various rises in prices around the city. It ‘knows’ producers’ ‘motivations’ and assures its readers that all problems are now overcome. In the government’s simple logic, if producers are raising prices, there is some kind of problem with the chain of supply. That problem very well has to do with government prices controls. But more to the point, if there are price controls, there damn well will be shortages and lines. Just think of Jimmy Carter’s 1980 gas lines, something brought on by that exact dynamic. Now imagine it writ large by an admirer of Fidel Castro, anxious to turn his country into a Cuban-style dictatorship.

Along with coffee shortages, there are now meat shortages in Venezuela, from agricultural sector battered by price controls and its retailers battered by unfair competition from the government. It’s no surprise that this is happening. One other important detail: a cattle expert in Caracas told me that Castro’s Cubans have very definitely taken over Venezuela’s Ministry of Agriculture and make all essential decisions.

The results speak for themselves.

Instead of letting them phase in following the New Year, President Yushchenko wants to hold a popular referendum on the constitutional changes that were agreed upon during the Orange Revolution last year. I smell a — dun dun dun — political ploy!

KIEV (Reuters) - President Viktor Yushchenko said on Friday constitutional changes reducing his powers from the New Year could destabilise Ukraine and suggested he might call for a referendum on the matter.

The changes, approved by parliament a year ago at the height of Ukraine’s “Orange Revolution”, were part of a deal to win broad agreement on restaging a rigged presidential election.

Yushchenko won the re-run against a candidate backed by Russia and took office in January.

“The biggest threat is that we could end up with unbalanced and therefore ineffective government in Ukraine. The balance is shifting toward institutions that cannot properly ensure stability,” Yushchenko said in a television interview.

“The current balance is also not ideal. But what is proposed could hurt relations between the various branches of power. The issue of a referendum will be on the agenda.”

Under the current changes due to come into effect on January 1, 2006 the president is no longer free to nominate the prime minister and other key ministers.

Critical appointments will have to enjoy the support of a majority in what is often a fractious chamber. And with a parliamentary election due in March, the prime minister will almost certainly emerge from the largest group in the chamber.

The changes were originally proposed by Yushchenko’s predecessor Leonid Kuchma — whose chosen successor lost last year’s long and bruising presidential election.

Urged on by European mediators, particularly ex-Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, Yushchenko reluctantly agreed to the changes to end last year’s upheaval.

The most important power that Yushchenko will lose, of course, is the ability to nominate the prime minister. He used to support the changes; that is, when his and his party’s poll numbers were doing well. But with parliamentary elections coming up in March, and his party sagging by the double-digits behind one time rival Viktor Yanukovich’s party, he no longer does. Yulia Tymoshenko now supports the changes, having been fired by Yushchenko earlier in the year and poll numbers showing her just about par with his party. She’s working to regain her old job as prime minister and, under the changes, Yushchenko wouldn’t be able to stop her.

The real worry for Yushchenko is that the balance of power in the Rada is going to shift after the elections. With both he and Tymoshenko polling in the teens, and the Regions party polling in the 20s, it looks like Yanukovich could become the prime minister with extended powers. This is why Yushchenko is trying to prevent this by putting the changes up to a referendum and seeing them fail. Of course, he won’t be able to do it alone. The really interesting thing will be seeing whether Yushchenko and Tymoshenko can team back up to form a parliamentary majority, or if one of them will break and team up with Yanukovich’s team.

I see problems with this on multiple levels.

CAIRO, Dec. 30 - Egyptian riot police officers rushed into a crowd of unarmed Sudanese migrants early Friday morning, killing at least 23 people, including small children, after the group refused to leave a public park it had occupied for three months hoping to press United Nations officials to relocate them.

The Sudanese - thousands of men, women and children - were packed into what amounted to a traffic island in an upscale neighborhood. They had fled war-torn Sudan, but the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees office in Cairo - across the street from where they camped out - told them that they were not eligible for refugee status or for relocation because it was safe for them to return home.

The police had tried for hours to persuade them to leave the small square, hosing them with water cannons, surrounding them with cordons of riot control officers, imploring the women and children to board buses, and repeatedly warning that they would be removed by force.

When the officers charged, women and children tried to huddle together, and to hide under blankets as some men grabbed for anything - tree limbs, metal bars - struggling to fight back, witnesses said. The police hesitated, then rushed in with full force, trampling people and dragging the Sudanese off to waiting buses, the witnesses said.

“They started hitting our heads with the sticks and dragging us,” said Napoleon Robert Lado, a leader of the group, speaking on a cellphone from a police camp where he and others had been taken. “They dragged me when I was trying to help a woman who fainted to stand up. They dragged me, and I was stepping over the old people and women and children. I was screaming and trying to step away, but could not.”

By nightfall, Muhammad Khalaf, head of the area’s emergency department, said there were 23 dead, 7 of them children, 8 elderly, and 7 more women. Rights organizations said others died after being taken to police camps and being denied immediate access to health care.

First of all, it doesn’t matter whether your were trying to get them out of the park for a few hours or a few minutes, you just don’t go massacring a couple dozen refugee — all of them women, children, and the elderly no less. And I bet the Egyptian government wonders why it has a bad rep. Second, there wouldn’t be any refugees to massacre if there weren’t a campaign of genocide going on in Sudan. That the UN office in Cairo tried to tell them that it’s safe to go back home is ridiculous, especially given that we know that people are still being slaughtered.

These guys have the right idea.

In a rare protest against an official media crackdown, about 100 journalists from one of China’s most aggressive daily newspapers have gone on strike after the paper’s editor and two of his deputies were fired, local journalists said Friday.

