Blogging the democratic revolution
Don’t miss it, soapgun is hosting this week’s carnival of revolutions! And might I say, he did a very good job. Regime Change Iran has up it’s Iran week in review, filled with very important news and information. The second edition of Azerbaijan election monitor is up. Very in-depth. The Eurasia Daily Monitor also has up a bunch of stuff, as does Eurasianet. Transitions Online, an e-zine covering the progress of democracy in the former USSR, has up a new articles as well. Mark Steyn, lastly but not leastly, has his column up about the London tube tragedy here. Check…
It’s time for another hard hitting report by Amnesty International, and this time the Iraqi “insurgents” have found themselves in their, er, verbal crosshairs. They’re still recovering from the whole “Guantanamo = Gulag” controversy, so this is the perfect time to wise up and release a real report on real human rights abuses. It’s the perfect way to both get their credibility back and do the work they were started to do. The press release starts off really well too; with a real bang, if you’ll excuse the pun. Armed groups opposed to the US-led multinational force and Iraq’s government…
All stops must be pulled out to pass CAFTA. Not doing it will destroy our country. And we can kiss the hemisphere goodbye. The showdown is this week. We cannot fail. I repeat, cannot. Andres Oppenheimer, in the most powerful argument yet, explains why here. Update: The Washington Post, in its bluntest argument yet, warns that a vote against CAFTA is a vote for Hugo Chavez. It’s as simple as that.
Nicaragua’s Contras, the original freedom fighters in our lifetime, who during the Reagan Era, took on the name and tradition of the original Hungarian freedom fighters who resisted Soviet tanks in 1956, have turned their swords into plowshares and begun the extraordinary task of growing some of the world’s best coffee. Freedom-fighting Contra Cafe! Being Nicaraguan, it’s going to be good – it would be good even if sandalistas grew it – but so much the better that it’s a project of those who truly know what freedom is. Boli-Nica first discovered the phenomenon, and Instapundit has some good and…
Earlier in the week I wrote about martial law being declared in Mahabad, a city in the north-western Kurdish area of Iran. According to Kurdish Media, protestors are defying the crackdown. And now, the protests are spreading throughout Kurdish cities in Iran. Since the killing of Shuana Kardi, a Kurdish activist, on Saturday July the 13th by the Pastaram in the city of Mahabad, Iranian Kurdistan, the people of this city have come every day to the streets in order to protest against the Iranian state????????s oppressive policy towards the Kurds. They expressed their demands for democracy, their national and…
Greenpeace recently told Venezuelan activist Alek Boyd it had better things to do than defend endangered species in Hugo Chavez’s slash-and-burn Venezuela. So, rare-songbird soup is back on the menu in Chavistaville. A private nature conservancy full of rare animals and plants unique to Venezuela, Hato Pinero, is under the machete by Chavez’s Marxist-Leninist land-confiscators as never before. The Los Angeles Times has the full horrible story on Hato Pinero that Greenpeace doesn’t care about here. Here are the desperate pleas from Hato Pinero’s owners about this ensuing maelstrom of environmental waste ahead: Andres Branger made pleas to save his…
After suffering through terrible years under a populist madman who suspended the national legislature when free parliamentary threatened his rule, and following three years of a bloodless military coup, the people of Guinea-Bissau are ready to return to multi-party democracy. Indications are showing that, indeed, today will be a good day for the otherwise turbulent nation.
Two editorials about today’s launch of Telesur, Hugo Chavez’s grand new television network designed to put the region’s free press out of business, are in today’s Chicago Tribune and Monday’s Investor’s Business Daily. (A third, here, from El Semanal Digital, is in Spanish.) The Tribune points out that Castro is deeply involved in this “news” project, a bad sign given his abysmal record on the free press, and argues that if it’s as bad as it looks, no one’s going to watch it. True. IBD warns that this is an effort to replace Venezuela’s authentic free press and give Colombia’s…
OK, so it’s a bit of a stretch to put this under babes of politics, but I think you’ll let this one go: Pounding a beat, pistol in hand, an Iraqi woman soldier is a novelty in Baghdad: Pounding her Baghdad beat, wrapped in a bulletproof vest and brandishing a pistol, Sgt. Bushra Jabar definitely stands out in the new Iraq. She’s the only woman in the Iraqi Army unit patrolling the Kharkh district in the heart of the capital. … Her day starts with a ride to her base in the back of a military pickup truck. She’s wearing…
Protestors demonstrated for the Prime Minister of Nepal who was removed from office following the King’s constitutional coup nearly half a year ago. When to police rushed in to break it up with batons, the protestors fought back with bricks. Not what I’d call a healthy situation. KATMANDU, Nepal (AP) – Police used batons to break up a protest by supporters of this Himalayan country’s detained former prime minister on Sunday, leaving about 15 demonstrators and 10 police injured. About 400 supporters of Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba were rallying outside the Royal Commission for Corruption Control, waving flags and…
Gateway Pundit rounds up the news on pro-democracy dissidents imprisoned in Cuba for protesting the regime. One of these dissidents is a woman named Martha Beatriz Roque, an organizer of the first ever Assembly for Civil Society in May. Now, at least five of the 20 dissidents have been freed. Cuban authorities have released some of the group of 20 dissidents detained shortly before a planned protest in Havana on Friday. According to the independent Cuban Commission for Human Rights, at least five people have been released. Among those who have been allowed home after being questioned overnight, is a…
Soapgun is hosting this week’s carnival of revolutions. Please submit your democracy-related posts to him by sometime on Sunday: soapgun99Éyahoo.com. Thanks!
