Blogging the democratic revolution
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.
It was 364 days ago that King Gyanendra suspended democracy by sacking parliament and began a new war against Nepal’s civil society in the face of a Maoist insurrection. Since then, thousands of people protesting against the government have been arrested, from major politicians and journalists to the everyday man and woman. Just today, on the eve of the anniversary of the king’s seizure of power, over 1000 people have been arrested for opposing him. Hundreds of opposition activists have been arrested across Nepal on the eve of the first anniversary of the royal coup, the opposition says. An opposition…
The Washington Post published an editorial over the weekend entitled, “U.S. Policy Seen as Big Loser in Palestinian Vote” that is well worth a read for anyone who wants to know exactly what it’s like to be completely oblivious to what democracy actually is and the institutions that are needed to sustain it. Staff writer Glenn Kassler attempts to critique Bush administration policy toward the Palestinians, in which there are probably many. But it ultimately turns into a condemnation of America’s policy of trying to spread democracy in the Middle East and becomes a declaration that the Palestinians, Egyptians, Iranians,…
Tim Russo continues to post his manuscript about his work promoting democracy in Armenia back in the ’90s, and a particularly interesting post for Publius readers would be one of his latest on the “
Well, it’s the weekend, and you know what that means… See you Monday!
Palestinian Prime Minister Ahmad Qurei’ and his cabinet (most of which are Fatah) announced their resignation following the January 25th elections. With a voter turnout of 77% preliminary results show Hamas with a substantial victory, taking 76 of the 132 seats, and proving that pollsters were clearly off in their predictions which favored a Fatah majority. According to the Israeli online news site Ynet, Hamas leader Mahmoud A-Zahhar continues to say that they will not change their call for the destruction of Israel. He also said, “The issue of weapons is related to the occupation. We will not receive dictations…
Women living in the United Arab Emirates have staged a first-ever protest demanding equal citizenship rights in the country. Dubai: Twenty-three UAE national women protested outside the Labour Ministry building yesterday to demand the re-instatement of their social security payments. A top ministry official said the minister has issued directions to reconsider their cases. The women stood outside the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs yesterday from 9am until 11:30am in a silent protest. It was sparked after their social security payments of Dh1,095 a month were cut off, days before Eid Al Adha, because they are married to working…
Following last week’s crackdown by royalist security forces preceding planned pro-democracy protests, in which hundreds of pro-democracy politicians and activists were detained and communications were cut across the whole country, the situation in Nepal has deteriorated even further. Protests have been ongoing for the past four days, with standoffs between the demonstrators and police resulting in tear gas being shot from one side and stones being thrown from the other. With the Maoists ending their ceasefire and stepping up attacks, Nepal is perhaps at one of its most unstable points in a really long time. KATHMANDU (Reuters) – Nepali riot…
It looks like Code Pink forgot to tell Common Dreams News Center that their logo is bunk and a forgery. In a recent article written by our all-time favorite mental patient Cindy Sheheen, Common Dreams proudly displays the logo that exploits a brave Iranian woman. You know, the one that Code Pink tried to swiftly remove without any notice. Looks like someone forgot to cover their tracks.
Sorry everyone, but the large traffic influx due to the post about Code Pink has led my web host to temporarily block access to the site for several hours because it literally crashed the entire server. Sorry for the inconvenience everyone! I think they may be communist sympathizers. The downtime is unacceptable when it comes to issues of the blogosphere, where news moves quickly, so I’m in the process of moving the site to a new host. Hopefully this can happen over the weekend and we won’t ever have any downtime again.