The editor of The Beijing News, Yang Bin, and deputy editors, Sun Xuedong and Li Duoyu, were dismissed Wednesday as part of what media watchdog groups describe as a sweeping government campaign to tighten control over the media and the Internet.

The striking journalists, about a third of the staff, stopped work on Thursday after editors from The Beijing News’s conservative parent paper, the Guangming Daily, were appointed to replace Yang and his deputies.

The Beijing News was published on Friday but the names of its editors, normally printed on the tabloid’s masthead, had been omitted.

Senior editors from the paper were unavailable for comment.

It is unlikely that the Chinese government will slowly give up its restrictions on the media out of the goodness of its little communist heart. What will happen as time goes on is that the government will try to further restrict media; however, as Chinese journalists become more experienced, together with the ongoing development of new technologies, they will be able to slip past the clutches of the authorities more and more often. That’s why it’s much easier for the government to censor stories printed on paper rather than online, where it is constantly falling behind on its ability to block the connection of people and information.

On January 1st, CAFTA is ready for implementation. The nations of Central America have just a few things to do to get it all in place but on a rolling basis, they will be set to get involved with the opportunities of free trade and with it, all the prosperity that follows. After NAFTA was implemented, Mexico’s stock exchange rose 200% in the years that followed. So it shall be with CAFTA. Central America should prepare to be a big global player, a known name, a symbol of excellence, and a rich, prosperous region that has broken all ties to the penurious and violent past. Rule of law will win out, markets will develop, jobs will form, trade and innovation will begin, the region will ATTRACT immigrants instead of export people, and a great sense of pride and achievement will in little time come through.

Congratulations to Central America, Domnican Republic and the USA, all winners in this great agreement!

OFFICE OF THE UNITED STATES TRADE REPRESENTATIVE
Executive Office of the President
Washington, D.C.
20508

USTR Press Releases are available on the USTR website at www.ustr.gov

For Immediate Release:
December 30, 2005

Statement of USTR Spokesman Stephen Norton Regarding CAFTA-DR Implementation

“The United States has been working intensively with free trade agreement partners in Central America and the Dominican Republic in order to implement the CAFTA-DR. The United States will implement the CAFTA-DR on a rolling basis as countries make sufficient progress to complete their commitments under the agreement.

“Several countries are close to being ready to implement but none has completed all of their internal procedures. For example, on December 15 El Salvador’s Congress passed a legislative package to implement the CAFTA-DR. Once the Congress sends the legislation to President Saca for signature in early January, El Salvador will have the ability to issue further regulations and complete its internal steps and the final CAFTA
implementation review process with the United States.

“The United States will continue to work intensively with CAFTA-DR partners to bring them on board as quickly as possible. At the same time, the implementation process should not be rushed. Otherwise, the
benefits of CAFTA-DR to farmers, workers, businesses and consumers of the United States and of its CAFTA-DR partners could be jeopardized.

“During the interim period before full implementation, countries can continue to enjoy existing trade preferences.”

Background

Countries which are signatories to CAFTA-DR include the United States, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Nicaragua. All of the CAFTA-DR signatories have ratified the
Agreement except Costa Rica. El Salvador was the first to ratify in December 2004. Nicaragua was the most recent, in September 2005.

Implementing legislation for the CAFTA-DR passed the U.S. Senate in June and the House of Representatives in July, 2005, and was signed by the President in August.

The CAFTA-DR partners agreed to a target date of January 1, 2006, for entry into force. All countries recognized, however, that this was an ambitious goal, and that all countries might not have completed their
implementation process by that time. Other U.S. free trade agreements have had a longer preparation period to get ready (typically 6-7 months with only one country), so the need for additional time is not unusual.

With the exception of Costa Rica, all of the countries are working to complete the implementation process as soon as possible. Under the “rolling admissions” process, entry into force would occur on the first day of the month with a country that the USTR determines is ready by the middle of the preceding month. The intervening time will allow for a Presidential proclamation to be prepared. Implementation as early as February 1 is possible in some cases.

CAFTA-DR is the second largest U.S. export market in Latin America, behind only Mexico, buying more than $16 billion in U.S. exports. Successful CAFTA-DR implementation is critical to the broader U.S. policy goals for the Americas of strengthening democratic governance, expanding economic opportunity, and investing in people.

http://www.ustr.gov

Is it me, or did Publius‘ first birthday just pass yesterday?

Now that I’ve fully recovered — it was so bad that it must have been bird flu — I can finally get back to what’s going on with the Iraqi election results. Only it’s already beginning to wind down. The political groups are criss-crossing with dozens of talks all over the country to work out a compromise. New elections are certainly out of the question, but it looks like some of the demands of the Sunnis and seculars will be fulfilled and the Shia-Kurdish alliance will evolve into more of a national unity government. Final results will be released in the next few days and we’ll start to see what unfolds from there.

I know this because I’ve been reading Iraq the Model, which has told me everything and more than the mainstream media has in its stories. Richard Fernandez from The Belmont Club, who has been watching this story unfold through the eyes of ITM as well, had this to say in a recent email exchange commenting on the unfolding events:

I think there is too little information coming out of Iraq right now. The only way forward is to try and build up independent sources of information. We’ve made a start and others are working at it too. But there’s a long way to go.

And so we’ve been watching, but it hasn’t been the New York Times or the Washington Post, it’s been Iraq the Model. It crosses my mind that while perhaps the independent media hasn’t been built up to a great degree in Iraq, the people who live in the country itself seem to know perfectly well what’s going on. The country has domestic and foreign television stations, dozens of credible newspapers and hundreds of others, and great programs like Radio Sawa that broadcast all over. Access to information is actually quite robust.

