Blogging the democratic revolution
I’m going to take this opportunity to remind you that I’ll be hosting Monday’s Carnival of Revolutions. That means if you have a blog post or know of a blog post relating to democracy movements, tyrannical regimes, the spread of freedom — and all that sweet stuff — be sure to email it to me at robertmayerÉgmail.com. And if you don’t, go on a scavenger hunt so that I don’t have to! Meanwhile, I’m working on a post delving into the complexity of the elections in South Lebanon tomorrow. Stay tuned.
To give some short-term background: The Azeri government has, in the past few weeks, really cracked down on opposition leaders and arrested hundreds of people. With this rally, as with all, the opposition applied for approval to hold their rally but they were denied. But instead of staying home, they came out into the streets as planned, and boy, did they come out. BAKU, June 4 (AFP) – Some 10,000 anti-government protestors rallied in the capital of oil-rich Azerbaijan calling for regime change in the former Soviet republic on Saturday. In the first opposition rally not to have been crushed…
Zapatero may have given in to Al Qaeda an easy time after the Madrid train bombing, but the Spanish won’t have any negotiating with the Basque separatists. Victims, relatives, and supporters are marching in Madrid against government plans to negotiate with the ETA terrorists. Great photo here. Spain’s prime minister Jos???? Luis Rodr????guez Zapatero faces the first major demonstration against him today when tens of thousands are to march through Madrid demanding he does not negotiate with the Basque terrorist group Eta. Organisers said at least 200 coaches were due for the march, which has the backing of the main…
It is a unique blessing of the free world that its people can express a wide variety of opinions and choose how to live peacefully without being persecuted by their own governments. These are examples of real, universal human rights that need to be defended and brought to the dark corners of the world. This is why we need human rights organizations that can recognize the difference between sporadic crime in the free world and regimen genocide where the press doesn’t exist to report it. This is the problem with much of the human rights movement today. Its leadership does…
I normally don’t comment on the media, but this bit from the AP is egregious: But in a development that could affect efforts to get Shiites and Sunnis working together, President Jalal Talabani said Saddam, a Sunni, could be put on trial in the next two months. Hello? Excuse me? As though it’s not a ridiculous enough assumption that Saddam Hussein is representative of Iraq’s Sunnis and that his trial could cost the new government their support… bipartisan cooperation efforts are absolutely nowhere on the scale of important issues in trying and sentencing a genocidal tyrant who literally filled the…
The regime is going to be starving for legitimacy if this is true, and by all accounts it looks highly probable. A nationwide survey conducted by an Iranian opposition group showed widespread voter apathy in Iran’s upcoming June 17 presidential elections. The People??????????s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI) said in a press release that a survey of 1,730 adults eligible to vote showed that 92 percent of voters intend to boycott the elections. The survey was based on interviews conducted between May 27 and May 30, 2005. READ MORE While the PMOI as an opposition group has clear interests in…
It is not unusual for countries to have “rubber-stamp” parliaments, but they don’t usually make it as obvious as Egypt does. I recently posted a roundup on Egypt’s ruff-up of the opposition in the recent referendum meant to endorse a change to the election law which would superficially allow for open elections while in reality guaranteeing continued dominence of the ruling party. If you missed it and haven’t followed events in Egypt lately, you might want to read that for background. Yet now evidence has appeared which shows that the ruling party of President Hosni Mubarak, the National Democratic Party,…
A columnist for the Lebanese publication An Nahar has been murdered in a car bombing, in which his car was rigged to explode upon ignition. Here is the report from Reporters Without Borders: Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert M????nard, who is currently in Lebanon, voiced dismay at the murder of columnist Samir Kassir of the An-Nahar newspaper, who was killed when his car blew up this morning in Beirut. “We are in a complete state of shock after Samir Kassir’s cowardly murder,” M????nard said. “We have lost a friend, and press freedom has lost a passionate defender. We share his…
Before anything, read Austin Bay’s fabulous piece fisking Amnesty International on their bizarre claim that Gitmo and Abu Ghraib are modern day gulags, and that the U.S. is the leader in human rights abuses in the world. Hahahahahaha. Right. Anyhow, I received an email with a really good idea: Go to Google News and search for stories about “human rights abuses xxx” where xxx is the name of a country. Let’s see the results as of this moment. United States: 2,740 Iran: 374 China: 824 Sudan: 400 Zimbabwe: 265 Belarus: 39 Russia: 483 Burma: 68 Saudi Arabia: 142 Nepal: 232…
Two weeks ago, Robert Mugabe started his “Operation: Clean-up” which has destroyed the market stalls of thousands of Zimbabweans and now left up to two million homeless. On both the human rights and geopolitics scale, the role that China plays in Africa in general and Zimbabwe in particular is especially important. They have been making inroads into the continent for years and the effects are starting to show. The opposition Sokwanele blog explains: Now let’s look at more recent developments. Riot police have just been sent into the flea markets in Harare, and been set upon street traders who ply…
Gary Metz at Regime Change Iran is looking toward the Iranian presidential elections on June 17, and he wants the people there to know the truth about what goes on in their own country. That’s why he’s organizing a blogosphere campaign to spread the news about Iran so that the people have plenty of opportunities to circumvent regime attempts to shut them out. If you support democracy in Iran, and you are a blogger, be sure to visit the link.
