Blogging the democratic revolution
In view of the utter silence of the anglo phone MSM with respect to recent announcements of chemical warfare agents and other weapons sold by Spain to Venezuela Ä1Å I decided to dig a little and the findings, as usual, are rather grim. It turns out that Venezuela has been spending, since 2000 Ä2Å, substantial amounts of money in the procurement of defence and “Double Use” materials. According to Spain’s Customs and Special Taxes Department of the Treasury ???????247.509 and ???????2.812.827 worth of defence and ‘Double Use’ materials were acquired by the Hugo Chavez administration in that year; in 2001…
As I begin writing this, it is 4:40am, and that makes me feel like starting out with the most ironic item of them day. Lebanon saves Syria from a car bomb. Yes, you heard that right. A truck loaded with 40 kilograms of explosives was seized overnight while on its way toward the Syrian border, outgoing state minister Albert Mansur said yesterday. ???????The truck loaded with explosives was heading to Syria, according to sources of the investigation,??????? Mansur said on LBCI television. Police said security forces had seized a Hyundai truck in the northeastern district of Hermel, a few kilometers…
Always a favorite of mine, Chrenkoff has his 25th installment of good news up!
Several hundred journalists, activists, and colleagues of the late Elmar Huseynov rallied and called for the government to speed up investigations into the murdered editor’s death. BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) – About 700 journalists and rights activists rallied in Azerbaijan’s capital Saturday to protest what they call authorities’ failure to fully investigate the death of an opposition magazine editor and bring his killers to justice. … At the protest meeting opposite the city’s National Academy of Sciences, the participants shouted “Freedom” and “Freedom of Speech.” They then went the cemetery where the journalist is buried, and the head of the country’s…
Gary Metz has posted his week in review for everything that has happened in Iran. Templar Pundit quotes one specific post from Regime Change Iran that I find interesting: At least 1,500 anti-government protests, strikes, and clashes took place in Iran during the year that ended on March 20. More than 450 strikes, demonstrations, and gatherings by white- and blue-collar workers, were reported in state-run and opposition media. Some strikes, such as the one by coal miners in Sangroud, lasted for more than 50 days. Non-payment of salaries, insufficient pay, and the privatisation of many sectors of work were the…
Miguel has translated a dazzling article from Spain outlining, in the most precise and concrete terms, why Venezuela can have all the poverty it cares to pay for. It’s chilling and illuminating. Read it here.
It seems that on the way back from Pope John Paul II’s funeral, Karami made the announcement that his new government will be formed by tomorrow and that elections may be delayed by up to six months! Premier-Designate Omar Karami has scheduled the announcement of the new government from the Baabda presidential palace for 11 a.m. Monday, leaving it to parliament to decide whether the spring legislative elections could be held on deadline, An Nahar reported on Sunday. Karami made the revelation in remarks to Lebanese reporters Saturday aboard the jetliner that carried him with President Lahoud back from Pope…
Djibouti — One of the many unfree places left in the world where a “president” can call the opposition cowards while firing tear gas at them for protesting a rigged election. Djibouti’s incumbent leader, Ismail Omar Guelleh, has won presidential elections boycotted by the opposition and in which he was the sole candidate. The high turnout – 78.9% – was the only unpredictable element in the polls. Mr Guelleh, who won 100% of the ballots cast, told France’s Le Figaro newspaper he regretted “having no opponent”. Earlier on Friday, police fired tear gas to disperse hundreds of protesters rallying against…
The official Pora website hasn’t been updated in months, so I’ve been really wondering what they’ve been up to since the Orange Revolution. Since then, they’ve created the Red Pora youth organization, which seeks to immitate its Ukrainian civic campaign in Russia. There still isn’t much, but according to this article, Pora has backed Mikhail Kasyanov for president in 2008. A political youth group has said it will support former Russian prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov in his bid for the presidency in 2008. The group, called Pora! (High Time), has the same name as the youth group in Ukraine that…
I put up a little contact form at the left side of the site. You can still contact me by email, though. Mainly what I’d like you to use it for is sending me tip-offs to news or blog entries that are relevant. This way I could definitely get to everything in a day. Strangely enough, most of my time goes to looking for the news than it does actually writing about it.
Previous statements have said that they would not contest the election results in court, as it would be futile given that it is controlled by Mugabe. Now, they have decided to do so in the districts where the most flagrant violations occured. Zimbabwe’s main opposition party, the Movement for Democratic Change, has reversed its earlier decision not to challenge the results of last week’s parliamentary election in court. The party is now taking cases of what it calls the most blatant irregularities to the Electoral Court. The Movement for Democratic Change, or MDC, will challenge one or two results from…
Let the race begin! (Kyodo) _ The Mongolian presidential election campaign officially kicked off Friday with speeches, music and rallies as four candidate began vying for the top spot in one of the world’s youngest democracies. Until May 20, the candidates will fly or drive around the landlocked East Asian nation to speak with some of the 1 million voters, including a rural nomadic population, about poverty alleviation and other key issues. The leading contender is Nambariin Enkhbayar, a former prime minister backed by the Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party. His main rival is Mendsaikhani Enkhsaikhan of the Democratic Party. The…
Bizblogger reminds us that with the Pope’s passing, there are still those in China who are not free to worship as they wish. He also notes something unknown certainly to myself and probably many others. An unidentified secret cardinal. While there are 117 known cardinals preparing to select the next pope, the number could actually be 118. When John Paul II created new cardinals in 2003, he said he was keeping one name secret, or “in pectore,” meaning “in the heart.” The name remains secret until the pope announces it or leaves other instructions. This formula has been used when…
I don’t really like making a post to just one article at a time so I’m going to just put everything for Central Asia I’ve read today here. Turkmen President Saparmurat Niyazov has suggested that his country may hold presidential elections in 2009. Let’s all take a deep breath so that our laughs can be longer. Nathan notes conflicting accounts of one of Niyazov’s quotes appearing in different stories. Which mean exactly the opposite if ???????succession??????? and ???????continuity??????? are used in their normal senses. I won????????t hold my breath either way because for all we know he could decide tomorrow…
We can expect to see Russia go under any day now! Here’s the rest of the pictures from the protest. Hat tip: Andy at Siberian Light for the email.