The problem may not be so much that independent information is sprouting too slowly in Iraq, but that the information isn’t being relayed across the Atlantic. While most newspapers are sticking with the Reuters bomb of the week reports, Omar and Mohammed are taking the news from multiple Iraqi sources and presenting that information in a manner that actually helps the reader understand the real political situation in the country. So, question, since that’s the media’s job, why isn’t it doing that?

VCrisis has several good pieces tonight on Argentina but one that caught my eye an event I knew about - that Argentina’s largely leftist press is on the take, with a few isolated exceptions. Now many of those exceptions are under attack as the Nestor “Anti–Summit of the Americas” Kirchner regime strengthens and consolidates its power a la Hugo Chavez. Press freedom is beginning to wither there for those who are not on the take. The story is here.

Cuban exiles at Killcastro.com (the name comes from Havana street graffiti) went over, point by point, U.S. proposed reforms for a post-Castro Cuba.

They focused exclusively on how effective each individual measure would likely be to dislodge “The Beast” from power and enable the blossoming of freedom in Cuba, the coming Havana Spring all hope to follow in the wake of Castro’s unmournable death.

The fascinating item from these real Cubans is here.

I Believe Only In The Power Of The People
by Evo Morales
December 24, 2005

Thank you for the invitation to this great meeting of intellectuals “In Defense of Humanity.” Thank you for your applause for the Bolivian people, who have mobilized in these recent days of struggle, drawing on our consciousness and our regarding how to reclaim our natural resources.

What happened these past days in Bolivia was a great revolt by those who have been oppressed for more than 500 years. The will of the people was imposed this September and October, and has begun to overcome the empire’s cannons. We have lived for so many years through the confrontation of two cultures: the culture of life represented by the indigenous people, and the culture of death represented by West. When we the indigenous people together with the workers and even the businessmen of our country fight for life and justice, the State responds with its “democratic rule of law.”

What does the “rule of law” mean for indigenous people? For the poor, the marginalized, the excluded, the “rule of law” means the targeted assassinations and collective massacres that we have endured. Not just this September and October, but for many years, in which they have tried to impose policies of hunger and poverty on the Bolivian people. Above all, the “rule of law” means the accusations that we, the Quechuas, Aymaras and Guaranies of Bolivia keep hearing from our governments: that we are narcos, that we are anarchists. This uprising of the Bolivian people has been not only about gas and hydrocarbons, but an intersection of many issues: discrimination, marginalization , and most importantly, the failure of neoliberalism.

The cause of all these acts of bloodshed, and for the uprising of the Bolivian people, has a name: neoliberalism. With courage and defiance, we brought down Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada the symbol of neoliberalism in our country on October 17, the Bolivians’ day of dignity and identity. We began to bring down the symbol of corruption and the political mafia.

And I want to tell you, companeras and companeros, how we have built the consciousness of the Bolivian people from the bottom up. How quickly the Bolivian people have reacted, have said as Subcomandate Marcos says ????ya basta!, enough policies of hunger and misery.

For us, October 17th is the beginning of a new phase of construction. Most importantly, we face the task of ending selfishness and individualism, and creating from the rural campesino and indigenous communities to the urban slums other forms of living, based on solidarity and mutual aid. We must think about how to redistribute the wealth that is concentrated among few hands. This is the great task we Bolivian people face after this great uprising.

It has been very important to organize and mobilize ourselves in a way based on transparency, honesty, and control over our own organizations. And it has been important not only to organize but also to unite. Here we are now, united intellectuals in defense of humanity I think we must have not only unity among the social movements, but also that we must coordinate with the intellectual movements. Every gathering, every event of this nature for we labor leaders who come from the social struggle, is a great lesson that allows us to exchange experiences and to keep strengthening our people and our grassroots organizations.

Thus, in Bolivia, our social movements, our intellectuals, our workers even those political parties which support the popular struggle joined together to drive out Gonzalo S????nchez Lozada. Sadly, we paid the price with many of our lives, because the empire’s arrogance and tyranny continue humiliating the Bolivian people.

It must be said, compa????eras and compa????eros, that we must serve the social and popular movements rather than the transnational corporations. I am new to politics; I had hated it and had been afraid of becoming a career politician. But I realized that politics had once been the science of serving the people, and that getting involved in politics is important if you want to help your people. By getting involved, I mean living for politics, rather than living off of politics. We have coordinated our struggles between the social movements and political parties, with the support of our academic institutions, in a way that has created a greater national consciousness. That is what made it possible for the people to rise up in these recent days.

When we speak of the “defense of humanity,” as we do at this event, I think that this only happens by eliminating neoliberalism and imperialism. But I think that in this we are not so alone, because we see, every day that anti-imperialist thinking is spreading, especially after Bush’s bloody “intervention” policy in Iraq. Our way of organizing and uniting against the system, against the empire’s aggression towards our people, is
spreading, as are the strategies for creating and strengthening the power of the people.

I believe only in the power of the people. That was my experience in my own region, a single province the importance of local power. And now, with all that has happened in Bolivia, I have seen the importance of the power of a whole people, of a whole nation. For those of us who believe it important to defend humanity, the best contribution we can make is to help create that popular power. This happens when we check our personal
interests with those of the group. Sometimes, we commit to the socialmovements in order to win power. We need to be led by the people, not use or manipulate them.

