Blogging the democratic revolution
The organized campaign to see Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer, who was jailed this month for insulting Islam and the government, is quite a thing to behold. Between FreeKareem.org, online petitions, blog posts, and articles in huge publications like the Washington Post, rarely has there been such an interest in the blogosphere as a whole on…
Richard Fernandez at the Belmont Club posts about a subject close to home — about a document called the Melo Report released yesterday in the Philippines. It’s the result of a fact-finding investigation conducted by former Supreme Court Justice Jose Melo into extrajudicial killings committed by both the military and communist rebels. The result is…
Breaking news – Russia’s elite spetznaz goons uses poisoned Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko’s photo at the center of their targets during shooting practice. The Times of London has the story here. But they’re still denying that they had anything to do with killing Litvinenko. My my, how hollow their elaborate protestations of noninvolvement in Litvinenko’s…
On October 13, 2006, Human Rights Watch reported on a Russian trial court’s ordering the closure of an organization based in the Russian city of Nizhny Novogorod and known as the “Russian-Chechen Friendship Association.” The RCFA is a nongovernmental organization established by Russians to inform the public about the dire plight of Chechnya and Russian…
During his 2005 State of the Union address, President Bush set forth a bold plan to to make the advancement of freedom and democracy the cornerstone of America’s foreign policy. Under liberal democracies, the Islamic terrorist and statist authoritarian threat would practically vanish from the face of the earth. Sure, there would be conflicts, but…
Iran’s Islamofascist barbarians have either come to their senses or caved in to international pressure on the infamous case of Nazanin Fatehi, an unjustly accused Iranian girl whom we’ve blogged about here at Publius as a worthy freedom cause. Nazanin, age 17, was walking in the park with either her little sister or her boyfriend,…
A The Belmont Club Richard Fernandez discusses the propaganda of Islamic radicals who, at the moment, are ten steps ahead of the West in terms of spreading its message. The speed at which the message is spreading, the reach that it is attaining, and the sheer quantity cannot hope to be matched by the bureaucratic…
The State Department has put out a press release detailing new initiatives to support human rights that will begin next year. By and large, the plans focus on supporting NGOs that operate under fierce government repression, thus countering the global trend of cracking down on such organizations from Russia to Venezuela. Here is a list…
Castro’s goon squads beat up Cubans in Havana Sunday Source: Stefania at Free Thoughts Their crime? Celebrating human rights day. You heard that right, they were observing human rights day. That’s why they were beat up by Castro’s ‘repudiation’ squads, the barrio thugs who serve as Castro’s illegal enforcers, beating others with impunity in the…
On September 8, 1999, several hundred pounds of explosive detonated on the ground floor of a nine-story apartment building in the southwestern Moscow neighborhood of Pechatniki. 94 people were killed and 150 wounded. Five days later, a second building was leveled, this time on Kashirskoye Highway, again in the southern region of the city. In…
Poisoned Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko on his deathbead Source: Kim Zigfeld, at La Russophobe In his defiant last statement, poisoned Russian ex-spy Alexander Litvinenko said, “The bastards got me. But they won’t get everybody.” Incredibly brave words for a man going down in lingering pain from a now-unknown poison. Less than a week ago, Alexander…
At VCrisis, Alek Boyd has firsthand info about how Hugo Chavez’s shiny new Russian weapons purchases are being used – to massacre Venezuelan and Brazilian peasants from helicopters in the deep jungle. There was a great big massacre of miners in the Amazon rainforest this week and Boyd is on the scene with tons of…
When I heard about the protests planned against Khatami’s speech at Harvard, I knew just the guy to contact. I emailed Jesse Sage over at HAMSA and he filled me in on all the information. Khatami was to speak at 4:00 p.m. so the protests would start around three. We arrived in Harvard Square outside…
In a moment where the forces of dictatorship and tyranny seem to be pushing back against democracy, the common thread that has successfully aligned nations such as Iran, Russia, Venezuela, China, and Sudan have been the supply and demand of energy. While it is encouraging that the relationships forged seem to be more based on…
(To hear the interview in .mp3 format or download it to your iPod, click here or right-click and choose “save target as”.) Since Alexander Lukashenka became president of Belarus in 1994, he has used every avenue possible to repress political opposition to his rule. He has jailed politicians and activists, shut down NGOs both major…
There may be an Arabo-Iranian Cold War brewing, if the Arabs make themselves relevant again As the Arabs furiously try to guilt Syria into curbing Hezb Allah????????s activities and ???????rejoining??????? the Arab world, one cannot help but see an almost laughable, but certainly pathetic, last ditch attempt at salvaging what influence the Sunni Arab states…
Charles at LGF caught Reuters in what looks like an obnoxious faked photo, with lots of dissection and discussion. A special correspondent who works for Reuters sent me this photo from the series, which I believes corroborates Reuters’ story. Judge for yourself: UPDATE: Now that Adnan Hajj has gone public, I feel it’s ok to…
When I was in Washington, D.C. last week, I had dinner with the relatives I was staying with at their good friends’ house. These family friends happened to be Iranian. They had a son and two daughters, the boy was the youngest and the girls were about four years apart from each other. I had…
As millions around the world I was glued to the TV watching the World Cup final when Zin????dine Zidane headbutted Marco Materazzi. My instant reaction was “what could Materazzi possibly have said to prompt such a reaction?” I didn’t judge Zidane, contrary to the statements of commentators who just couldn’t help themselves in condemning in…
ÄNote: The Algerian independence day is July 5Å Algeria????????s independence came on July 5, 1962, after a long and bloody war against France. The Revolution that took place from 1954 to 1962 would soon be abducted by the egos of many powerful men, with names like Ben Bella, Boumediene, and Khider. But, the ideals of…
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Imprisoned Democratic Revolutionary Of Burma Source: OA Net The Burmese military junta’s 61st birthday present to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was a beefed-up contingency of military troops at her door this morning. Burma’s democracy leader has now spent all of ten years under house arrest, with very few visitors…
Less than a week after Hugo Chavez threatened to shut down the broadcast press by yanking their licenses, a newspaper editor for the weekly Ahora newspaper was gunned down in a targeted hit. His death raises the total of news editors shot dead to at least four that I know about. Hugo Chavez has it…
Islamism defeats itself. Every time. This is a simple observation. Take the recent take over of the Somali capital by Islamic militias. This illustrates the archetypical Islamist power grab scenario: in a nation wrought with chaos and violence, and lacking strong leaders of principle, Islamic leaders with machine guns move in to give a desperate…
According to Dick Marty’s report on secret CIA flights and prisons on the European continent, fourteen countries were complicit in either allowing or turning a blind eye to the CIA’s activities. That’s right, fourteen countries. Including the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Most of the important European Union countries. Interesting. Doesn’t sound like this…
This post refers to events that occured in Algeria last weekend. The Algerian regime, though it has made some reforms, is not pleasant. It is corrupt, gluttonous, and repressive. Life is difficult for many in Algeria, especially for the forgotten ones of Boumerdes who were displaced by an earthquake in 2003 and still have not…