Blogging the democratic revolution
In an unprecedented move, the Human Rights Association of Syria has filed the first ever accusations of torture against Assad’s regime. (Via: Norm) With Syria under international pressure over its presence in Lebanon, and amid a wave of agitation for democratic reforms across the Middle East, Syrian lawyers are now daring to file the first cases of torture against the state. The Human Rights Association of Syria (HRAS), a non-governmental organisation operating in Damascus, announced earlier this month that it would launch several cases in a matter of weeks. ….. ÄKÅeeping track of political prisoners is next to impossible in…
Talk about good timing. The ten minute interview was done in the White House and broadcast directly to Lebanon. President Bush has insisted anew that Syria should “get out completely” from Lebanon and let the Lebanese people decide their own future in internationally monitored elections on schedule and free from external influence or intimidation. Bush pledged, then, to drum up global monetary assistance to help “this country back on its feet.” In a rare direct address to the Arab world, Bush also said in an interview broadcast by Beirut’s LBCI television network from the White House he wanted the Assad…
Russia billionaire Boris Berezovsky, now called Platon Elenin, says he wants to meet with Viktor Yushchenko to turn over the Melnychenko recordings from Leonid Kuchma’s office. We’re talking ten CDs that supposedly has all kinds of good juicy stuff on them. I have the latest over at Bloggledygook, with a special gift at the end for Robert.
Congress voted to remove President Lucio Gutierrez from power today, and swore in his vice president, Alfredo Palacio Gonzalez, a St. Louis cardiologist, as his successor. The legislature acted after 50,000 people filled the streets of Quito and fought troops and police in pitched battles. A Chilean photographer was killed and more than 180 were injured. (See the burning tires on the front page of the El Comercio Web site.) Congress was emboldened to make the move after the police chief of Quito suddenly resigned, saying he was unwilling to fire on demonstators. Gutierrez prompted the protests against his two-year…
I know that the third round of municipal elections in Saudi Arabia are coming up, so I checked out Arab News, which has a lot of material up, but I came upon this article noting that legislation had been passed in Kuwait allowing women to both vote and participate in municipal elections. KUWAIT CITY, 20 April 2005 ???????? In a first step toward granting women full political rights, Kuwaiti lawmakers agreed yesterday to allow women to vote and run in local council elections, but the measure requires more legislative action before it would become law. The measure was taken on…
How bad is it for Venezuela? Is it really a colony of Cuba? This essay by Gustavo Coronel should settle the question definitively. Read it here.
Remembering my post from yesterday on Armenian and Azeri opposition groups, I come across this article on RFE/RL describing the Azeri opposition movement. Prague, 19 April 2005 (RFE/RL) — Several opposition leaders and former government officials announced on 12 April the creation of a new election bloc to run for seats in Azerbaijan’s Milli Meclis, or national parliament. The alliance is known as Yeni Siyaset (New Politics). It includes Namazov, the chairman of Azerbaijan’s Public Forum nongovernmental organization, and a onetime aide of late President Heidar Aliyev. Other members are Lale Sovket, the former chairwoman of Azerbaijan’s Liberal Party and…
Yesterday I posted that Georgian President Saakashvili will predict where the next revolution will be on April 22 during the next GUUAM summit. Check out what this article has to say. TBILISI. April 19 (Interfax) – Georgia’s parliament plans to adopt an address that will be sent to the people of Belarus this week. “The parliament of Georgia is confident that the fraternal people of Belarus will be able to overcome all resistance which is being put up by internal and external retrograde forces, and this wonderful European country will not be isolated,” reads the draft document. Chairman of the…
Finally: Lebanon’s Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati announced he has succeeded in forming a new government, after a month and a half of political wrangling by pro-Syrian and opposition politicians. Lebanon’s fledgling Prime Minister Najib Mikati made the eagerly-waited announcement that he had put together a new government at the presidential palace. The government, with those named today, he insisted, will be a short-term administration, destined to supervise parliamentary elections, quickly, and within the constitutional time frame, “God willing,” as he put it. Mr. Mikati denied that there had been a tug-of-war between Lebanon’s opposition movement and pro-Syrian politicians, in choosing…
Blogger Tim Russo, who did democracy work in Armenia, tells us not to hold our breath on a united opposition front there. Armenian opposition parties might be the most splintered opposition in the entire former Soviet Union. Almost daily, some guy decides that the other guy running the party doesn’t deserve to run the party, and runs off to start his own party. “Opposition” alliances last about as long as Italian governments. There’s been so many parties, blocs, “unions,” and “fronts,” they’re running out of names for them. The same can also be said for Azerbaijan’s opposition, who had attempted…
Nathan points to an article saying that Georgian President Saakashvili will unveil the next country to undergo a “velvet revolution” at the next GUUAM meeting. Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili has said that a new velvet revolution will follow the regime changes in Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, Rosbalt news agency reports. ???????We have defeated our enemies in these two countries, but there is one more country on our list,??????? he announced at a meeting with the Georgian Prosecutor General????????s Office staff. The president promised to reveal the name of the country at the five-nation GUUAM summit in Chisinau on April 22 that…
I was just sent a link to a photo gallery of all the rulers of “Not Free” countries as ranked by Freedom House. Perhaps this is an obvious common denominator, but they are all ugly people.