This is a roundup for the Egyptian blogosphere (plus some other Arab blogs) and the protests against terrorism which they are organizing. I’ll be updating this post as I get new links. I would like to note that I was in Luxor, Egypt in December 1997, shortly after the gunning down of foreign tourists at the Temple of Hapsetshut there. It really hurt the local people and they were very angry. There were signs in the streets saying “No to Terrorism” in Arabic only; this wasn’t a campaign for foreign consumption. There was also an Arabic-only interview with Egyptian national…
Kofi Annan is mad. That’s right, Robert Mugabe is still plundering the entire country of Zimbabwe, and Kofi has to take time away from shredding Oil-for-Food documents to read a 100 page report about it. Hey, if I were the head of an ineffective international institution and I had to read about something I couldn’t do anything about, I’d be mad too. UNITED NATIONS, July 22 – The United Nations today condemned the mass destruction of urban slums and shantytowns in Zimbabwe by the government of Robert G. Mugabe as a “disastrous venture,” saying it had left 700,000 people homeless…
I have already discussed thoroughly the ongoing trade embargo that Syria is imposing on Lebanon. By closing off the border, Syria is effectively shutting out Lebanon’s only means by which to transport their goods to the rest of the Arab world. This in the middle of an enormous fiscal crisis worth upwords of $30 billion. Effectively, Syria is waging a trade war against Lebanon to throw it into crisis while saying that the Lebanese “can’t govern themselves.” One of Syria’s other tactics at sowing discord has been the targeted assassination of politicians in Lebanon. Today, another bomb went off in…
Kurds in western Iran, on the border with Iraqi Kurdistan, have been engaging in massive unrest following the election. Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty has superb background on the story as usual. Unrest among Kurds living in western Iran, which has been continuing for several weeks, has prompted a government investigation that began on 20 July. This comes on the heels of low levels of Kurdish participation in the June presidential election, which may be indicative of their sense of exclusion from the country’s politics. The Kurds are not promoting separatism, and the central government may find that meeting…
Here’s an interesting article at The Messenger, an English-language Georgian newspaper. Additionally, here at a Ukrainian news site, there’s a brief report on Israeli investment in Ukraine, noting that over the most recent half year “foreign capital amount increased 16 times in comparison with the same period of the last year.”
On July 19th I posted on a leak of the draft Iraqi bill of rights, which was published in Arabic on June 30 and translated to English on July 6. After I posted about that draft, a new one was released on July 20 and subsequently translated by Nathan Brown at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Given the three weeks of separation between these two drafts, significant and progressive changes can be seen since June 30. You can read the full text of the new draft, accompanied by the old one, here. One of the smallest yet significant changes…
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice decided to pay a surprise visit to Beirut, Lebanon this fine Friday. The purpose of the visit is to give support to the new government after the withdrawal of Syria. Here are the details: U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived in Beirut on Friday for a surprise visit, the first by Washington’s top envoy to Lebanon since Syria’s April troops withdrawal from this country under U.S.-led international pressure. Rice arrived on a private plane that landed at 1 p.m. (1000 GMT) and she is expected to meet President Lahoud, according to presidential spokesman Rafik…
Andy “Now that’s what I call inflation!” Young has come across a few gems detailing the incredible rate that corruption and bribe payments are growing in Russia since just after Putin took the presidency. In fact, sincev2001, the average bribe has grown 10-fold. INDEM’s “Corruption in Russia: Dynamics and Perspectives” report claims the average bribe in 2001 was $10,200 and has increased to $135,000 in 2005. The report claims bribes increased 10-fold since 2001 and equal to two and a half times the current federal budget. The Moscow Times report he links to also that businesses and individuals are “forking…
We have often speculated about who and where Cuba’s Babes of Politics, the women opposed to the Fidel Castro regime, are. I have found them, I will leave you with their riveting story opposing Castro and a NYT photo that takes care of business: Quote from one of the dancers: “An artist will always be a revolutionary in the whole sense of the word,” Mr. David said, “because he’s always trying to change things, but through culture, not politics.”
I just wrote an article about trade as the needed force for democratization in Africa. I think it’s really good and would like to try to get it published. Not to mention I have tuition to pay, so getting a little bit of cash would be cool too. Can anyone here get me in touch with someone who might consider my article? It’s just over 800 words, a reasonable length. Any help would be great!
Last week I noted a leaked memo from the Kremlin discussing its fear of the collapse of the republic of Dagestan, located in the North Caucasus. In essense, their ultra repressive tactics against separatist Chechnya has led to an endless cycle of repression, which breeds extremism, which earns an even more repressive repsonse from Moscow. This extremism against the Russian state is being exported throughout the entire North Caucasus. Essentially, what once were separatist rebels are transformd into terrorists working alongside Islamic militants. Putin is now up against an entire region of his country that wants to break away violently.…
In new news, more bombs in London: Three London Underground stations were evacuated at midday Thursday, and the London police commissioner confirmed that four explosions occurred in the subway and on a bus. The Fire Brigade was investigating a report of smoke at one station. And in a follow-up to old news, it looks like the Georgian grenade-thrower got found, killed a Georgian police officer, got shot, and is now receiving medical care. And of all the possible surprises: Officials on Thursday gave little information about Arutyunian, described in news reports as being in his mid-20s and unemployed. But Interior…
People in Kenya’s capital of Nairobi demonstrated for the second day against proposed constitutional changes that will leave the country with a watered down premiership and an ultimately authoritative presidency. The government has banned the demonstrations, but protestors say they will take to the streets for a third day. Clashes are also being reported in cities elsewhere. NAIROBI, July 21 (Reuters) – Kenyan riot police guarded the rubble-strewn streets of Nairobi on Thursday as protest leaders promised a third day of demonstrations against President Mwai Kibaki’s handling of a constitution reform. The protests — which have turned central Nairobi into…