We may have differences among our popular leaders and it’s true that we have them in Bolivia. But when the people are conscious, when the people know what needs to be done, any difference among the different local leaders ends. We’ve been making progress in this for a long time, so that our people are finally able to rise up, together.

What I want to tell you, compa????eras and compa????eros what I dream of and what we as leaders from Bolivia dream of is that our task at this moment should be to strengthen anti-imperialist thinking. Some leaders are now talking about how we the intellectuals, the social and political movements can organize a great summit of people like Fidel, Ch????vez, and Lula to say to everyone: “We are here, taking a stand against the aggression of the US imperialism.” A summit at which we are joined by compa????era Rigoberta Mench????, by other social and labor leaders, great personalities like P????rez Ezquivel. A great summit to say to our people that we are together, united, and defending humanity. We have no other choice, compa????eros and compa????eras if we want to defend humanity we must change system, and this means overthrowing US imperialism.

That is all. Thank you very much.

I woke up yesterday morning to a conference being broadcasted on C-SPAN called “The Future of the Middle East,” and since I was still sick, I sat up and watched through the whole thing in between shots of Tylenol. There were a couple of people on the panel fielding questions, but the most interesting comments tended to come from the Turkish ambassador to the United States, Faruk Logoglu, with regards to Islam and building democracy in the region. Here are three of the remarks he made that I think are worth remembering:

1) We should not be asking whether democracy and secularism can live alongside Islam, or any other religion for that matter. Furthermore, we should not try to achieve pluralistic societies in the Middle East by attempting to mix Islam with democracy. Instead, he believes that democracy and Islam should be separated, with religion being relegated to the private sphere completely, much like what we do here in the West. That is how they codified it in Turkey’s constitution, and certainly that country has become known as one of the most secular and pluralistic Muslim countries in the world.

The problem at the heart of this issue has always mainly been the fact that Islam puts a special emphasis on religious and politics being intertwined, inevitably leading to the tendencies toward totalitarianism. So perhaps we should be looking at the Turkish model as a way of approaching the problem of creating democratic societies in Muslim countries. From that point, we would only need to figure out how people from other countries would accept such a model.

2) He pointed out that elections alone do not make a democracy. This is something that I have stated several times but many seem to forget it. Democracy requires a diverse economy and civil society, a free media, fair courts, and all of the institutions that help secure people’s rights that don’t just magically appear with elections. For a read about what you generally need for a full democracy, read Robert Dahl’s On Democracy.

3) Education was one of the more important things that he emphasized with regards to building and safeguarding democracy. He also talked about the need for a good, secular education. This is particularly a concern for Muslim countries where many children are educated in religious madrassahs, but instead of being educated, are indoctrinated with extremist ideologies. For democracy to succeed in the Middle East, the next generation needs to be literate and ready to embrace the new millenium.

It reminds me very much of the vast tranformation that undertook Germany after World War II. One of the first things the Allied power did was to restructure the country’s education system by ravamping the curriculum, adding civics courses, and firing teachers that were associated with the Nazi regime. The problem is a bit different in Muslim countries, however. For example, in Pakistan, madrassahs hold great power over local populations because of the services they offer because the government does not provide them. Governments therefore cannot act with such haste to remedy this like the Allies did, but they can act to subvert their power through good governance.

…that have implications for revolutionary change in 2005. From Latin America, here’s my personal list of the most revolutionary stories in the hemisphere:

1. CAFTA - Toughest legislative battle of the year in the U.S. and the most important one. Free trade with the tiny nations of Central America has become a reality. And free trade lifts businesses across the board. Even Contra Cafe! No more will Hugo Chavez be free to subvert the hemisphere with his pork-barrel spending programs that create dependency. Instead, every nation will stand up for itself and all of its earnings will be purely their own, no strings attached. The harsh battle for passage and the incredible hard-won victory will assure Central America’s success for years to come.

2. Summit of the Americas - George Bush was dealt a bad hand of cards, got a clown show of odious Seattle-style protestors shoved in his face, seemed to lose on all fronts. Except that he didn’t. He went head to head with Hugo Chavez on free trade, giving him the fight he was spoiling for - and won. Hugo Chavez found himself internationally isolated after this one, shouting into the breeze that Mexico’s Vicente Fox was a ‘cachorro.’

3. Emergence of Cuban Civil Society - A stunning development. Deep inside Castro’s island hellhole, Cuba’s democrats unexpectedly came out and met, exactly as Adams and Jefferson and all the U.S. founding fathers had done years before them. Like them, they did so at great risk. Their message will reverberate for centuries to come.

4. Venezuela’s Ruined Election - Behind the pretense of democracy and the apparent normalcy of the country, Venezuela harbors a brutal leftist tyrant intent on destroying all civil liberties and economic freedoms. Hugo Chavez is attempting to set up a Castro-controlled Cuban dictatorship while claiming it’s all democratic. Venezuela’s opposition, in a rare show of unity, came to the agreement that they would not allow themselves to be used this way. It was a risky move but their only means of communicating to the world that this was not a democracy.

5. Election of Evo Morales in Bolivia - Morales caused trouble all year long, toppling President Mesa and setting up roadblocks to starve cities into submission. Now, he’s been elected president of Bolivia, surely a tiger to ride, given that there are people out there who are even more radical than he is. Still, the silver lining is this: it was done as a real democracy, with a very un-Venezuelan-like fairness, swiftness and legitimacy. Maybe this will in the end assure that this does not amount to a total disaster.

