Blogging the democratic revolution
Venezuelan journalist Patricia Poleo, whose case we have tracked here was sentenced to six months’ jail by a Venezuelan kangaroo court. They said she misidentified a photo in one of her stories. It’s a characteristic of tyranny to issue draconian sentences for technicalities. But for Venezuela, the free press loses another voice. Government bureaucrats can safely operate outside free scrutiny. This is an outrage. Here is the email I got: Acaban de sentenciar a Patricia Poleo a 6 meses de carcel en el juicio con Jesse Chacon. VIVA LA LIBERTAD DE EXPRESION!!!!!!. UPDATE: Miguel Octavio has an insightful longer essay…
Several hundred journalists, activists, and colleagues of the late Elmar Huseynov rallied and called for the government to speed up investigations into the murdered editor’s death. BAKU, Azerbaijan (AP) – About 700 journalists and rights activists rallied in Azerbaijan’s capital Saturday to protest what they call authorities’ failure to fully investigate the death of an opposition magazine editor and bring his killers to justice. … At the protest meeting opposite the city’s National Academy of Sciences, the participants shouted “Freedom” and “Freedom of Speech.” They then went the cemetery where the journalist is buried, and the head of the country’s…
This isn’t getting much attention at all in the English media, but the Yemeni government seems to be in the middle of a serious smackdown on the Yemeni press. I was first alerted to this earlier today after watching a brief news report on Al-Jazeera, but even that outlet doesn’t have anything on it either on the English or the Arabic version of its website. (A note for those who depend on Al-Jazeera’s English site: the two are almost entirely different; only the main Arab world-related stories make it into the English version, which is clearly designed for a global…
How’s we miss this? Here’s a tremendously good news source for Zimbabwewatchers called ZWNEWS.com, one of the best I’ve seen. Hat Tip: Dave
Daniel noted earlier the blatantly warped and somewhat arbitrary questions, but Mike Connor all the way out in Yushchenko’s Ukraine noticed it as well. They better watch out, or they might develop the same bad international reputation they’ve acquired at home!
Ever wondered what makes the sinews of one the world’s foremost enemies of freedom move? It’s money of course, $500,000 of it in oil-rich Venezuela’s case, but how it happens is what’s most in need of some daylight. Alek Boyd at VCrisis has gotten hold of new Freedom of Information Act documents on the Venezuela Information Office, the propaganda arm of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. He has a 31-page file filled out by the VIO in Washington itself, detailing the people it met, the ways it preoccupied itself, and the reporters it courted and harassed. It’s pretty creepy reading –…
Jane over at Armies of Liberation is hallucinating with joy as al-Khaiwani, editor of the al-Shoura opposition newspaper, was pardoned directly by President Saleh. Jane, as you may know, had received correspondence from him and organized a petition to have him freed. Hopefully the blogosphere played a little part. Congrats!
Last Friday, the Venezuelan government declared a new law, one that makes it an actual crime to ‘offend Chavez.’ Chavez of course will say when he is offended. The king decides. And this means bloggers. A new Venezuelan blogger, called Jolly, gives his take here.
