Blogging the democratic revolution
The Times has an incredible piece on how fast and how hard the revolutionary winds of change are hitting Europe. Europeans everywhere are rejecting the Franco-German centralized-welfare-statist model and embracing the Anglo-Roman ideal of freedom and rule of law. It’s happening at breakneck speed, and among people no one ever expected such enthusiastic support from. East and West are uniting under common ideals, not degrading spoils-grabbing. Europeans everywhere are rejecting subsidies, taxes, bureaucracy, privilege, inequality and inertia, in favor of free capitalism and fairness, something that could make Europe the dynamic powerhouse it is meant to be. The Revolution is…
Let’s get one thing straight: whether it was Rafsanjani or Ahmadinejad who was selected to win, it doesn’t really matter. When looking at Iran, one only has to know that irregardless of anything, the Guardian Council and Supreme Leader Khamenei in particular control the political levers of the country. Michael Ledeen puts it eloquently, much better than I at two in the morning: Please keep two basic facts in mind as this melodrama unfolds: Neither Rafsanjani nor Ahmadinejad has any intention of altering the basic structure of the Islamic Republic, nor of “liberalizing” Iranian society (the Reich was not notably…
Last week, I wrote about how the media got the story wrong on Iran. Hopefully, they will not make the same mistakes that they made then. To help them out, I’m going to compile articles and photos that show that the Iranians once again boycotted the sham elections in huge proportions. The word has to get out to the world that the regime is completely illegitimate even in the eyes of its own people. If there was ever a time to act, it’s now! Click “more” for all the articles and photos. And remember, if you are a journalist or…
They have started. Venezuela’s oil workers in the eastern part of the country have launched bitter protests against corruption and lost jobs. Their actions have shut down the refineries and the state oil company doesn’t sound as though it is in good shape. As oil hits $60 a barrel, there may be a revolution on. The angry oil workers did stop production. Read it here.
UPDATE: The regime was forced to move the Los Angeles station. New location is listed at the link. The regime is simply relentless! Here is the list of polling places that will be set up tomorrow. If there is one in your hometown or nearby, investigate! Assemble! Protest! Call the FBI. I’m currently in Sacremento at the moment, without a car, and with no ride out. Lucky for them. So if anyone is in one of these local areas, please get out there! A notable removal from the list is the polling place in Tucson, Arizona. Ha! I guess they’re…
When discussing the move towards democracy in Eastern Europe, I always try to remind of the revitalized GUAM alliance, which is meant to secure economic independence toward Russia and move toward western values. The A in GUAM stands for Azerbaijan, which is generally more repressive than the others: Georgia, Ukraine, and Moldova. After the opening of a major pipeline, in which many western leaders were present to criticize the government, the government began to allow protests. Well, an MP recently came out and suggested that the country may slide into civil war, recalling the fall presidential elections in 2003 when…
For those of you have have read my report on the Iranian polling station in Tucson, you may be pleased to know that the Washington Times, in an article entitled “Iran’s sham election — on U.S soil,” has picked up my experience as well as that of Will Franklin’s down in Houston and will be investigating further. But the dissidents have their own informal intelligence networks that gather information about where the voting will take place, a fact that displeases the regime and its supporters. On Friday, a clash occurred at one of the polling places, located at the Commerce…