6. Washington Embraces Venezuela’s Democrats - Everyone was stunned when President Bush sought to meet Maria Corina Machado. She was in town to ask congressmen to please not turn their heads to the depredations of Hugo Chavez just because Chavez did not like Bush. She was urging them to support democracy in Venezuela. Bush and Condi Rice knew of her work and asked to meet her, sending a strong message to Hugo Chavez, just through a single photograph without words, that the U.S. is watching Chavez’s destruction of democracy in Venezuela and had no intention of being fooled.

7. Colombia Rises - Every economic indicator out of this country glows. Everything from inflation to GDP to producer prices to strengthening currency has exceeeded expectations. No other South American nation is arcing upward the way this one has. And the hearts and minds of the people are changing, after 40 years of pariahhood, they suddenly realize how great it is to be Colombian and how much they have to be proud of. It’s a real revolution.

8. Indictments Of Pinochet and Fujimori - Is it political or is it really about accountability? Chile is hard to read, because it is a left-leaning government prosecuting a rightwing ex-dictator and not a leftwing terrorist. Still, accountability is important and if this creates progress in strengthening institutions, rather than sets off a cycle of recriminations when some rightwing government takes the helm, it will be worth it.

9. Washington Prepares for Trouble from Paraguay - The president of Paraguay sought help and the White House received him, unlike many other heads of state. Donald Rumsfeld also came there to hear him out. There are regional predators in our hemisphere and Paraguay sought to defend itself so that its weak democracy can have a fighting chance to flourish and grow.

10. Mexico’s Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador rises in the polls - Mexico is preparing for a presidential election in mid-2006. Rising in the polls - at least until recently, is AMLO, a leftist who’s taken money from Hugo Chavez. That said, Mexico’s institutions are much stronger than those of most Latin American nations so the race is on to keep him moderate instead of a problem.

Daniel at Venezuela News has scrolled through the year’s news and come up with a great list of awards for the year on topics ranging from man of the year to ‘analyst’ of the year, to assorted female categories. It’s great fun to look at - read the whole thing here.

After being released on bail in March for the presidential campaign, Ayman Nour, the liberal opposition leader who got second place in this year’s presidential election, has been convicted of “forging signatures” for his candidacy registration papers. He has been given five years of prison time. The charges are false. The judiciary is corrupt. And this is certainly not the way to build a liberal democratic society. It has completely called into question Mubarak’s dedication to reform; not that anyone truly believed in it anyhow. The U.S. government is not taking kindly to the news.

An Egyptian court sentenced a top opposition leader to five years in prison Saturday for forging petition signatures in a trial that strained relations with the United States and raised doubts about the sincerity of Egypt’s democratic reforms.

Ayman Nour, who came in a distant second to President Hosni Mubarak in the country’s first contested presidential elections earlier this year, said the government invented the forgery charge to eliminate him from politics.

The White House said Saturday that the conviction “calls into question Egypt’s commitment to democracy, freedom, and the rule of law.”

The United States was “deeply troubled” by the conviction and called on Egypt to release Nour, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

Nour’s Al-Ghad party issued a statement saying Saturday’s verdict was “a matter of settling of the accounts of the presidential elections.”

“The verdict had been issued long time ago, and it did not come from the court but from the regime which has destroyed political life for many decades,” Al-Ghad said.

Nour, whose chief lawyer promised an appeal, was ordered detained earlier this month ahead of the verdict. He has been on a hunger strike for two weeks, was moved to a hospital a week ago and looked pale in court Saturday.

His wife and lawyers in the courtroom, and hundreds of his supporters outside, erupted in anger when the conviction was announced.

“Down with Hosni Mubarak!” his wife, Gamila Ismail, shouted.

“This is a political verdict that will be annulled by the appeals court,” attorney Amir Salem said. “This verdict will go into the dustbin of history.”

He said he would appeal to Egypt’s highest appeals panel, the Court of Cassation.

Outside, about 500 Nour supporters chanted “Hosni Mubarak’s rule is illegal!” and “The trial is illegal!” They were barred from the court building by hundreds of riot police, who had closed off the street.

If elections are to be held in Egypt in which liberal candidates and reformers are elected to office, not only must blatant fraud be stopped, but the government must stop persecuting liberals while allowing the anti-democratic Muslim Brotherhood to operate near freely. It should be the other way around.

Democracy is not sustainable without the conditions that allow moderation and compromise. Likewise, democratic systems are designed in different ways in order to make this happen. We have seen throughout history that when extremist groups come to power, they quickly dismember the very institutions that allowed them to do so. That is not democracy; that is dysfunction.

That’s exactly what is happening in Egypt. The supposed reforms that Mubarak sponsored are not democratic. They’re dysfunctional. He is trying to convince the West that, by opening up the political system (in the way he chooses), the Muslim Brotherhood will come to power and the country will become a haven for Islamic extremism. He’s saying, “It’s me, or them, and you’re better off with me.” The Egyptian government would then point to the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood scored 20% of the seats in November’s parliamentary election while the liberal parties fail miserably.

It would be a mistake to believe this. Elections alone don’t make a democracy. It includes a vibrant non-governmental civil society, something that the Mubarak government has repressed for decades. Because of this, and allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to flourish as its only opposition, the liberal parties have not been able to develop that vast grassroots network that the Muslim Brotherhood has. While its candidates may have scored 20% of the seats, only about 25% of the population actually voted, so it is hardly representative.

With the imprisonment of Ayman Nour, this is the perfect time for the United States to re-examine its relationship with the Mubarak regime and start cutting the $2 billion in aid given to it every year. We have to instead deliver them a message that we won’t stand for stalling, and that Ayman Nour must be given his freedom.