Remember the Venezuelan reporter whose house was raided and trashed by dictator Hugo Chavez’s security agents? We wrote about her here, here and here. She’s now being prosecuted. The interior minister is believed to be targetting Patricia Poleo because some think he wants to erase his role in a 1992 coup attempt from history, and she’s written about it. Alek Boyd has a summary here. In the middle of all this, there’s a grotesque picture of someone, accused by Poleo of being the interior minister himself, of posing over a dead body from the 1992 coup attempt here she wrote…
Given that I recently posted an entry, Jordan’s Civil Society Crackdown, which was somewhat critical of Jordan, I thought that it would be appropriate to link to a transcript of an interview with Jordan’s King Abdullah from Middle East Quarterly, posted on Regime Change Iran, since it shows his strategic insight. He talks about a variety of subjects in the interview, including how to combat militant Islam, and I can assure you that Abdullah is not one of those Arab leaders who says one thing in English and another in Arabic. He also discusses at length the threat that Iran…
I thought this was incredibly timely given that Kirk had just posted a piece on Jordanian civil society. Natasha Tynes is reporting on an unreported story in the mainstream press that I’m finding particularly interesting. You may all remember a few thousand Iraqis protesting against the insurgents when a car bomber blew up a couple hundred Iraqis. Natasha brings to our attention an article written inside a Jordanian paper that bends, distorts, and outright lies about the entire event. If also portrays the bomber as a martyr. Well, she wasn’t going to have any of that. First, she translated the…
Both blogger Miguel and blogger Daniel in Venezuela see growing examples of media self-censorship in the light of dictator Hugo Chavez’s all-encompassing media law. The details are disturbing and this is quite serious. Read and compare each of these unrelated news items here and here.
Venezuelan blogger Daniel reports that Miguel’s powerful exclusive on photoshopping is now having a big impact in Caracas through a Venezuelan newspaper pickup. This is a great victory for the blogosphere, and very sweet for Publius Pundit which was first to link Miguel’s scoop on the fake photos. After that, Miguel’s post was linked to huge effect on Little Green Footballs. And soon after that it made its way into the important Venezuelan Spanish-language blogosphere. Following Miguel’s high hit count, a local newspaper got wind of its impact, and ran with it as a news story. That’s no small thing.…
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.
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…
Zed just let me know of his latest Daily Burma post. There is a new publication in Canada that is the first in North America to print in Burmese! Check it out, he has the PDF file of one of its issues.
Reporters Without Borders has the report: Reporters Without Borders has renewed an appeal for the release of 11 journalists currently being held in prisons in Nepal. Six of those being held were among at least 16 journalists security forces picked up after King Gyanendra seized power on 1 February and declared a state of emergency. Nepal was already holding five journalists before the royal coup, making it, after China, Cuba and Eritrea, the world’s fourth largest prison for journalists. “Until they are released we will continue to urge the international community, particularly the European Union, to apply political and economic…
The Venezuelan Information Office, which is the aggressive propaganda arm of the Chavez regime, does more than just propagandize – it also seeks to discredit critics – in the U.S. It has now has targetted Wall Street Journal editorial page writer Mary Anastasia O’Grady in a concerted campaign. Venezuelan blogger Alexandra Beech at The Sixth Republic has the story here.
Alek Boyd has some footage from a Fox news show about Hugo Chavez’s Zimbabwe-style land confiscations. See it here.
It’s a bad day for the independent media in Venezuela. The Chavistas are in an extremely ugly, confrontational mood and starting to lash out. Most disturbingly, Patricia Poleo, the fearless Venezuelan journalist whose home was raided last week, has just been indicted and charged with misuse of information. Miguel’s blog has additional background. But that’s not all – the tremendous Michael Rowan essay cited here a couple days ago, is now under attack by chavista minions who parrot the communist line of Hugo Chavez. This is a warning to this writer that they will come after him next. It’s getting…
Alek also has fished up some laws Venezuela’s El Supremo seems to have broken in his toilet-mouthed TV chat about distinguished US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Read the whole thing here.
Here’s a big shoutout to Babalu Blog, who just got a big mention on the front page of the Miami Herald. Congratulations! The more people who knows about your cause, the better.
Norman Geras is pissed at the Guardian’s editorial section. But honestly, it’s no use getting mad at people who can’t write.
IEDs (full disclosure: I write for this site) has stories here, here and here.
I outline NYT reporter Juan Forero’s propaganda that gives Venezuela’s dictator Hugo Chavez a boost, now that he’s off to Porto Alegre to defend Zimbabwe-style land expropriations. Juan’s timing for Chavez is just ‘coincidentally’ perfect, and his arguments are party-line. As news, it’s weeks late, but it’s just perfect to re-frame the debate for Chavez’s soapbox. This is bad stuff.