Brilliant Italian journalist Oriana Fallici explains why she’s a revolutionary in an amazing interview with Tunku Varadarajan of the Wall Street Journal editorial page. “In the beginning, I was dismayed, and I asked, how is it possible that we do not have Cavour . . . just one Cavour, uno? He was a revolutionary, and yes, he was not of the left. Italy needs a Cavour–Europe needs a Cavour.” Ms. Fallaci describes herself, too, as “a revolutionary”–“because I do what conservatives in Europe don’t do, which is that I don’t accept to be treated like a delinquent.” It’s all good.…
Hugo Chavez has threatened to cut off oil to Paraguay, just as the Austral winter begins. This is a new major incident of Paraguay abuse from the Venezuelan dictator. His gall and malice know no bounds. He made the threat as a parting shot against the small helpless South American nation at a Mercosur conference in Paraguay itself, always on his best-guest behavior, where he appeared in a bid to gain full Mercosur membership. This isn’t the first time Venezuela has kicked Paraguay around. A former Paraguayan president’s daughter was kidnapped and murdered by Paraguayan thugs who were being directed…
Kirk just yesterday wrote a great article detailing the way that the U.S. strategy is moving forward to deal with political reform in Egypt. I think linking our aid to moves in the direction of sustained political openness is definitely the best way to go. In light of reading his article, I though I’d check to see if there have been any immediate after-effects, and indeed, it appears as if Mubarak has allowed a protest to go unhindered by the riot police. CAIRO — Egyptian police opened the streets of north Cairo yesterday to political protests for and against President…
Your profession is a noble one. A free press is foundational to a free society. In challenging powerful institutions to answer the hard questions others fear to ask, journalists have led to the collapse of corrupt leaders and helped ensured our democracy. You have done so by reporting the truth in spite of the threats and objections of those in power. Reporting from Iran is dangerous. It is hard to tell the truth in Iran. It takes courage. We are all to aware of the case of photo-journalist Kazemi, who was murdered by the Iranian government, for merely photographing a…
I have traditionally been a supporter of the foreign aid that the United States gives to the Egyptian government, mainly on the premise that the soft authoritarianism of Hosni Mubarak’s government was the only alternative to an Islamist takeover which could throw the region into war. Following the 9/11 attacks and further reflection, however, I have come to the view that Mubarak’s stifling government and our close relationship with it breeds anti-Americanism, and furthermore acts as an incubator for militant Islamism because all non-Islamist civil society is snuffed out. On Tuesday, Congress passed its $20 billion foreign aid budget which…
Article 72 of Hugo Chavez’s custom made constitution reads “All magistrates and other offices filled by popular vote are subject to revocation.” With such revolutionary prevision as background let me expand into the most notorious case of political prosecution in today’s Venezuela. Since there are no precedents of a systematic attempt at silencing and imprisoning members of a civil group in the country’s history one should start by giving a rough chronological account of events. Hugo Chavez won the presidency of Venezuela in 1.998, his little plan to take power by force, via coup d’etat in 1.992, turned out to…
As I mentioned here last April, Luis Ramirez at Voice of America is the best China reporter there is. I noted his daring efforts to report the truth about what is going on in China and and cited his long string of impressive pieces. I was right. Luis has now won one of the most prestigious journalism awards in Asia for this very work I cited. I am so happy for him, it’s what he truly deserved! (As I mentioned in that earlier item.) Sometimes things turn out they way they should. Way to go, Luis, FANTASTIC WORK! Congratulations!