The Big Pharaoh: “Now the issue is between the Egyptian government and the US administration. There is a lot of similarities between Nour’s and the Saad Eddin Ibrahim’s case, the human rights activist who was sentenced to 7 years behind bars yet was released as a result of US pressures. The judge who sentenced Nour today is the same guy who sentenced Ibrahim. And Ibrahim was released when he appealed. So the question is: will the US administration act in the same manner so that Nour might get released when the verdict is appealed? That’s what many Nour supporters are hoping for even if they don’t publicly admit it.”

Freedom For Egyptians: “Whether we agree with Ayman Nour or not, today is another blow to democracy efforts that I call farce that started with the amendement of article 76 of the constitution that allowed multiple candidates to run for the presidency.

What answer should we seek for the attacks by the thugs of the ministry of the interior on opposition demonstrations, the Black Wednesday May 25, the cold blood attacks on voters in the parliamentary elections….the list of violations is long… and life is getting heavier by the minute… we are back to square ONE…. The regime’s National Democratic Party thugs are in power, joined by the ‘Banned’ Muslim Brotherhood and Mubarak is still in power for 30 years grooming his son…..Is there a hope?”

My gift this year was the flu from my family. I wish they could have included some Tylenol with that! Anyhow, loyal readers, what are you all doing today?

The animals are at it again. They got caught trying to kill President Uribe of Colombia. The story is here.

COLOMBIA-PRESIDENT
Explosive found near ranch of Colombia President Uribe

Bogota, Dec 24 (EFE).- A bomb made up of some 46 kilos (101 lbs.) of explosives and shrapnel was found near the ranch of Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, in the northern province of Cordoba, presidential bodyguards reported.

The device was found shortly before Uribe was scheduled to arrive at his rural retreat, located some five minutes from the regional capital, Monteria, and 902 kilometers (560 miles) northwest of Bogota.

Military personnel and police responsible for Uribe’s security told the press in Monteria that a peasant had warned of a bag left in the area.

Inside the bag were discovered 10.7 kilos (24 lbs.) of two kinds of high-powered explosives and 36 kilos (79 lbs.) of shrapnel, as well as various detonators.

Explosives experts said that the bomb had not yet been assembled.

The bag was found some 400 meters from Uribe’s country home, on the side of a road where he customarily jogs when he stays overnight at his residence “El Uberrimo,” or Fertile Land.
The president spent Friday night at the ranch, which he left Saturday after heading a community council in Monteria.

Security agents did not discount that the explosive device was meant for an assassination attempt against Uribe, who is the Colombian politician most threatened by guerrilla groups.
Since he came to power in August 2002, the president has been the target of various terrorist attacks, all unsuccessful, while others have been discovered while still in the planning stage.

Last October security forces found mortars in an east Bogota house aimed by presumed leftist rebels at the seat of the government and the military unit protecting it.
Uribe said the mortars were found in the Las Cruces neighborhood, which is within sight of the Nari????o presidential palace and the presidential guard’s headquarters.
“They found tubes with explosives,” Uribe said during a visit to the north Bogota neighborhood.

The mortars found were of the same type used by Marxist insurgents in attacks on Aug. 7, 2002, the day Uribe was sworn in as president.

The inauguration day mortar attacks killed 21 people. Mortar rounds were fired at a military school in northwest Bogota, and, a few hours later, at other downtown locations.
Some shells fired as Uribe was being sworn in hit the nearby presidential palace, wounding several police officers.

The most serious damage, however, was done a few blocks away in the El Cartucho neighborhood, an area frequented by beggars, prostitutes and drug addicts, where 15 people were killed and dozens of others wounded in the rebel barrage.
EFE jgh/cd

Sounds insane, but it’s true. Venezuela has the world’s finest coffee, but when I looked around in the shops of Caracas for some bagfuls to take home for Christmas presents, there were none to be found. (I had trouble finding the Hugo Chavez Action Figure for Christmas, too. Not even the buhoneros had it in stock.)

These shortages, like the various meat shortages seen around Caracas in past months, are glints of the shortages to come as the communist revolution of Hugo Chavez consolidates. They are a sign of something, the first shooting pains, and they don’t just occur in a vacuum. The conditions that create these little shortages are price controls, capital controls, exchange controls, an unfavorable business and investment environment (foreign investment is 75% lower in absolute terms than in the pre-Chavez days) and the disincentives inherent in collective farming. It’s just small stuff now, but there is no reason to think the trend isn’t likely to continue.

Caracas looks like a normal place. With these shortages, it’s not.

I’d given up on the coffee, but on my way out of Maiquetia, I spotted a coffee shop that sure enough, sold Starbucks-size bags of the precious brew ahead of the waiting flights, and snapped up six bags, praying that the glorious aroma of them would not arouse the U.S. Customs man I’d lied my way past about consumables on my declarations sheet. I was ready to tell him I’d bought it all at the Duty-Free along with my Santa Teresa rum, or if that didn’t work, whine about my whole form being written in Spanish, and claim I didn’t speak any so how was I to know? No, I got away with it and am sipping it as I write this, the very bag on my desk. Whew!

Katy at Caracas Chronicles has an amusing piece about the government’s likely response to the great coffee shortage showing up in Caracas - the tongue in cheek account can be found right here.

With the recent magazine photos of the sexy young bin Laden niece - tell me THAT girl isn’t, in her own way, a revolutionary - I thought it would be worth it to note that Cuban dictator Fidel Castro has wealthy young offspring who like to party it up in Havana, too. But unlike the bin Laden girl, who’s doing her cheesecake pictures to stick it into bin Laden’s face, these young Castros have no idea that their sybaritic lifestyle is actually on film.

