Blogging the democratic revolution
In the twilight of Iraq’s latest successful election, and before the doomsayers have a chance to get back on their callused feet, it’s worth taking the time to examine Iraq’s inexorable progress in gaining freedom — an immense project that is changing not just the lives of twenty-five million people (a praiseworthy feat in itself),…
It was Mao Zedong who first said that, as long as a population remains neutral to an insurgency, the ultimate war against a government could be won. He layed out a three-pronged strategy for victory, which consisted of the preparation of an underground infrastructure, limited guerilla warfare, and eventually conventional warfare that would lead to…
The polls have closed in Iraq. Voter turnout was incredibly large, expected to be even higher than in January and October. All groups participated. For those of you wanting to know what’s going on, here’s a roundup where you can get all the information your heart desires. Pajamas Media has amazing on the ground reporting…
News reports are indicating that all sects of Iraqi society are turning out to vote, including the Sunnis who have made due to come out in full force. Turnout is expected to be larger than in the previous two elections. What we will witness today is not only another historic event as we saw in…
Today’s parliamentary election in Iraq will be the first that includes all major and minor groups turning out in full, making it the first truly representative government the country has had — ever. The important virtue of this is that of legitimacy, the only quality that will allow the government to operate as it needs…
The second Mehlis Report on the assassination of Rafik Hariri by Syrian and Lebanese security authorities has been released. You can download the PDF here. I know my headline makes it sound like a bad sequel, but this one actually goes beyond its predecessor, delving into a new depth of intrigue and plot twists. Yet…
Today, the general manager of the anti-Syrian, pro-independence newspaper An Nahar and a legislator from Beirut was assassinated by a car bomb. Almost all of Gebran Tueni’s editorials that have been published in the English-language version of the paper, Naharnet, have been against Syria. The last one published called the mass graves discovered by Lebanese…
A brief timeline of events: – Iranian President says that Israel should be “wiped off the map.” – The United Nations condemns his remarks. – Iranian President calls for Israel to be moved to Europe and denies the Holocaust. – The United Nations is shocked — shocked! — by the remarks. Oops, I seem to…
Check this out. It’s the launch of a new Middle East human rights initiative to bring together activists from the Middle East and America. They’re doing an essay contest for people under the age of 26 to share ideas about what to do. Check out the website here. It’s being done by a good group…
Egypt has now completed the first round of the the third stage of its three-stage parliamentary elections, and is now completing the run-offs for the third stage. Egypt’s electoral system is complex and sometimes confusing to outsiders because the same election involves three stages, each for a specified geographic region of the country, followed by…
With the Muslim Brotherhood gaining an unprecedented amount of seats in this month’s parliamentary elections, the authorities in Egypt clamped down to the point of surrounding polling stations with riot police and knifing down voters. These voters, in turn, went as far as using ladders to sneak into polling stations so as to simply cast…
This past Sunday, Egypt completed the run-off to the second of three rounds of parliamentary elections. The system is set up such that roughly a third of the 444 seats are up for contest in each round. Because the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) is legally banned, they run candidates as independents and so ascertaining their strength,…
A Saudi national studying at Arizona State University, a party school by all counts and from my own recollection, thinks that the school should sanction the possibility of expelling students for wearing any clothing with the ASU logo when posing for dirty, dirty magazines. The ASU Web Devil reports! If one student leader has his…
I managed to watch some of Al-Jazeera’s coverage of the trial of Saddam Hussein. While he was in power, it was known that he was a semi-literate thug, albeit an exceptionally cunning one. He was reportedly frustrated by his inability to converse with other members of the Iraqi elite on equal terms because he couldn’t…
I have now posted my Middle East Week in Review news bulletin. News briefs for the week deal with issues in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Iran and Chechnya. Lots of election news this week, although some of it is “election” news. Democracy watchers may want to focus…
This article will discuss the recently concluded Cairo conference of “national reconciliation” mostly as it was seen through the Arab media. The result is perhaps best summed up by Al-Hayat‘s headline on Nov. 22: “Cairo Conference: A Pass on American Withdrawal and Agreement on the ‘Legitimacy of Resistance’ and Rejection of ‘Terrorism’.” According to the…
This article was posted to my blog over the weekend, prior to the second round of voting. As indicated in my Middle East Week in Review post, the second round took place on Sunday amid a major crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood. Early indications are that this crackdown has had the result intended by the…
Two rounds of voting out of three have been undertaken in Egypt’s parliamentary elections, with the Muslim Brotherhood scoring approximately one fourth of the total seats. But after its initial strong showing in the relatively peaceful first round, the government took the initiative to crack down on the organization by arresting hundreds of its members…
I have now posted my Middle East Week in Review bulletin for the past week. Topics for this week’s bulletin include Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Israel, Palestine, Morocco, Yemen and Iran. Notable for democracy watchers is that the second round of Egypt’s parliamentary elections took place on Sunday, and this time the government clamped down…
Election results from Egypt’s first round of parliamentary elections are coming in, and due to the greater transparency and lesser violence than before, the Muslim Brotherhood took a big chunk of seats. Of course, there were instances of fraud, intimidation, and genereal irregularities, but they seem to be committed on an individual basis instead of…
It seems that regime thugs in Tunisia are giving French journalists the kind of treatment American journalists have come to expect from the Sudanese. This is from Al-Sharq al-Awsat, Information Summit: Crisis Between Tunisia & France Because of Assaults on Journalists: On the evening of the “World Summit on the Information Society” which Tunisia is…
I’ve never been one to put it past Assad to have much class, but this is a bit much. The Syrian government has called unequivocally, through its state-run media, for people to take to the streets of Beirut in order to topple Lebanon’s first independently elected government. Anyone else thinks the heat is starting to…
I have just posted my Middle East Week in Review news bulletin for the past week. This week’s bullet-points include links on Jordan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Yemen, Iran and Australia. I have a separate post, Abdullah’s Struggle With Islamic Terrorism, which is a follow-up to last week’s attacks in Amman. It focuses on…
I just spat my drink out through my nose, or would have if I’d been drinking, when I came across this subtitle at Reason: Palestine, not Iraq, is the best shot at an Arab democracy. I suppose in part that’s because I was recently planning on using the same comparison to make the point that…
Egyptian blogger Abdal Karim Soliman was released from jail after a massive effort pressing for his release. He had been arrested simply for what he wrote on his blog, which was a denunciation of attacks by Muslims on a Coptic nun. It sparked an outrage in the Egyptian blogosphere, prompting a worldwide campaign on his…