Flying to Sacremento in the morning. Updates will be around lunch time! UPDATE: Missed my first flight so I had to go through Vegas. But they have wi-fi in the airport. I’m lovin’ this. I have to board for Sacremento in a minute, so it’s relatively impossible to scramble my thoughts together into a coherent post on a worthy subject. Meanwhile, here are some quick links to some reading you can do until I get back on the ground. While on the plane, I’m rereading The Future of Freedom. The last time I read it was three years ago and…
This makes political influential number three after Rafik Hariri and Samir Kassir. Former Community Party leader George Hawi was killed in a car-bomb blast in Beirut’s Wata Mosseitbeh middle-class neighborhood at midmorning Tuesday in the latest link of a chain of political assassinations that rocked the nation in connection with Syria’s expulsion from Lebanon. He was 65. Police said the thunderous explosion went off as Hawi, an outspoken critic of Syria’s heavy-handed tutelage, climbed into his car, turned on the ignition and started the Mercedes-Benz rolling. Investigators have determined that the blast was detonated by remote control. A worker at…
I’m going to take Gary’s banner and run with it here: how is it that the blogosphere is getting this story so wrong? I usually don’t like to open my mouth too wide too quickly, but when the media isn’t even shooting, the blogosphere simply can’t afford to miss the mark. What I mean by this is that many bloggers are pointing to the obvious fact that the election results were rigged, instead of to the not-so-obvious fact that the regime had to invent high turnout numbers to legitimize itself. That’s the real story. So blogosphere, stop pouting. Moin the…
Tony predicted an Aoun loss, so obviously that was going to be the outcome. Er, and it was! Saad Hariri’s alliance swept all 28 seats, cementing him in parliament with a 72 seat majority in parliament and shutting out the possibility of an Aoun 1/3 veto. Beirut, Lebanon – The anti- Syrian Opposition dealt a commanding blow to Michel Aoun’s return to the Lebanon political scene. In a clean sweep of the 28 contested seats for North Lebanon, the Opposition amassed over 56% of the total seats in the electionin what is being hailed a landslide victory. The official results…
Andy at Siberian Light is hosting this week’s carnival of revolutions! Check it out for all of the past week’s democracy goodness. And Gary Metz has the Iran week in review up. Gateway Pundit has news up about Rice pushing democracy in Egypt and more protests in Bahrain. Bingo quote: “For 60 years, my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region, here in the Middle East, and we achieved neither,” Rice said. “Now, we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people.” Right on. Will Franklin has…
I will be updating this post with more pictures as I find them and as they are sent to me. So if you have photos from anti-regime demonstrations, send them to me! Click “more” for the photos.
I usually do an analysis every week right before each election round in Lebanon; this being the last. However, Tony at Across The Bay, who is a Ph.D. candidate in Ancient Near Eastern Studies, has an analysis that I agree with so much that I asked him if I could simply reproduce it here. It pertains to the election alliances shaping up in Northern Lebanon for the elections today, and his prediction. And again, I definitely recommend his blog! –Robert Mayer Although I don’t usually play the prediction game, I’m going to venture and say that the Karami-Frangieh-Aoun alliance is…
Overview: According to the document released by the Iranian government, a polling station for the presidential elections in Iran was located near me in Tucson, Arizona at the Southern Arizona Association for Visually Impaired (SAAVI). I drove there around 9am and the receptionist confirmed that, indeed, voting would be from 3pm-7pm. I arrived back on the scene around 4pm with my camera and notepad in hand and entered the polling station. After a brief look around, I asked the man in charge, the “poll monitor,” if I could interview him about the polling process, telling him that I am a…
To hear the OAS tell it, Lucio Gutierrez was this noble guy who just happened to be president of Ecuador and due to crazy people out there, got overthrown, and isn’t it a terrible thing when presidents, no matter what they act like, get thrown out? Instability, instability, oh is anything worse than instability? Well, yes, as a matter of fact there is. How about a thug president who doesn’t obey laws, stacks courts, and then invites in a crooked ex-president called El Loco, who vows to be the next Hugo Chavez? What about that? Hmmm? Alek Boyd has a…
Bolivia has been a favorite host-target of Sandalista parasites for years and years. Because no news organization ever cared about this country, it was they who framed the news and the debate about what was really going on in Bolivia. They tell us Bolivia’s just a simple story of the rich oppressing the poor, all elites and businesses being bad, (especially if they are from Santa Cruz), U.S.-style racism holding people back, all Indians monolithically seeking populism, all Indians dirt poor because whites took their money away, all syndicates – syndicates! – in places like El Alto these noble representatives…
Heading out there now. Full report to come. UPDATE: I’m back. I acted like a freelance journalist and sat down with the poll monitor for an interview for about an hour and a half. Am working on the report of what I learned about this process, and most importantly, what goes on inside this guy’s head. CRIMINY: Had to drive halfway across the world to buy a new card reader for my digital camera. I was able to get pictures of the ballots, the ballot box, and the “poll monitors” themselves. And a lot of information. The guy really thought…