Blogging the democratic revolution
Can a civilized nation tolerate a crowd of people who let themselves be led by the nose by sheikhs, dervishes and the like . . . and who entrust their faith and their lives to fortunetellers, magicians, witch-doctors, and writers of amulets? *** Countries may vary, but civilization is one and for a nation to progress, it must take part in this one civilization. The decline of the Ottomans began when, proud of their triumphs over the West, they cut their ties with the European nations. This was a mistake which we will not repeat. I have previously provided to…
The Egyptian immam Sheikh Yousef al-Qaradawi made an appearence in Tizi-Ouzou, Kabylia (in the Tizi-Ouzou wilaya) today. Qaradawi, who has a television show on Al-Jazeera (esh-Sharieh wal-Hayat) and founded IslamOnline, recently debated Amr Khaled on the Dansih cartoon controversy (he took the “let us show rage” side of the debate), and openly supports suicide bombings, and jihad against Israelis. He believes strongly that “Everything will be on our side and against Jews on ÄJudgment DayÅ, at that time, even the stones and the trees will speak, with or without words, and say: ‘Oh servant of Allah, oh Muslim, there’s a…
Liberian ex-dictator and accused mass murderer Charles G. Taylor Source: AFP, via Yahoo! One of the continent’s grisliest mass murderers, Liberia’s ex-dictator Charles G. Taylor, was apprehended in northeastern Nigeria yesterday and shipped back to face justice in a Sierra Leone court run by United Nations prosecutors. He’s charged with 17 counts of crimes against humanity. The UN had made a resolution that Liberia put the thug on trial a couple years ago, and President Bush, meeting with his Nigerian counterpart this week, put a lot of diplomatic muscle into making sure that happened. That’s to his credit because this…
There was once a time when I predicted roughly when Mugabe????????s regime might collapse. During the Presidential election of 2002? Maybe in the MDC????????s final push? Perhaps he would just die of a heart attack? So far Mugabe has proved myself, and most probably every Zimbabwe watcher wrong. Yet could 2006 be Mugabe????????s last year in office? The succession within Zanu-Pf began in late 2004. At the party congress, much-hated information minister Jonathan Moyo attempted to boost his own position, by calling for a parliamentary speaker to be elevated to a vacant Vice-Presidential position. When Mugabe, a man with his…
Last Thursday, an elite squad of government commandos known as Black Mambas stormed The Standard Group, the second largest media organization in Kenya. They disabled transmission equipment at the Kenyan Television Network and burned thousands of copies of the next day’s issue of The Standard newspaperl; both deemed to favor the political opposition. Completely disregarding the law. That’s what happens when there is nothing to check the government’s power. And this is Kenya, one of the better African countries when compared relatively to many of its neighbors. Now, everyday Kenyans and civil society advocates are protesting against these actions in…
The Movement for Democratic Change, the battered opposition party in Zimbabwe, has officially split into two groups amid a dispute on who the leader should be. A certain Gibson Sibanda, once vice president of the party, has been declared the leader despite calls to the contrary from Morgan Tsvangirai, the (ex?)leader of the party. It’s an interesting development, and one long seen coming. Leaders of Zimbabwe????????s splintered Movement for Democratic Change found a new bone of contention this week as it emerged that the Bulawayo-based faction led by secretary general Welshman Ncube sought to elevate vice president Gibson Sibanda to…
Despite the arrest of thousands of peaceful demonstrators, the further slaughter of hundreds more, and the trial the leaders of the democratic oppositions, the United States will not be joining other World Bank donors in revoking aid to the Meles regime. According to the article, the U.S. doesn’t feel this is necessary as there has been progress toward democracy and because the aid is being used for development projects and the combating of AIDS. Therefore, the aid is actually being used to help foster democracy. Or so the argument goes, which is why the ambassador has called the idea of…
Somewhat more literally, Kenyans had an orange revolution of their own, rejecting a new consolidation of power by President Mwai Kibaki in a fair, democratic process. This represents significant progress in Kenya’s ongoing struggle over its freedom from corruption and pursuit of real democracy; the story I linked to has a good amount of detail. Mr Kibaki has spent a large amount of political capital trying to push through what would have been the first major amendment of Kenya’s constitution since it won independence from Britain in 1963… Mr Kibaki told the nation that any new effort to revise or…