Hillary Clinton, on her latest rumble and tumble of speeches aimed at the Bush administration, has accused it of downplaying Iran as a threat to national security and has subsequently called for sanctions against the regime. But in the wake of so many lobbying and corruption scandals in Washington, is Hillary playing a game of double standards? According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Clinton has received $5000 in campaign contributions from a PAC called the American Iranian Council, which is known to be against sanctions and in favor of restoring diplomatic and trade relations between America and Iran —…
After the jailing of opposition leader Ayman Nour, the United States has decided to halt free trade talks with Egypt for the meantime. It is a sign of growing American willingness to make the distinctive link between the economic benefits it can bestow and the nature of the governments we do business with. The decision highlighted a growing rift with an important Middle Eastern ally after it held an election for president last September that the United States described as highly flawed. Egypt had been eager to work out an agreement that would reduce or eliminate tariffs and increase trade…
In a move to confuse news agencies, the Syrian government has released five activists who took part in the Damascus Spring, all the while meeting with Iran’s messianic president. Syrian authorities have released five pro-democracy activists, including two prominent former legislators, after they had served nearly four years of their five-year prison sentences. Those released Wednesday – former legislators Mamoun Homsi and Riad Saif; Fawwaz Sello, Walid al-Bunni and Habib Issa – were part of a group of nine men arrested in 2001. They had been imprisoned for 45 months. Three of the group were released earlier. Issa told The…
It has been nearly a year since the King suspended democracy in the country and began his crackdown on the political opposition; which, at this point, is every political party in the country. Earlier this month, the King of Nepal reinstituted a ban on political rallies that had been lifted late last year. In response, pro-democracy forces in the country have prepared a massive rally to protest the renewed political repression. As if to prove them right, the King responded by cutting all communications in the country in an attempt to foil the organizers of the rally. Phone lines, cellulars,…
I almost forgot that it’s been exactly one year since Human Rights Watch released it’s year 2005 report on global human rights abuses in which its highlight focus, despite everything else going on in the world, was the abuses at Abu Ghraib. Well, fire up the grill and pop open a beer, because their year 2006 report is out and there’s something very unsurprising about it. The introduction by Kenneth Roth, while paying some attention to Russia, China, and Sudan toward the end, spends a good 2/3 of the essay focusing on Guantanamo Bay prison and complicity by Western nations…
In an interview with Newsweek, IAEA director-general Mohamed ElBaradei has gotten out of touch with his soft side and unleashed some fightin’ words. What if the Iranians are just buying time for their bomb building? That’s why I said we are coming to the litmus test in the next few weeks. Diplomacy is not just talking. Diplomacy has to be backed by pressure and, in extreme cases, by force. We have rules. We have to do everything possible to uphold the rules through conviction. If not, then you impose them. Of course, this has to be the last resort, but…
A representative of the electoral commission in Iraq has said that it has had to throw out less than 1% of the ballot boxes due to fraud, so if the unverified preliminary results are indeed correct, this won’t affect the outcome of the election. BAGHDAD ???????? Iraqi officials Monday concluded an inquiry into allegations of widespread fraud in the Dec. 15 elections by annulling returns from fewer than 1% of the ballot boxes, and said the action was unlikely to alter the overall result. The ruling by the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq failed to placate secular and Sunni Arab…
The results are in! After a nail-biting month, Concertaci????n candidate Michelle Bachelet has won the Chilean presidential run-off election with 53.5% of the vote. It’s the fourth straight victory for the center-left coalition, and they have won a slight majority of seats in both houses of Congress as well. The opposition has conceded gracefully, people are celebrating, and no bombs are going off. All in all, a model democratic election. It is a reward for sixteen years of reform. President Lagos is retiring with a popularity rating near 75%, and there is no reason to believe that there are any…
As you all know, blogging resumes Monday… except for this weekend. On Sunday I’ll be blogging the Chilean presidential election.
Pack up your bags and go home everyone, the seemingly impossible has happened. The West has officially ended negotiations with Iran — or is it the other way around? — after Iran began the process of enriching uranium. The EU3 has referred Iran to the IAEA with the express intent of taking the issue to the Security Council. Britain, France and Germany tonight took the first step towards seeking international sanctions against Iran over its controversial nuclear fuel programme. Following crisis talks with his counterparts in Berlin, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, said that they had agreed to request an…
Nathan Hamm is noting some interesting political developments in the most democratic country of Central Asia, which has culminated in several thousand people protesting.
Longtime contributor Kirk H. Sowell over at Window on the Arab World, and More! sent the following to me via email with regards to my post, “Dealing with the rise of Islamist politics.” It furthers the discussion by pointing out a key flaw in the article I linked to; that, while elections would certainly lead to Islamists gaining power in the Middle East, the article makes several wrongful assumptions and mistakes because it doesn’t go into specific detail on the countries he talks about — or even goes into wrong detail. Here’s what he had to say. I’ve never had…
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…
Remember that whole deal between Russia and Ukraine that ended the gas crisis that the press and diplomats all over the place were cheering over like a teenage boy getting his first lap dance? Well, if you’ve been reading Publius then you’d know that there was some pretty shady behind-the-scenes dealing going on. Ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the fireband corruption fighter of the Orange Revolution, revealed the true details of the plan several days ago and — uh oh! — it looks like the Yushchenko government was conveniently hiding a couple of details from the public; details that ultimately expose…
There’s an article by Carnegie senior associate Amr Hamzawy that I think you all will find very interesting. It contends that the slow opening of political systems in the Middle East is allowing for progressively better representation of what the population actually wants, which is why Islamists are beginning to take seats. Since the majority of people in Middle Eastern countries are actually quite conservative, these forces need to be engaged appropriately so that they will learn how to govern pragmatically and provide a valuable democratic alternative to the current secular authoritarian regimes. Here are his main conclusions: The electoral…