After years of stalled talks between the two, Georgia and Russia have signed a joint declaration pledging toward a specific plan for the pullout of Russian military bases from Georgia. The Russian and Georgian Foreign Ministries published a joint declaration, which outlines the process of withdrawal of Russian military bases from Georgia. It also deals border delimitation and conflict resolution issues. The Joint Declaration was signed by the to Ministers ???????? Sergey Lavrov and Salome Zourabichvili, after talks in Moscow on May 30. According to the declaration Russia committed itself to putting its two military bases, in Batumi and Akhalkalaki,…
George Bush has a way of surprising dictators. He gets in their faces when they least expect it. He’s bold. He says what he means and means what he says. Nice to see a real man. Today he symbolically snapped a great wet towel in the face of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez. Bush openly met with Venezuelan dissidents, like Babe Of Politics, Maria Corina Machado, giving the NGO leaders from Sumate the full White House tour and VIP treatment, making sure there were lots of cameras around to see the intention. Bush doesn’t do nuance. He likes people who like…
Exactly two months ago, this “outpost of tyranny” was holding parliamentary elections that were inexplicably fraudulent. Many foreign journalists were inside the country, so Mugabe made sure that food was given out and gasoline made available — at least in his supporters’ strongholds. Even once he stole the election and secured enough seats to change the constitution at whim, he made conciliatory grunts to the opposition. No more. The cloak of illusion soon came off as these basic commodities have become memories of the distant past. Inflation and unemployment has skyrocketed, making it impossible to save or even to live.…
This one looks a lot more unstable – stay tuned. Read it here.
Has Hugo Chavez had a heart attack? Been done in by an ex-wife? Gotten an offer he can’t refuse from a fed-up military? He’s disappeared, the descamisados are gathering below his balcony, the streets are shut down, and his spokesmen say all is normal. His minions say he will come to the balcony to address the adoring masses soon. Something’s going on. Could this be the end? Here is my Babalu summary here.
Nathan Hamm of Registan is hosting this week’s carnival of revolutions! Check it out to read the blogosphere’s best on democracy movements unfolding around the world.
GatewayPundit has a terrific item on a little-noted but huge Hong Kong freedom and democracy march. They’re determined people, those Hong Kongers, and on marches they go all out. GatewayPundit has a couple great pictures of Asia’s most beautiful city, too, making me feel like I’m there. See it here.
When I lived in Oxford, I remember how tough the U.K. courts were in granting asylum to Romanians fleeing Ceaucescu’s communist hellhole, perhaps fearing a flood of people. They gave almost no one a break. This being England, things don’t change that much, and I doubt U.K. courts are any less tough. So it tells you something when a British court acknowleged the intolerable reality of Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela and granted a young Venezuelan couple asylum. Alek Boyd’s gotten hold of some court documents that show the ordeal of the dissidents, and with the court’s note that Venezuela has assumed…
It has been widely reported that the referendum on Egypt’s new electoral system was marred by violence. The referendum was passed with 82% of the vote with 54% participation amid a widespread boycott by both Islamist and secularist opposition parties. Meanwhile, multiple accounts were given of opposition protesters being physically attacked by supporters of President Hosni Mubarak and his National Democratic Party. (See my pre-referendum post, Egypt Clamps Down on the Muslim Brotherhood, which provides some background and discusses some of the issues regarding reform in Egypt.) But how bad was the violence? The Egyptian government, unsurprisingly, is arguing that…
The first round of Lebanon’s first election free of Syrian interference since, well, before I was born has started. The next rounds will take place over the next three consecutive Sunday’s, ending on June 19. Candidates will be competing for 19 seats within three districts within the Beirut region. There are 240 polling stations open and 100 observers from the EU and the UN. But it is unlikely to be much of a competition, with Saad Hariri — the successor and son of Rafik Hariri — looking to sweep every seats with nine seats automatically won unopposed. For more information…
Don’t miss Regime Change Iran, with the most important roundup of events pertaining to Iran that you will ever read.
Dictator Hugo Chavez of Venezuela breaks everything he touches. He’s destroyed Venezuela’s democratic institutions, wrecked its judiciary, laid waste to its oilfields, subverted its elections, desecrated its ecology, devalued its money, trashed its free press, busted its banks, stomped its property rights, tore apart its relations with the U.S., gutted its civil service, split its military, wrecked its treasury, bankrupted its companies, shot its demonstrators dead, neglected its tallest skyscraper to burn, turned its hillsides into mudslides and made a smoking ruin of Venezuela’s good name in the world. That’s not all. The story of how he’s desecrated art is…
Today’s 20-year verdict against Schapelle Corby, supposedly for drug possession and drug running on the island of Bali, has radicalized a major part of Australia. The 27-year-old surfer insists she didn’t do it, but was the victim of an airport smuggling ring that forgot to retrieve its pot from her boogie board bag. Conveniently for them, the film of the baggage sequence has disappeared from airport custody. And no fingerprints were taken from the pot, something Schapelle says would exonerate her. Meanwhile, Indonesia tried her with a real charmer of a judge who said he didn’t believe in acquitting anyone…
It had to happen sooner or later. The high expectations and aspirations of the Lebanese people are slowly degrading into a state of national melancholy. Undoubtedly, Lebanon will never be the same after March’s Cedar Revolution, but that won’t stop the country’s professional politicians from pulling as many strings as possible to stay in power. Actually, it is no wonder that a sense of disillusionment has set in as May 29 nears. Now that Syria has pulled out, the precedent for a unified anti-Syria opposition has been removed as each party forms alliances and election lists with formerly hostile rivals.…