Blogging the democratic revolution
Now that I’ve lured you in with a misleading, typical MSM headline, read on. In Iran, motives are never so genuine and kind. TEHRAN, Iran May 23, 2005 ???????? Iran’s supreme leader ordered the hard-line constitutional watchdog council to reconsider its decision to bar senior reformist candidates from running in next month’s presidential elections, state-run television reported Monday. The Guardian Council, which vets the election candidates, on Sunday rejected all the reformists registered to run in next month’s presidential elections. The council rejected all but six of the 1,000 hopeful candidates. Among those rejected were all the female candidates. “It’s…
Georgia experienced the Rose Revolution in 2003, serving as an antecedent for Ukraine’s Orange Revolution (as well as democratic revolutions elsewhere). Georgia has since made nice progress, with U.S. President Bush visiting two weeks ago. Now a commission of the Georgian government, led by President Saakashvili, has prepared a draft document outlining the nation’s national security requirements and fundamental national values. Civil Georgia has the story: The draft concept of the national security sets sovereignty, security, peace, democracy, rule of law, human rights and welfare as Georgia????????s fundamental national values. These values are a ???????vital necessity for the existence and…
Will Franklin is hosting this week’s carnival of revolutions, where you can catch up on the democracy movement over the past week. Next week it will be hosted by your favorite playboy, er, not me, I mean Nathan at Registan.net. I’ll be the week after.
The candidate of the ex-communist MPR has won Mongolia’s presidency, garnering over 50% of the vote and thus avoiding a runoff election. A former Communist prime minister of Mongolia has won Sunday’s presidential election, state media say. Nambaryn Enkhbayar beat three other contenders by polling more than 50% of the vote and thus avoiding the need for a run-off, Mongol Radio reported. The official results are expected later on Monday, but Mr Enkhbayar said his main rival had already conceded defeat. Before the poll, there were rallies for a more transparent electoral system in the capital, Ulan Bator. Protesters also…
Don’t miss Gary Metz’s week in review over at Regime Change Iran, the essential blog on developments you know where.
The New York Times reports: In a stark reversal from earlier this year, when Sunni Arabs boycotted national elections here, a broad gathering of Sunni sheiks, clerics and political leaders formed a political alliance on Saturday, seeking to win back the political ground they had lost to Shiites. The meeting was the first wide-scale effort by Iraq’s embittered and increasingly isolated Sunnis to band together politically, and was broadly attended by what organizers said was about 2,000 Sunni Arabs from Baghdad and nearby cities. The gathering was an implicit acknowledgment that it had been a mistake to turn away from…
Last night I watched an episode of “Writers,” a program on Al-Jazeera. They were actually in London, speaking to two Arab writers, one an Egyptian novelist who lives in London, Ahdaf Soueif (see this article for an interview with her), and an editor with the London-based Arab newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi (whose full name I can’t remember, Amjad something I think, not Abd al-Bari Atwan, their managing editor). They talked about a number of things, but the guy made a comment on which I want to focus to the effect that when we speak of democracy in the Middle East, “the…
With Lebanon’s elections near, sources at GeoStrategy Direct are saying that the recent flare up in violence, both the bombings in Beruit and the attacks on Israel in the south, have been a deliberate attempt by Iran and Hizbullah to derail the entire process. I have a rather longish post on my own blog focusing on Hizbullah and its leader, Hassan Nasrallah. It mostly deals with national security issues and provides links for those who want more background on Hizbullah; check out Spotlight on Hassan Nasrallah to read the whole thing. These are the two paragraphs from my GeoStrategy Direct…
They’re heading to the polls right now to vote in their country’s presidential election. Actually, that started a few hours ago, but I bet the nomads still have a ways to go. So far, it looks like the now center-left ex-Communist Party is going to do well in the polls. The Democratic parties alliance has splintered since ’96 and, despite large economic growth over the past year after a couple years of famine, are looking to lose out again on the presidency. Mongolia is electing a new president, with a candidate of the ex-Communist Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party tipped to…
You know how it goes: as soon as your diplomats get expelled, its finally a humanitarian crisis! European lawmakers are finally urging their countries to get tough on Castro. This, of course, after they lifted sanctions on the regime earlier in the year. Two former Spanish senators, Isabel San Baldomero and Rosa Lopez Garnica, were expelled, as were lawmakers from Germany, Italy and the Czech Republic. Arnold Vaatz, a German lawmaker who was expelled from Cuba on Friday, called for the European Union to take a stronger stand against Cuba. ééWith its decision to lift (diplomatic) sanctions against Cuba, the…
The Venezuelan dictator has a way of finding it…based on who he is, a creature of chaos. It’s not the other way around, says Pedro Burelli, a razor-sharp analyst of Venezuelan affairs. He is an oil man, and one of those people who knows the deal. Every word he writes is worth pondering closely. Take a look at this lead: Ever since he beat off efforts to recall him, many have predicted that Hugo Chavez will get into trouble only if, and when, oil prices fall from their lofty levels. My response has always been: ???????Hugo Chavez will get into…
Is that a great headline or what? I wish I had thought of it myself. Read the whole thing here.