The Real Cuba has found some authentic news photos showing the sons and daughters of the bearded dictator living it up in Havana, unlike most authentic impoverished Cubans can possibly do. You have to scroll nearly to the bottom but the photos of ‘The Castro Family Enjoying The Good Life’ are right there.

Christmas is barely legal in Fidel Castro’s monstrous dictatorship in Cuba, and this year more than most. There is a sullen, sad atmosphere in Havana these days, partly from want, and partly from the sour, tired nature of the regime on its last legs.

That’s why Val Prieto at Babalu blog came up with the idea of asking Cuban Americans from all over to describe their best Cuban Christmas memories, from childhoods either in Miami or in Havana. The rich tapestry of customs and relationships is completely unique and, given Castro’s tyranny, distinctly revolutionary. The whole fascinating thing can be read here.

Alberto Quiroga has a separate piece on what Cuban Christmas really was and is, and his elegant work can be read on his Havana May 1950-November 1960 blog right here.

David Sasaki and Juliana Rincon Parra at Global Voices have something very special in their Bolivian blog roundup - a slew of translations from the original Spanish. If you had always wanted to be able to read the Spanish blogs but couldn’t do it, they’ve opened that window and have a long, beautifully done roundup from the Spanish-language Bolivian bloggers. Well worth a click here.

Daniel in Yaracuy has another elegantly done post comparing and contrasting two court verdicts in two highly politicized cases, one for the opposition, and one for the ruling party. As may be imagined in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, the reality shows that Chavistas get about three times as much ‘justice’ as Venezuela’s battered opposition.

I’ll add one more editorial note that Daniel didn’t: I don’t believe any of these verdicts reflects the truth of what happened and none of the people going to jail on either side had anything to do with the murders. It’s all politics, jumping from the pockets of kangaroo courts.

Daniel’s short, fine piece is here.

In one of his finest posts, Daniel in Yaracuy province describes the curious reverse phenomenon now seen in Venezuela under the Hugo Chavez regime: the effort to eradicate all symbols of secularism and holiday cheer in Venezuela, in favor of a highly politicized, chavista-cized more ancient Christian model. It’s a strike against globalization and the U.S. in particular. That’s why Daniel’s seeing some weird things around Yaracuy, and he’s posted all the photos, well worth a click here.

While we are on the topic of Christmas, take a look at Alek Boyd’s ‘Merry Christmas Venezuela’ post and photo, showing Santa Chavez with his loyal elves. (Scroll down from here.)

UPDATE: The scroogery is not limited to Caracas. It seems to have its origins in Havana, where Santa Claus is banned. CB at Killcastro has an item here.

They grossly undercounted the amount of support shown by Evo Morales in that strikingly well-executed election this past Sunday. Boz goes into several reasons why in an extremely interesting post here.

The Sunni lists, along with ex-PM Iyad Allawi’s multi-confessional secular list and others, have joined together to contest the results of the December 15 election in order, at the least, to have the results reviewed and their complaints addressed. At the most, some members of this new coalition have called for new elections altogether.

BAGHDAD, Iraq Dec 22, 2005 ???????? Dozens of Sunni Arab and secular Shiite groups threatened to boycott Iraq’s new legislature Thursday if complaints about tainted voting are not reviewed by an international body.

A representative for former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi described the Dec. 15 vote as “fraudulent” and the elected lawmakers “illegitimate.”

A joint statement issued by 35 political groups that competed in last week’s elections said the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, which oversaw the ballot, should be disbanded.

It also said the more than 1,250 complaints about fraud, ballot box stuffing and intimidation should be reviewed by international organizations such as the United Nations, the European Union, the Organization of the Islamic Conference or the Arab League.

There was no one available for comment at the U.N. office in Baghdad, but a world body spokesman in New York rejected a review.

The name of this new grouping is Maram. According to this report, they are calling on the Electoral Commission to be disbanded and replaced by an alternative. If their demands are not met, they will boycott the new parliament and call for nationwide peaceful protests to call for new elections. It seems that they’re taking a cue from Ukraine and Lebanon on this front.

It remains to be seen what happens after this. The January 30 elections saw promises of revolt but nothing materialized. This time, however, there is much more support behind the cause. The ruling religious Shia UIA is defiant toward the demands, saying that they are simply sore losers and should respect the demands of the majority.

Well, that would be fine and dandy if there weren’t something seriously fishy about the results, as no polling or analysis before the election showed the UIA doing as well as it did, or the Sunni and secular parties doing as poorly as they did. In fact, the UIA was supposed to drop by nearly half, while Allawi was supposed to do as well as double. What gives?

Let’s take a look at some of the complaints of fraud, and see if there is something of an information lapse with regards to what actually happened and who was speaking to the press:

- 200,000 suspicious names got added to the voter rolls in the disputed city of Kirkuk just days before the election, allowing the Kurds to get over the 50% + 1 votes necessary to join the city with the Kurdish region to the north. This action was taken by the Electoral Commission that is now in dispute. They had previously made the decision that only voters registered in the city, exactly as the law says (I read the regulations), could vote, but just before the election it decided that anyone with an ID could vote. Because of this corrupt and possibly illegal decision, Kurdish voters flocked in from the north in buses to make sure that oil-rich Kirkuk became part of their region.

- According to this report, Turkmen names were taken off voters rolls in Kirkuk. Also, the media was only allowed near two polling centers out of 267 and three monitors were on hand. One man was caught voting four times, and it is not apparent how many people were able to do this.

