Blogging the democratic revolution
Three thousand protestors in Jalalabad have seized a government building and are demanding next week’s parliamentary election runoffs be free and transparent. More than half of the seats in parliament were forced into the runoffs, so this is big.
Taef Accord and WMD — The Bekaa Valley? Quite a bit has happened since Thursday. The international pressure, for one, has certainly stepped up. President Bush is even talking about it during his social security runs in New Jersey! But now even Saudi Arabia is getting in on the game. Syrian troops have been fortifying their positions east of Beirut as pressure mounts on Damascus to pull out of Lebanon without delay. Syrian troops were digging in at Hammana, part of the mountain range 26km (16 miles) east of Beirut, and at three other positions along the ridge yesterday. “They’re…
Robin Koerner has informed me about a website that she has been working on called Watching America. Now, you all know how much I like to link out to interesting material, but I found this website in particular to be quite different from anything else. It is a news site that translates what the foreign press is saying about America. Make sure to check it out, I know it will probably make my job easier in many cases.
Gateway Pundit has been following elections in Kyrgyzstan as well, and note unrest in the south over fraud, along with violations of people being bought off. Make sure to read it over. In addition to that, a grenade was aimed at an opposition leader, but it did not succeed. But read this: BISHKEK, March 3 (Reuters) – Assailants threw a grenade into the empty apartment of a prominent Kyrgyz opposition leader on Thursday, causing no casualties, in an attack both opposition and authorities accused each other of staging. The blast occurred days after the first of two rounds of a…
Elmar Huseynov, the editor of the outspoken anti-government weekly publication, Monitor, was shot dead by an unknown assailant on March 2. The first thing that jumped to my mind when hearing about this was the murder of Gongadze in Ukraine, who was the anti-government editor of Ukrainska Pravda. HRW, New York, 04.03.2005 — The Azerbaijani government must fully investigate the killing of the editor of the independent weekly magazine Monitor, Human Rights Watch said today. The murder of the editor, Elmar Huseynov, is a frightening reminder of the danger of outspoken criticism in Azerbaijan. On the evening of Wednesday, March…
A lot of stuff is going on in the world. We’ve got a Lebanon roundup coming up for you as the day gets started there, with a focus on the role of Hizb’allah and an opposition group called Lebanese Forces. The Moldovan elections are on Sunday, and I’ll prepare a primer to those for you along with my personal stance. A prominent anti-government journalist was murdered in Azerbaijan, and it has triggered a wave of protests right now and into next week. In between these focuses I will link you out to other interesting reading as well. Should be a…
That’s the title of a new report by Amnesty International concerning Nepal. The government of Nepal should restore fundamental human rights, open a peace process based on justice and respect for human rights, protect human rights defenders and end the impunity of the security forces. The Maoists should commit themselves to respect international human rights and humanitarian law. The US, UK and India play a critical role as major allies of Nepal and key providers of military aid. AI calls on them to suspend all military assistance to the government of Nepal as a means of pressurising it to change…
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Arthur Chrenkoff is doing just that. Check it out, it makes interesting reading. I’ve got some work to get done and a nap to take, so the Lebanon update will come in the wee hours of the morning (which is cool, because the time zone difference will give me more to collect). Look forward to it!
Senator John McCain, my senator in Arizona, issued a statement on the recent elections in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. And it was the right oneto make.
While most of the sources I use for the daily Lebanon sources are indeed local sources (Lebanon Wire, Daily Star, Naharnet), they are more favorable to the events going on specifically because they are local. But what is the rest of the Arab world saying? How do they view this? In this post, we’ll peruse some news articles an editorials from leading news sites in the region such as Al-Jazeera and Arab News. Let the Lebanese sort out their own problems by Dr. Mohammed T. Al-Rasheed at Arab News: As the world watches, Lebanon throbs. To be a politician, one…
First the revolution; now the aftermath. Well, for Syria that is. Just about everyone and their mother is taking shots at what soon will be the next regime to surrender in the war of ideas. NEWS: The Lebanese opposition is keeping up the front, and have put forward a list of several basic demands that must be met to continue the activities of government: After a joint meeting at the mountain home of opposition leader Walid Jumblatt, they called on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to announce a troop pullout from the country and for the resignation of security officials there.…
Winds of Change has a huge roundup of news concerning Iran. That and Wednesday’s briefing from Regime Change Iran complement each other nicely.
