Blogging the democratic revolution
I haven’t jumped on the bandwagon too much with regards to the insanely hot Lebanese protestors, but that’s because I was waiting on enough material to make a decent sized photo archive. Drop a line in the comments if I’m missing any good photos! Have fun! UPDATE: Hans Nyberg let me know about a sweet panorama that he has of the protest. You click look all around, and even zoom in. I’m using that feature to babe spot. Check it out! And D.B. Light has a collection of all his posts on protest babes. And let’s not forget about the…
Via John Hawkins, I come across a list of proposed slogans for the United Nations. Here are my favorites: – Ignoring the irony of cronies of pissant dictatorships voting in a democratic fashion for 60 years. – Genocidal dictators, beware our harshly worded letters. – Having discussed at length almost every major crisis in the past 60 years. Read the rest!
John Burgess over at Crossroads Arabia notes an article in Arab News that says 87% of Saudis favor female participation in elections. JEDDAH, 16 March 2005 ???????? A survey conducted by an independent agency in Jeddah showed 87 percent Saudis backing women????????s participation in elections. It also reflected the greater role of media in educating the public on the polls. ???????Eighty-seven percent of 240 Saudis who took part in the survey called for women????????s participation in the next round of elections,??????? said Dr. Muhammad Fashetan, chairman of the SAS Center for Opinion Survey and Consultancy in Jeddah. He said the…
With everything going on, I haven’t been able to keep up as much with the usual blogs I read before Lebanon unfolded. So let me direct you to this series of posts I have been keeping up with called Dragons and Democracy, by David McDuff. He’s already on part 9, so you can scroll the the bottom of the post to get to the rest.
**Update 3/16** Things are quickly speeding up in east Asia. Just last week, China unveiled a law that would enable it to attack Taiwan if it tries to secede. And I have to hand it to the Taiwanese. Given their position, it may just be smarter for them to remain “part of China” and still retain their democratic, free-market society… but they won’t settle for less. Taiwan is now pursuing a counter anti-secession law that would allow Taiwan to pre-empt an attack by the Chinese mainland. Stepping up its opposition to China’s “anti-secession” law, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is…
This is good to hear, especially after this report by Omar that talks between the United Iraqi Coalition and the Kurdish Alliance melted down on the 13th. NewsBAGHDAD/ARBIL (Reuters) – Talks between Kurdish leaders and a Shi’ite bloc to form the next Iraqi government have collapsed three days before the country’s first fully elected parliament meets, senior politicians said on Sunday. Between them the two groups have the two-thirds majority needed to form the government and their failure to reach a deal could leave Iraq (news – web sites) in political limbo and further delay efforts to improve security and…
You may remember earlier in the week a couple Bahraini bloggers were arrested and people protested. Well, they’ve been released and with an added boon to all of us: They’ve passed some pro-democracy legislation. The Cabinet yesterday appr????oved the Chamber of Deputies???????? decision to introduce human rights and democracy as subjects at the intermediate and secondary levels and asked the Ministry of Education to consider both subjects in its curricula development plans. Check it all out. MORE: Babbling Bahrania is certainly covering this well.
The past month has certainly been amazing. Following the death of Rafiq Hariri, Lebanese broke out in the streets and protested, eventually forcing their government to resign. Syrian loyalists struck back by staging a hoax rally large enough to break the momentum and dishearten even some of freedom’s most ardent supporters. Everyone, however, except the Lebanese. In a moment truly reminiscient of 1776, the people came together in numbers two and a half times that of their would-be oppressors. And like I said, Assad must be shitting his pants, with Nasrallah quickly following. After Hizb’allah announced on Thursday that their…
A story so hideous I can barely think about it. This is the third such incident in Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. This is how Chavez deals with dissidents and troublemakers … and warns the others. To make it even more suspicious, the soldiers, ages 19 and 20, injured in the incident were improving – but all of a sudden died. I do not know any other country where this grotesque ‘punishment’ happens. Read the details here, here and here.
I thought this was incredibly timely given that Kirk had just posted a piece on Jordanian civil society. Natasha Tynes is reporting on an unreported story in the mainstream press that I’m finding particularly interesting. You may all remember a few thousand Iraqis protesting against the insurgents when a car bomber blew up a couple hundred Iraqis. Natasha brings to our attention an article written inside a Jordanian paper that bends, distorts, and outright lies about the entire event. If also portrays the bomber as a martyr. Well, she wasn’t going to have any of that. First, she translated the…
UPDATE: Scroll to the end for all latest updates on the protests! Hizb’allah is showing up less and less in the wire — which may or may not be good. But right now, the focus is on the opposition and what moves they will make in face of the pro-Syria protest last week that brought Kharami back to the premiership. Yesterday, protestors got a little creative, by coordinating with each other to make a giant flag using colored boards. Various opposition groups as well as Hariri’s Tayyar Al Mustaqbal (Future Tide) Movement have been blaring radio appeals for a massive…
The Jordanian government has been for years one of the more open of Arab states, with its monarchs – first the long-ruling King Hussein and now his son King Abdullah – ruling with a relatively light hand (I spent 1997 living in Jordan). Yet as democracy movements gain strength in other parts of the Arab world, Jordan seems to be moving toward a crackdown on professional associations. This is how the London-based Al-Hayat describes the new law in its March 5 article, “Jordan: The issue of freedom and human rights increases the attention of Washington and its demands”: It appears…
In the latest inane Michael Moore posing, Wayne Madsen — whoever he is — has written that not only did the U.S. and Israel commit Hariri’s assassination, but Karl Rove authorized it! You’ve just got to read this. March 11, 2005????????According to high-level Lebanese intelligence sources????????Christian and Muslim????????former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri was reportedly assassinated in a sophisticated explosion-by-wire bombing authorized by the Bush administration and Ariel Sharon’s Likud government in Israel. There are also strong indications that the Hariri assassination was carried out by the same rogue Syrian intelligence agents used in the 2002 car bombing assassination of…
The phrase, from a U.S. official, speaking on the record about Venezuela, is just too good. Read the whole thing here.