As the November parliamentary race is unfolding in Azerbaijan, Aliyev’s government has decided to start early and wage a campaign of far among opposition supporters. A protest among several opposition and youth groups was planned over the last week for Saturday, but the police cracked down and arrested dozens of leaders and activists. All of this simply to sow the seeds of repression. BAKU, May 20 (AFP) – A top official in Azerbaijan on Friday defended a crackdown by authorities on political opposition movements ahead of a planned anti-government rally, as the oil-rich republic faced a barrage of western criticism.…
Val Prieto has got a party and revolution going over at Babalu blog with the twin Cuban Nostalgia Festival and the Assembly for Civil Society simultaneously happening this weekend. It may sound farfetched but they are closely related. Val has a full blogging exhibit at the nostalgia festival, which is Cuban Americans’ defiant effort to keep their culture alive in all its glorious forms against the horrible efforts to erase it by Cuba’s tyrant. The latter is the revolution itself, which is electrifying the world as I write this. Those gorgeous photos of Cubans standing up for democracy against the…
Somewhat belatedly, this is the link to the Midweek Edition of my Biweekly News Bulletin, which I posted Wednesday night. While not bearing directly on democracy movements, I did come across an amazing article in an Arab newspaper which I have translated in full. The basic store is this: Two Saudi brothers hear about the “jihad” in Iraq and decide they want to go there to fight Americans in Falluja. So they go to Syria, which runs the pipeline for people who want to do this, and they quickly get into Iraq and meeting with a terrorist leader. But when…
Lovely Stefania in Sardinia, Italy has some truly awe-inspiring near-live photos from the ongoing Cuban Democracy Convention outside Havana right now. The power of these pictures is unbelievable. Only in the blogosphere can any revolution be so chronicled. I dare you to look at these photos without weeping. See them here.
The government of Canada yesterday survived a no confidence vote: The combination of the Liberals, the NDP, and Independent MP Carolyn Parrish resulted in 151 votes. Independent MP Chuck Cadman also voted with the yes side, bringing the vote to 152. But, after the Conservatives, the Bloc Quebecois and Independent MP David Kilgour voted, the numbers were tied at 152. Speaker of the House Peter Milliken was left to make the final, deciding vote in favour of the government. Meanwhile, questions have arisen as to the propriety of how some of the pro-government votes were assured, with suggestions that the…
I awoke to a Google News alert to this fantastic editorial describing how Togo was betrayed its rightful place among democratic nations. It has only been a few weeks since terribly falsified elections were held in that country, and the political crisis has only deepened since. After hundreds were killed in the aftermath, thousands more fleeing the country, both sides were urged to form a unity government. That just fell through. Togo’s political adversaries have failed to agree on a government of national unity at a summit of African leaders in Abuja, Nigeria. The meeting was held to stem a…
I admit that I ran across this item on accident, because as under-publicized as it is, that would be the only way to find it. While speaking to the International Republican Institute — one of the main organizations that allocates democracy building aid — President Bush proposed creating a special corp of federal workers that would help young democracies create a sustainable future. WASHINGTON (AP) – President Bush, seeking to put muscle behind a promise to support young democracies, said Wednesday the administration is creating a special corps of federal workers that will deploy quickly to help foreign governments in…
The Council of Europe ended its third summit since 1949 in Warsaw on Tuesday with everybody calling for democracy in Belarus, which is the only European country that cannot attend the event. Out of all the countries, however, Poland really stood out with its calls. WARSAW – Calls for democracy in Belarus and agreement on the Warsaw Declaration charting the course for the Council of Europe over the coming years closed debate at the council’s summit in Warsaw on Tuesday. Poland’s president Aleksander Kwasniewski slammed human rights violations in Belarus and called for the democratisation of Poland’s eastern neighbour, dubbed…
Alek Boyd has some shocking information about the extent of Hugo Chavez’s international networks. Not only is the Venezuelan dictator suspected of being fully engaged in meddling in the internal affairs of Colombia, Ecuador, Bolivia, Paraguay, Nicaragua, Grenada, Argentina, Chile and Mexico – he’s meddling in France! That’s right, the thug is buying up the mainstream media there in France and manipulating it like Telesur. It’s really shocking. Not only that, he’s got maybe some contact with some communist union there about schoolbooks and he’s manipulated history taught in French schools to tell the story of the glorious him. Yes,…
Venezuela’s vindictive dictator, Hugo Chavez, was revealed in all his glory to be the author of the infamous ‘Tascon List’ – a blacklist of all the people in Venezuela who legally and openly signed the referendum petition to recall Hugo Chavez last year. The price they paid for that was high. The Thug of Caracas vowed to exact revenge on them if they defied him and he made good on his threats. Chavez got people fired from jobs, denied them passports, denied them services, and otherwise made 3 million people second-class citizens. It was a relentless vindictiveness not seen since…
Note: I posted this earlier at Bloggledygook, but then realized that the back story has a lot to do with the struggle for Cuba. Make no mistake: there are those who will do anything to make excuses for Fidel. A post in abdymok on Reporters Without Borders (or RSF for Reporters sans fronti????res) caught my eye this morning. Founded in 1979 by Robert Menard, RSF is a rights organization based in France that monitors press freedom abuses around the globe, with special focus on Cuba. It has been a frequent and vocal critic of the US, most recently over “self-censorship”…
Here is the first mainstream media editorial I have seen hailing Cuba’s brave democratic revolutionaries – it can be read here.