The government is still clamping down in Nepal, arresting over 500 protestors in light of planned pro-democracy rallies of several thousand. KATHMANDU (Reuters) – Nepali soldiers killed at least 50 Maoist rebels in a deadly overnight clash, the army said on Friday, as around 500 political activists were reported arrested by police during pro-democracy rallies in the kingdom. … The new violence came as police in Kathmandu arrested about 50 political activists, including some former ministers, who were demonstrating against King Gyanendra’s move on Feb. 1 to declare emergency, sack the multi-party government and seize power. “Down with the proclamation…
The new unicameral parliament in effect since the dissolution of the upper house has renounced the election date set by the previous parliament for June 26. A new date hasn’t been announced as the legislature is busy discussing what to do now that Akayev has resigned. Kyrgyzstan????????s unicameral parliament has repealed a resolution adopted by the former bicameral legislature that set June 26 as the date for the country????????s special presidential election. A new election date will be set only after legislators review the issue of former President Askar Akayev????????s resignation. Parliament on April 7 postponed debate on Akayev????????s resignation…
This isn’t getting much attention at all in the English media, but the Yemeni government seems to be in the middle of a serious smackdown on the Yemeni press. I was first alerted to this earlier today after watching a brief news report on Al-Jazeera, but even that outlet doesn’t have anything on it either on the English or the Arabic version of its website. (A note for those who depend on Al-Jazeera’s English site: the two are almost entirely different; only the main Arab world-related stories make it into the English version, which is clearly designed for a global…
Miguel Octavio reports a wave of purges in Venezuela for workers who had the temerity to sign the Recall Referendum petition last August. Dictator Hugo Chavez’s vengeful party apparatus is hunting them down, one by one, and either denying them employment or firing them from their jobs. It’s all very redolent of the days of Stalin’s henchmen during the dark days of the Soviet Union or the Castro regime of Cuba over the years, and quite chilling. It heralds the complete politicization of society so characteristic of communist regimes and it will get a lot worse. Read the whole story…
As accorded by the deal struck between the main Shiite coalition and the Kurdish Alliance, a Shiite has been elected Prime Minister. This is the post with the task of forming and managing the government, while the presidential role is mostly ceremonial. Iraq’s newly appointed presidential council yesterday chose Ibrahim al-Jaafari, a Shia, as prime minister, but the new leader indicated it might be some time before he can form a government. Iraq’s president, Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani who was himself elected by parliament only the day before, informed Mr Jaafari that he should form a government, only minutes after…
Venezuela is the only country I know of whose Embassy employees in Washington are regularly commissioned to harass bloggers. Honestly, I don’t understand how this can be legal. We all get emails from them. They are worse than that, though – their crazed leftist “press” minions on the Internet, who have some sort of relationship with them, post bloggers’ home addresses, work places, phone numbers and e-mails on their sites. They also have called bloggers’ employers and attempted to get them fired. And of course they try desperately to find out who some of us are. This is all perfectly…
With Mugabe rigging himself a 2/3 majority, what exactly could the opposition do anyway? Members of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Zimbabwe’s main opposition group, are hesitant about their political future when the new parliament reopens after last week’s general election which delivered President Robert Mugabe’s ZANU-PF a large majority. The MDC is engaged in its most serious debate since it was formed five years ago. The first debate among MDC leaders after last week’s election is whether they should return to parliament. Several MDC analysts say the opposition’s experience in parliament has been “futile and agonizing” and that…
Tipping the hat to Gateway Pundit for letting me know about this. You may remember when about a week and a half ago ten thousand protestors in Bashkortostan gathered to demand their president’s resignation. Today, they took it on an airplane straight to Moscow. 7 April 2005 — Activists from the central Russian republic of Bashkortostan flew to Moscow today to call for the removal of Bashkortostan President Murtaza Rakhimov. Roughly 200 activists planned to deliver a petition to the Kremlin that they claim carries 100,000-plus signatures. Opponents accuse Rakhimov of human rights abuses and corruption. The group has official…
This article caught my eye just before I went to hit the bed. Very sneaky. Very smart. Observer teams from African countries and regional organisations have been unanimous in declaring the elections free and fair, but the US embassy said that although the Zimbabwe government had not invited it to send observer teams from abroad, it had sent 25 of its Harare-based diplomats to observe the process in almost half of the 120 constituencies. Their reports showed “several patterns of irregularities” – the exclusion of observers from four polling stations, the failure to publish the results of each polling station…
For what you need to know from the last week of news from Russia and its near-abroad, check out Andy’s — guess — weekly news roundup.