Have you ever wondered how Venezuela ended up with a thug like Hugo Chavez as president? He didn’t blow in out of nowhere – if you watch Venezuela, you might hear scattered reports about how crummy and corrupt the political parties he replaced were, sowing the seed that eventually grew Chavez. Alek Boyd at VCrisis has a chronological rundown about what lowlife they were, and this is important to understanding what the current Venezuelan revolution is struggling against – not just Chavez but everything that preceded him. I love this passage here: Now I won’t deny that I am also…
I bet you’ve all seen that link at the top of the screen! Make sure to click it, and in particular, go directly here for the latest on round 2 of the Kyrgyzstan parliamentary elections at The Argus!
Marxist party hacks, the world over, have the world’s worst record on the environment. Black rivers, dead lakes and Chernobyl are their legacy stretching from the Oder to Hainan. It’s particularly bad when they go after nature preserves, distributing them as political spoils to reward party hacks for their loyalty. That is why the Venezuela government’s expropriation of a priceless nature reserve, Hato Pinero, full of rare anacondas, wildcats, orchids and Amazon rainforest creatures is so disturbing. The Chavez political machine is about to turn this natural treasure into a wasteland. Blogger Daniel in Yaracuy has the full story here.
The LA Times has a good article on the many strange deaths that have shadowed the Orange Revolution. How Yushchenko handles the pressure in this time after the Revolution will tell us much about his ability to govern and the future of Ukraine. My take is here.
This is certainly a positive development. CAIRO (Reuters) – Egypt on Saturday released on bail Ayman Nour, an opposition leader detained since the end of January and whose jailing aroused Washington’s concern. Scores of people, waving orange Ghad (Tomorrow) party flags, cheered Nour as he left a Cairo detention center after supporters paid his bail of 10,000 Egyptian pounds ($1,724). Nour, leader of the opposition Ghad party, was held for about six weeks during investigations into allegations that his party forged documents when it applied for recognition last year. The party says the allegations are fabrications. “He came out much…
Gary Metz has published his week in review for Iran, as well as his Sunday briefing. Check those out.
This one almost flew under the radar. NABLUS, WEST BANK — Hamas, the major force behind a four-year suicide bombing campaign, announced yesterday it would run in a coming parliamentary election, a move that could undermine Palestinian efforts to end violence, reform a corrupt government and renew peacemaking. Hamas has emerged as a key player in Palestinian politics. A victory by the militant group in the July 17 parliamentary vote — to be held days before Israel is to begin withdrawing from the Gaza Strip — could be a deciding factor in whether the Israeli pullout leads to peace talks…
I was just searching for news, and the latest confirmation of the opposition’s attempt to block the parliament’s presidential election is showing. CHISINAU. March 12 (Interfax) – Members of the opposition Democratic Moldova Bloc (BDM) who have been elected to parliament made written obligations on Saturday to boycott the election by the new legislature of the next Moldovan president. … The BDM deputies, in explaining in a statement their planned boycott, cited what they called a need for “the decommunization of the country and the development of Moldova along the path of democracy and European integration.” But not all the…
Poor girl, she is totally warped. It isn’t her fault though. She honestly isn’t much into politics, so she doesn’t fervently research what she reads. I emailed her right after the assassination of Hariri and asked her what she thinks, and here is her reply: Anyhow, you know that i lived in lebanon for 4yrs and a bit! and i was very heart broken to hear what happened for more than one reason. 1- Rafik al hariri i knew on a personal level, well not me but he is friends with my parents and he helped me get thru aloth…
The people have spoken. Thousands of Bolivians in many cities have come out and rallied behind President Mesa. Gratifyingly, the news photos showed lots of Indian faces. President Mesa’s victory from his ‘resignation’ seems to have forged a fragile consensus across the country in favor of freer markets, foreign investment and more openness to the world. This shows a lot of courage. Evo Morales vows to make trouble but he does not seem to be gaining traction. His roadblocks are being dismantled or driven right through, only one big one remains, near Cochabamba. Meanwhile, President Mesa is beginning to reach…
Firstly, the OSCE is concerned because of the major crackdowns on independent media, NGOs, and people’s lives in general. A senior official of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) has denounced authorities in Belarus over their treatment of independent media. The OSCE’s special commissioner for the media, Miklos Haraszti, said today that restrictions have effectively shut down many non-state media outlets. His statements accompany the release of a broad assessment of media freedoms in Belarus, where President Alyaksandr Lukashenka has kept a tight hold on power for more than a decade. Effectively, Belarus has earned the nickname…