More than usual, anyway. The UN Commission on Human Rights just passed a resolution condemning Belarus for abuses. Following the adoption on 14 April of a resolution by the UN Human Rights Commission alleging human rights abuses by Belarusian officials, Syarhey Aleynik, Belarus’s permanent representative to the UN, criticized the document as “another attempt to create a distorted picture of the country’s situation in order to justify the intention of its co-sponsors to interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign state,” Belapan and Interfax-Belarus reported. Aleynik said that the resolution has passed under “unprecedented pressure from the United States,”…
Probably one of the least noticed news items of the day is the results of municipal elections in the Basque separatist region of Spain. BILBAO, Spain, April 18 (Reuters) – Spain’s ruling Socialists declared Basque premier Juan Jose Ibarretxe’s plan for virtual independence from Madrid dead on Monday after he suffered a setback in regional polls. Ibarretxe, who had tried to turn Sunday’s poll into a plebiscite on his controversial plan, emerged weakened. The big winners were the Socialists and a little-known party backed by radical nationalists unable to vote for Batasuna, banned as the political wing of guerrilla group…
Stefania sent me this link to a plea for help from the Iranian student movement. They run a website that publishes information and they have run out of funds for it, so they are seeking donations. Under “more” I’m posting the letter in full, so click that in order to view it.
I am back from Boston. I’ve never actually been to New England, go figure, but I really liked the city. My posting will resume as normal starting Monday afternoon. Daniel and A.M. Mora y Leon have been doing a fantastic job with their posts while I was gone and deserve a big hand for their hard work!
When thousands of Venezuelans came forward last year to exercise their legally guaranteed democratic right to sign a petition to recall their president, precious few realized the kind of use dictator Hugo Chavez could and did make of that signature list afterward. It was published on the Internet – the names, addresses and social-security-number equivalent of all those who signed. It was used to blacklist signers, deny people work, target dissidents. Thousands of people were affected, not just in those who were not hired for jobs, but for those who were denied services, lost rights, got harassed and were brutalized.…
Just when you thought the Venezuelan Revolution was on its last legs, I discover this promising new blog in English called Notiven by Javier Caceres. It’s an occasionally updated blog that’s full of thoughtful analysis and commentary on the news. Javier’s got a new item up about Hugo Chavez’s likely plans to align and control the FARC narcoterrorist jungle guerrilla movement of Colombia. Well worth reading here.
Ecuador, arguably the most beautiful country in South America, has probably the stupidest government. Only dollarization has kept the government from making a complete hash of things, and high oil prices and a willingness to drill have enabled the Andean state to post a 5.4% rise in GDP in 2004. But dollarization by itself is not enough. The place desperately needs rule of law, and they aren’t even close. This country’s crisis is centered around the Supreme Court, which was stacked with President Lucio Gutierrez’s 31 political cronies a few months back. This stacking didn’t going down well in the…
Venezuela’s opposition is melting away. Agencia EFE gives a good description of how 200,000 opponents of the Chavez regime have largely drifted over into Miami, where they are both invisible and increasingly irrelevant to the revolution. Coming to the U.S. is, in a sense, a revolution of its own, because it’s a transformative experience, that of becoming a free person amid vast opportunities, and given the choice between freedom here and fighting a thug at home, most people prefer to melt into the milieu. But it doesn’t do much for Venezuela. The regime knows this and is using it as…
Venezuela does not have a conventional revolutionary set-up. It’s a revolution within a revolution, where, six years ago, “reformer” Hugo Chavez was elected to power as an outsider who would make a difference, and who instead ran his country’s affairs like an old-line caudillo party boss, his cronies lining their pockets, but with the added detail of retrograde Castroite communism as his substitute for reform. Of course he is hated. Essayist Gustavo Coronel takes a serious, scholarly look at Chavez’s decaying revolution and the prospects for a more authentic one replacing it. Read it here.
At Bloggledygook I have a post on an accusation by a deputy of the Ukrainian opposition that Viktor Yushchenko had a hand in the sales of X-55 missiles to China and Iran.
Here’s a news editorial pointing out that the roots of Mexico’s revolution right now is not in the existence of the Marxist PRD but in the lack of leadership of President Vicente Fox’s PAN party. That’s what fuelling Mexico’s growing protests. Maybe Vicente Fox should wise up before the next Hugo Chavez mini-me steps in to take over. Read it here.
Spain’s Foreign Secretary Miguel Angel Moratinos expressed from Washington “the military ships and planes sold to Venezuela ought to be considered as humanitarian aid”. Whilst in Capitol Hill he was scolded by both Republicans and Democrats with respect to the shady relationship that Spain maintains of late with the Cuban dictator and his Venezuelan toyboy. What’s more, John Kerry declined to a pre-arranged meeting with him. However Zapatero’s representative did have the time to keep at defending the indefensible and went as far as to suggest that Bush may be ready to meet with Zapatero. Well I for one doubt…
Pro-Syrian businessman Najib Mikati was appointed prime minister after the resignation (how many is that?) of Omar Karami. At Spirit of America, Mike Totten has a short but pointed interview with student opposition leader Nabil Abou-Charraf. Charraf contends that the latest Karami resignation is a ploy by the government to scuttle the upcoming elections. He says that to the opposition the elections are everything, the government, nothing. For his part, Mikati is being described as a moderate. But he is a moderate only in comparison to his rival Abdel-Rahim Mrab. He said: “We must take advantage of this unity and…