The main Ugandan opposition leader has been arrested and charged with treason, sparking riots all over the country. VIOLENCE broke out in Kampala yesterday after Kizza Besigye, the opposition leader and presidential hopeful, was arrested and charged with treason. If found guilty, he could face the death penalty. Police fired teargas and rubber bullets at thousands of protesters on the streets of the capital. One man was reported to have been shot dead as he tried to loot a shopping centre. Telephone booths were left smouldering on the pavements, and government vehicles were overturned and set on fire as rioters…
Last week, CUD opposition leaders called for people to take to the streets against Prime Minister Meles, who has become ever more authoritarian following fraudulent parliamentary elections. When they did, the police descended on the demonstrators and killed hundreds, injuring thousands more. They then rounded up the CUD opposition leaders and threw them all in jail. Now, it appears that they will be charged with treason for encouraging people to speak out a regime that surpresses self-evident human rights. Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi yesterday said that leaders of the main opposition party would be charged with treason, accusing them…
After the opposition called for protests against the government over the fradulent May elections, and people began taking to the streets of Addis Ababa on Tuesday, the unrest has spread beyond the cities with thousands of people demonstrating against the government. Could this be the start of a revolution, or will this one be silenced just as those before it? Addis Ababa – Thousands of students took to the streets in several Ethiopian cities Friday as unrest to protest a government crackdown on the opposition spread beyond the capital. Four people were killed and 11 injured, state television reported. Prime…
With the ruling party once again stealing the elections back in May and putting down an impending uprising, the people of Ethiopia aren’t ready to give up that quickly. The opposition has called for a boycott of companies and products controlled by the government. It has also called for popular protests. Of course, the government won’t be having any of that, and has continued its campaign of harassment, detention, and even murder of opposition supporters. ADDIS ABABA, 1 November (IRIN) – Ethiopia’s largest opposition party on Monday called for a consumer boycott of products controlled and sold by the ruling…
Zanzibar held presidential and parliamentary elections over the weekend. As with many elections in Africa that we have covered here at Publius the aftermath has been a violent one with protestors clashing with state police forces. The opposition is claiming victory although, as is suspected, fraud is likely to be committed on a wide scale. Results are starting to trickle in from semi-autonomous Zanzibar’s elections on Sunday. The islands’ main opposition group is alleging that serious irregularities have taken place, while the ruling party dismissed those allegations. As the vote-counting was under way, the two key contenders in the elections,…
Miguel Octavio has some utterly repulsive photos of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe in the throes of love. Look at those two embrace! What’s hard to believe is that Mugabe, one of the world’s foremost creators of famine and hunger today, was so much as allowed in at this United Nations conference in Rome. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had assured earlier that these kinds of obscenities at the UN – which do hurt its credibility – will stop. Well, they are not stopping. They are going on at full blast. Investor’s Business Daily has an excellent news…
Given its terrible wars and fearsome rebel groups, you might not think anything good could come out of Liberia. And, you would be wrong. Liberia has held its first successful free and fair elections this week. Long live the democratic revolution! Jim Hoft at GatewayPundit has a full roundup and video well worth seeing here.
To read some of the news, one might think the U.S. is the only place affected by the rise in world energy prices. After all, we are the world’s largest energy consumer (no value judgment, I add) and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez often makes anti-U.S. statements expressly for the purpose of driving up prices, something he can benefit from. Meanwhile, in the Middle East, Zarkawi, bin Laden, and other terrorists expressly target U.S. economic interests in a bid to wage economic warfare on us. Usually that means attacks on critical energy supply. Sometimes they gain small victories. Europe has diversified…
Thousands of people are being arrested, demolotions continue, inflation is skyrocketing, and there are even rumors of a military coup as even the army isn’t receiving food and pay crucial to their loyalty to Mugabe. This is Zimbabwe today. D.B. Light rounds it up.