- Omar catches the Election Commission in an error of blatant number fixing… “Lawyer Abdulwahid al-Lami is from the Lami tribe, the biggest in a province that is run by tribal relations. This candidate won 5 votes, yes 5 votes!
This means this man didn????????t even get the votes of his own family???????it doesn????????t make sense. It is as if the man paid 1 million dinar for each vote since the registration fee for candidacy is 5 million dinars. Heh.” Ä…Å “-Sheikh Raheem al-Sa????????idi was also running from Maysan and he????????s a local sheikh of a big tribe that has many thousands of members in the south. This sheikh won 17 votes only! A usual sheikh is married to at least 3 wives and has dozens of children, brothers and cousins and this one won 17 votes only!” The south, as you may recall, is dominated by the UIA-linked Badr Corp militia.

- According to the Mail & Guardian, “Allegations of fraud were already being made before results were announced. By Sunday, more than 1 000 witness statements of violations had been sent to the election commission. They ranged from claims of ballot stuffing to the involvement of police and others security officials in partisan campaigning.” This mostly happened in Shia-dominated parts of the country. This includes the south, where the Badr Corp is effectively in control, and Sadr City, Najaf, Karbala, and elsewhere where Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia draws a curtain to the outside world. The eyewitness reports show policeman and militiamen preventing people from voting, and then taking the ballot boxes behind closed doors and stuffing them before delivery.

- There are further reports that in Sadr City, voters were allowed to vote up to ten times. It’s not like there’s any oversight there, or anything. Sadr’s list joined the UIA for this election. It’s not wonder that the results were so heavily skewed in its favor in Baghdad. Dr. Ayad Sameraii from the Iraqi National Dialogue Front was on Al Arabia television mentioned this, and further said that “more than a hundred thousand of his slate’s supporters were denied admission to polling stations to cast their ballots. In Ghazaliya, the National Guards continuously fired shots into the air to disperse voters before they had a chance to vote. ”

- Allawi’s list, in the article linked above, lists his main complaints as, “supporters of the United Iraqi Alliance stormed polling stations to cast multiple ballots. Mr. Allawi????????s allies have criticized the electoral commission????????s decision to announce results so early, and have questioned whether the commission has the independence to stand up to powerful political parties.” The results were not supposed to be finished counting for up to two weeks. By announcing their count early, the Commission must have hoped to head off any complaints early. Instead, their legitimacy is being questioned, while the independence of the Commission itself is being questioned. No doubt, the penetration of the UIA and Sadr linked militias into the police forces, government (especially the Interior Ministry), and the Commission itself, not to mention the outright fear people have of them, likely had a large impact on the decision to skew the results.

- The media reported that so many Sunnis voted that election materials, such important things as ballots and ballot boxes themselves, were simply in short supply! Eleven out of 35 polling stations did not receive enough ballot boxes, several did not open, and many others ran out of ballots by early morning because of this. Come to find out, in key Sunni areas such as Fallujah, the Electoral Commission somehow forgot to deliver them. “‘Some sites ran out of ballots in the early hours of the morning,’ he said, adding that Iraq’s independent electoral commission was responsible for not having provided enough materials.” This was not just limited to Fallujah.

- The news also reported that voters were being helped out by being bussed to polling stations. Aww! While this is true in some circumstances, in others it was used to allow voters to cast multiple ballots at multiple polling stations (such as in the case of Kirkuk, above). There were over 30,000 polling stations throughout the country, making most every trip to a polling station within short walking distance.

This is all points in one direction. The Commission is heavily influenced by the ruling government and its supporters systematically committed fraud during and after the elections. This shouldn’t come as a surprise, however, as I warned about this on election day. What is actually surprising is that people are just brushing this off and calling the detractors “sore losers,” effectively letting the government get away with it. Remember, it’s not just the Sunnis anymore. It’s basically everyone who didn’t vote for the Kurds or UIA, including the secularists and liberals.

But we can’t afford to let them get away with it. If we want the experiment of Iraqi democracy to work, the new parliament needs to be legitimate. The people have to believe that the government isn’t corrupt and that their votes will be counted correctly. It is for this reason that the U.S. and UN need to stop their head-nodding that’s being done in hopes that the “sore losers” will withdraw their complaints and election day will escape untarnished. It won’t happen. If they don’t acknowledge what happened, and find a way to solve this, the political crisis will only deepen. Maram is gaining momentum and support by the day. Let’s hope something works out soon. If that requires a redo election in Baghdad, which appears to have had the worst violations, then so be it.

UPDATE: Keeping their word, the first round of protests have begun in Baghdad and elsewhere around the country. According to this report, around 20,000 in Baghdad. This is preliminary, and the longer this crisis drags on, the larger and more well-organized they’ll be. So far the call today just came from the Sunni groups, but I would expect that to expand to the other members of Maram soon enough. UPDATE: Make that a few hundred thousand.

Mohammed has more, in a very important post describing all of this. He says that the demonstration took place in Baghdad’s largest street and filled it for kilometers on end, probably being more than 20,000 people. Check out the video of it here.

He also notes that senior election commission official Farid Ayar has submitted his resignation to Prime Minister Jafari. Reason? ???????Time has changed and so did the principles and ethics that used to govern our work.” Wow. I agree with Mohammed completely: this is the beginning of the unraveling of this scandal.

The good news is that, so far, there has been no bloodshed. If this is resolved and that trend continues, it will actually speak volumes about the progress that has been made over the past few years, both in terms of the strength of the nation’s political culture and the will of the people to see a functioning democracy.