Blogging the democratic revolution
Cartoon jihad seems to have reached Iran. I say seems because as you know, in Iran most of the population cannot stand the regime anymore and is looking for a secular and democracy system of government and of course they’re not willing to participate in the regime-organized rallies. From SMCCDI : the demonstrators stayed under 400 individuals while the Iranian Capital has over 12 millions of inhabitants Ä…Å The today’s fiasco, for the clerics, marks the unpopularity of the ideological pillars of the Islamic republic regime and shows better the increasing secular aspiration of Iranians.Ä…Å Read the whole thing, for…
Imagine for a second that you’re the head of a secular authoritarian regime in the Middle East. The West is pressuring you to liberalize your political system, but elections are bringing to power grassroots Islamist groups who are looking to take you out of power. The root of this, you realize, could always be due to your terrifying rule of oppression, but of course that would be impossible. Simply unbelievable. I mean, who doesn’t love you, RIGHT? But nonetheless, you’re shitting your pants at the prospect of overthrow by Islamists, whether violently or democratically. Lucky for you, Muslims across the…
Rage across the Muslim world persists and grows for another week over cartoons published in a Danish paper depicting the prophet Muhammed. It has culminated in violent protests with chants of death, the burning of embassies, and a round of condemnations from governments in the region. Meanwhile, in Europe, the cartoons have been reproduced by newspapers all over the continent in a show of solidarity with the Danish journalists — who are now in hiding for fear of their lives. The battle lines are being drawn. They are not between nations, defended with vast armies as it has been throughout…
Global Crisis Watch/ClandestineRadio.com’s Nick Grace and Rich Lafayette hosted an interview with Aryo B. Pirouznia of the Iranian opposition movement SMCCDI and the newly-founded Iranian National Secular Party and with me. Listen to it here . The interview begins from the minute 8’30.
Jacqueline Mackey Paisley Passey in Costa Rica now has a tremendous gallery of photos on Costa Rica’s cliffhanger presidential election that are beautifully taken and beautifully laid out. That election has about 3100 votes’ difference now between Oscar Arias and Otton Solis, 40.5% to 40.3%, and 12% of the votes still to be counted – that’s getting really close! See Jacqueline’s pictures here.
Adriana Saftoiu, the spokeswoman for Cotroceni (the Presidential Palace) told Cotidianul daily that, ???????President Traian Basescu called Cristian T. Popescu, the President of the Romanian Press Club and asked him to take the necessary steps in order to stop the publication in mass-media of the respective cartoons.??????? Up to this press release there were no official communiqu????s of the Romanian Presidency, Government, or the Foreign Affairs Ministry, on this matter. The Foreign Intelligence Service (SIE) declared for the Cotidianul, ???????while we do respect the freedom of expression of the mass-media, the Middle East reactions do not let us unconcerned.??????? Most…
Ollanta Humala’s presidential campaign in Peru is bedevilled by charges from peasants from remote mountain areas that he tortured them in 1980s under the nom de guerre of ‘Captain Carlos.’ What a charmer. It’s not enough that he is leftwing and pro-Hugo Chavez, a failed military coupster, and an anti-Semitic racist. He’s also tortured peasants as El Capitan Carlos. Today his own brother confirmed it. El Universal has the story here. I can’t think of any bigger kiss of death to any presidential campaign than being accused of torturing peasants. Not even a Hugo Chavez endorsement. No spin-control is going…
Jacqueline Mackey Paisley Passey has first-rate overview of the election along with lots of photos in this entry here, and a terrific news roundup full of lots of blogs I didn’t know about. Be sure to see all her new stuff here. One of the links she has, on Babalu blog (which I admit I wrote the entry for), has some marvelous discussion in the comments section from the commentors, there are some really knowledgable people who have a lot of colorful detail there. The item is here. Taylor Kirk at The Latin Americanist has some interesting thoughts about the…
Costa Rica’s election, like Honduras’ election earlier, is turning into a cliffhanger. Frontrunner Oscar Arias is ahead, but only by about 0.4 percentage point. It could turn. This referendum on free trade – for his opponent, Otton Solis, is opposed to it – is suddenly a matter for speculation. Will Arias win? Keep fingers crossed. The news story is here and there are blog links two posts below. UPDATE: Nacion, as of 12:26 p.m. Pacific time, is reporting that the difference between the top two candidates is 3,647 votes. The item (if you can get it up, there’s heavy traffic)…
No one has a penchant for coming down on the wrong side of the issue like Spain’s Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. Whenever there is a critical juncture, a challenge from brute force, he has a way of placing himself on the illiberal side of the issue. So now he’s made a new string of appeasing statements about the Islamofascists, right in the middle of the Denmark cartoon crisis – taking the side of the rioters. In part his actions may be due to fear, considering that Spain gets more immigrants from Islamic countries than elsewhere. But such people…