Thousands of Congo’s displaced exiles are returning to their homeland in extreme hardship solely for the privilege of voting. Don’t anyone ever tell me they had the option to vote here in the states and just didn’t do it. Look at what these brave revolutionaries in Congo are doing. The news item is here and Robert or I will put together a news and blogger roundup if there is any further information we can get: Thousands of Congolese refugees are piling their furniture, bicycles, pots and pans onto barely seaworthy boats and heading back to their war-ravaged homeland, determined to…
Qando.net blog has a point-by-point comparison of the land confiscations going on simultaneously in both Venezuela and Zimbabwe. Other than his hint that Hugo Chavez, unlike Robert Mugabe, is actually a reasonable man who doesn’t quite realize what he is doing, it is a very valuable list of comparisons whose facts speak for themselves. Read it here.
The constitutional changes I wrote about two weeks ago just got their rubber-stamp pass in the Zimbabwe parliament. Did you see that coming? I sure didn’t! JOHANNESBURG, Aug. 30 — Zimbabwe’s parliament voted Tuesday to give President Robert Mugabe new constitutional powers to seize farmland and to restrict travel by government opponents in a country whose government is already regarded as among the most repressive in Africa. The parliament, flush with new members from Mugabe’s ruling party after a March legislative election that was denounced by many international observers as rigged, cast 103 votes for the constitutional changes, enough for…
Voting opened in the ethnic Somali region of Ethiopia, while a partial re-run vote was held in other districts where irregularities were too high back in May. Not that it matters, at this point. JIJIGA, Ethiopia — Voting in eastern Ethiopia ended peacefully Sunday, as elite forces, pro-government militia and police patrolled streets to secure the region’s delayed elections. Voters in the mostly ethnic Somali region, some armed with assault rifles, gathered at sunrise at polling stations to elect 23 federal lawmakers and 168 regional legislators. Some voters said they hoped the election would bring a way out of poverty…
Our friend Jim GatewayPundit has a good Zimbabwe news and blogger roundup, including a link to a new film about dictator Robert Mugabe’s ‘clear out the trash’ campaign that has left hundreds of thousands of Zimbabweans in the informal sector homeless and suffering. See it here.
In our latest showing of theatre performances from around the world, Robert Mugabe will be performing “I didn’t get what I wanted, so I held a fraudulent election and changed the constitution,” followed by his exquisite and complex personal rendition of “How to be a leftist dictator.” The latter will be reproduced cinematically as a late night feature on CNN. Just kidding, but it just keeps getting worse and worse over in Zimbabwe. If imposing a famine through land seizures weren’t enough, the government is throwing a hissy fit because white farmers have held up the process in court. But…
Since gain independence in 1962, Burundi has been ruled by the Tutsi minority, but the Hutu majority rebelled against the government in 1993 when its first democratically elected leader, a Hutu, was assassinated by Tuti paratroopers. Since then, ethnic warfare has ravaged the country and lands around it like Rwanda, culminating in the deaths of nearly a million people. The country has been under a transitional government for the past four years, which is largely responsible for helping to heal the country to the point of reaching a peace agreement. In March, the country voted overwhelmingly in favor of a…
NOT. Hey, that was a pretty funny joke right? Just about as funny as the racial justice jokers in the South African government. In a previous post entitled “South Africa Speeding Up Land Reform,” I talked about how President Mbeki is ideologically sympathetic with Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, and how the country is planning to speed up the process of land-reform through government redistribution. The land reform conference didn’t explicitly state that they were taking Mugabe’s lead, but based on what I know, I assumed it. Well, my assumption was correction. South Africa’s deputy president is saying that, with regards…