This is the guy that China put into power in Hong Kong after it was handed over from the British in 1997. After some protests against him, the Party promoted him out to a position in China. Bill thinks it has something to do with preventing a democratic push in light of events elsewhere in the world. UPDATE: Looks like a lot of people are taking notice here.
I was just sitting here a couple hours ago reading and thinking about doing a roundup on elections in Moldova, which are a week from now, but Lyndon Allin beat me to it.
A series of posts I have been reading over at David McDuff’s blog. Part six is up, and he has links to the other five parts. Check that out.
Nathan has a bunch of follow up news to the recent election there. Some are saying that democracy is on the march there as well!
Now this is news! Except that you have to wade through paragraph upon paragraph of details about bombings and missing people to see it. The writers at the AP really need to stay on focus before. Like I was taught in elementary school, “Opening, support, closing.” You’ll see from the article that their’s is more like “Opening, several paragraphs unrelated to the headline whatsoever, small snippet of relevant information.” I’ll put three dots for every paragraph skipped to get there: BAGHDAD, Iraq – More than 2,000 people demonstrated Tuesday at the site of a car bombing south of Baghdad that…
Aussiegirl is following the prosecution of the Gongadze case, a journalist whose head was found missing under Kuchma’s regime. Here are quotes from Yushchenko. Also, has his head finally been found? Either way, the killers have been found. Secret police, no less, though that was expected. And a witness was recently injured after the killers were named. I’m thinking there may be more than these three. abdymok is all over the whole story as well, with lots of information. For some background info, he is a journalist for the Kyiv Post.
And here begins the first of the daily Lebanon roundups. It’s hard to keep track of everything on the internet, so I’ll try to round it all up for you guys right here quick and easy. NEWS: Some protestors vow to stay in the streets until they get a good government: A few diehard activists remained in tents overnight and about 400 protesters joined them midmorning, but Lebanese soldiers had been withdrawn from the area where the day before 25,000 flag-waving demonstrators demanded and got Prime Minister Omar Karami’s resignation. “We will be here every day until the last Syrian…
Hey everyone. Yesterday was a long day, to note, I just woke up from my twelve hour slumber. Since many of you have never been here before, I thought I would give you a run down of what this site is about and what we’ll be covering post-revolution in Lebanon. We will definitely be keeping an interested eye on there. Updates on the daily political situation, news, what the blogs are saying, things like that. But we cover a lot of other things as well, such as what is happening in Ukraine post-revolution, A.M. Mora y Leon covers Venezuela and…
All this stuff finally came in the mail today. The books from Amazon.com, both of which you can order on the left hand side. The other shipment was from an Ebay seller, directly from Ukraine. I finally got a Yuschenko TAK! scarf! Now, before I go to bed, I would like to give a special shout-out to Bryan McRoberts. Starting on March 15, Lebanonwire.com will become available by subscription only, and he donated money to me so that I could subscribe and continue to bring the latest news from that region to you all. He and his family definitely have…
Kyrgyzstan is facing a run-off after a majority of seats failed to acquire an absolute majority of the votes: MOSCOW. Feb. 28. — A majority of the seats in Kyrgyzstan’s parliamentary elections Sunday were forced into a second round of voting when the contests failed to produce absolute majorities for candidates, according to preliminary results released Monday in the capital, Bishkek. That leaves the Central Asian republic to face another period of high political tension around the March 13 runoffs. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said Monday the vote “fell short” of international standards for democratic elections,…
Ben Morgan from Swarthmore College’s War News Radio program contacted me via email and is going to do a phone interview in about an hour. It sounds like a load of fun, I’ve never done that before. So hey, if anyone else wants to interrogate me, by all means, email me! UPDATE: Alright, interview is over. I think I may have been a bit long-winded on some things, but interesting nonetheless. I’ll let you know when a web feed is available.
Back from the school. Now here’s what I’ve got from Instapundit. I’m trying to get as much insight and information in here as possible so here we go. So far there is Ed Morrissey, Sissy Willis, and Jim Geraghty who are all talking about it. Keep watching Tony as well. Michael Ubaldi has just informed me that he’s merged all his Lebanon commentary into one useful category. Check that out. The Belgravia Dispatch has an email from Beirut, check that out. Oxblog notes that the New York Times has embraced the Bush Doctrine as so many of us did before…