Oscar Arias, a powerful, luminous, fearless advocate for free trade is winning in Costa Rica’s exit polls in what looks like a decisive victory. Reportedly taking in 45% of the vote in a three-way field, it means his victory so strong he will avoid a runoff, if these numbers hold, putting this election on a comparable level with Evo Morales’ in Bolivia. The cutoff for avoiding a runoff is 40% of the vote. What does it mean? It means that despite the naysayers, the people insisting the region is turning left, Costa Ricans in their thousands cast their votes for…
Thousands of Venezuelans rallied against Venezuela’s dictator today, protesting the anniversary of the awful day in 1992 when then-Colonel Hugo Chavez tried to seize power through military means. But Hugo Chavez had a surprise of them – a demonstration of his own to insist that this attempted military coup, I kid you not, was a good thing. Yes, the thuggish dictator who continuously forces every visitor and shill, from Jimmy Carter to Jesse Jackson to the LA Times editorial board to Cindy Sheehan to declare Chavez ‘democratically elected’ no matter what he does at the ballot box nevertheless wants all…
Islamofascist fanatics have set fire to the Danish, Norwegian, Swedish and Chilean embassies in Damascus, blaming all four for the Danish cartoons that offended Koranic commands not to make graven images of religious figures in a bid to halt idolatry. Anyone who looks at those cartoons can be pretty sure he wouldn’t be tempted to idolatry, given their derisive content. Well, except maybe an intellectually zeroed-out Islamofascist, who knows? The European Union, according to a Danish correspondent here, has responded wimpily, hanging the Danes, their own member country, out to dry. That’s emboldened the fanatics, who’ve burned the embassies in…
Thais have had it up to here with Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and 100,000 people are now in the streets demanding his resignation. The billionaire-army cop-turned prime minister has used his office to pocket billions for himself in yet another ‘Corporate State’ business deal while the rest of Thailand languishes in the aftermath of the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 that continues to depress wages – despite some economic growth. Thaksin isn’t the worst leader I’ve ever seen, but he has intolerable autocratic tendencies in a country whose very name means ‘freedom’ and a truly atrocious record on freedom of…
Venezuela’s dictator is now celebrating his seven miserable years in power with self-satisfying congratulations and an obligatory trip to Fidel Castro in Cuba. This extravaganza is happening as Venezuelans find themselves poorer, bleaker and less free than ever before. Teodoro Petkoff, an intrepid dissident editor of the left in Venezuela, writes a moving essay on the legacy of those seven years of Chavista failure here. Daniel in Yaracuy has additional thoughts, and a new blogging project in the works on this same subject here.
Cuban dissident Guillermo Farinas Hernandez is on the 2nd day of hunger and thirst strike in Cuba. Hernandez – whose health was already deteriorated during his time in jail – is striking for protesting against repression and the threats of closing his Cubanacan press agency. Hernandez said: “May they know that if God wants me to die, I’ll die and will be another martyr for the freedom of Cuba”. The next 72 hours are decisive to know whether his health will be further deteriorated or not. Listen to his declaration at Radio Mart???? Violent and big terrorist act against peaceful…
As part of my previous explication of the Hungarian political parties, and in order to convey how the parties involved are pretty counter-intuitive to American standards, I????????m presenting excerpted transcriptions of speeches regarding the upcoming elections. The first is by Viktor Orb????n, head of FIDESZ, who is presenting his eighth ???????state of the country??????? address ???????? looks and sounds a little like a more-populist, slightly sexier Al Gore. The second is a reply to Orb????n the following day by Ferenc Gyurcs????ny of the MSZP ???????? imagine a sort an even-more-bloodless Bill Gates figure, prone to seriously stick his foot in…
Two more Italian newspapers reprinted the Mohammed cartoons. L’Opinione and Libero are two center-right-leaning newspapers that consider themselves as “libertarian” and “unpolitically correct”. Here is L’Opinione frontpage today. And below is Libero’s . For those who don’t read Italian, this is the translation of the title: “Here Mohammed gives orders-What a shame. Europe caves in to Islam and apologizes for satire about Allah – Here are the 12 satanic cartoons nobody dares to publish” I believe that it’s everone’s right to criticize the cartoons. Everyone can agree or disagree about the content of the cartoons, but I think that every…
Hey everyone, Thanks for hanging around. The past two days have seen huge server problems as I’ve been changing hosting companies. Lots of stuff I didn’t expect to happen, along with having to now go in and manually add the last ten days worth of posts. But now, hopefully, Publius will be back to normal.
I watched the President’s State of the Union address with a French diplomat friend and my friend remarked that about 2/3 of Bush’s speech was on foreign policy, with a significant amount of it on democracy movements. “As it should be,” he added. I thought there was a nuance to it, though, and it was a little painful. President Bush outlined with great precision the consequences of America’s addiction to imported oil, explaining how high oil prices were fueling dictators and undercutting freedoms abroad, the very freedoms we were fighting for in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he named the wrong…