Blogging the democratic revolution
Iraq, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon – each in its own way has taken steps lately, some large, some small, toward joining the free world. But now Libya? Today’s Al-Hayat reports that Libya’s ruler, Mu’amar Qadafi, seems to have charted a new path in some ways, and reframed old predilictions on other issues. Coming off Libya’s renunciation of nuclear weapons and semi-normalization with the U.S. and Britain, this is potentially encouraging. The article, Qadafi Declares Reforms and Ends Hostility Between ‘African Libya’ and Israel, made the following points: The main point which was new was that normalization with Israel seems…
Why does the Venezuela’s thuggish dictatorship cringe at the cold spotlight of one of Aleksander Boyd’s meticulous investigations? Find out here.
Gateway Pundit has been following elections in Kyrgyzstan as well, and note unrest in the south over fraud, along with violations of people being bought off. Make sure to read it over. In addition to that, a grenade was aimed at an opposition leader, but it did not succeed. But read this: BISHKEK, March 3 (Reuters) – Assailants threw a grenade into the empty apartment of a prominent Kyrgyz opposition leader on Thursday, causing no casualties, in an attack both opposition and authorities accused each other of staging. The blast occurred days after the first of two rounds of a…
Elmar Huseynov, the editor of the outspoken anti-government weekly publication, Monitor, was shot dead by an unknown assailant on March 2. The first thing that jumped to my mind when hearing about this was the murder of Gongadze in Ukraine, who was the anti-government editor of Ukrainska Pravda. HRW, New York, 04.03.2005 — The Azerbaijani government must fully investigate the killing of the editor of the independent weekly magazine Monitor, Human Rights Watch said today. The murder of the editor, Elmar Huseynov, is a frightening reminder of the danger of outspoken criticism in Azerbaijan. On the evening of Wednesday, March…
That’s the title of a new report by Amnesty International concerning Nepal. The government of Nepal should restore fundamental human rights, open a peace process based on justice and respect for human rights, protect human rights defenders and end the impunity of the security forces. The Maoists should commit themselves to respect international human rights and humanitarian law. The US, UK and India play a critical role as major allies of Nepal and key providers of military aid. AI calls on them to suspend all military assistance to the government of Nepal as a means of pressurising it to change…
In a truly alarming development, Miguel Octavio reports that Venezuela’s dictatorship is handing over the job of issuing identity cards for every Venezuelan to a Cuban “company.” With this measure, every Venezuelan’s fingerprints, photograph and identity particulars will be in on file with Castro’s secret police. Every one. Given that the Chavez dictatorship enacted a recent law to allow Castro’s secret agents to question, arrest and spirit back to Cuba for Castro’s “justice” any Venezuelan they like, this complete citizen database in the hands of Cuba’s secret police has got to be the most damning dangerous thing Hugo Chavez has…
I missed yesterday but today I am back on track. Daily Burma is up. It’s short and sweet but there are some interesting developments to watch out for.
Arthur Chrenkoff is doing just that. Check it out, it makes interesting reading. I’ve got some work to get done and a nap to take, so the Lebanon update will come in the wee hours of the morning (which is cool, because the time zone difference will give me more to collect). Look forward to it!
The Reuters headline says it all: Oil Rich Venezuela Devalues Currency. Just as the IMF always recommends to developing (but not donor) countries. ‘It will raise your exports!’ they lie. Chavez didn’t need the IMF to order him to do this, he was happy to commit economic suicide on his own. What’s confounding is that Venezuela is an oil-exporting country with a huge stream of dollar revenue, quite unlike the usual IMF-bait basket case. The net result will be theft of savings, soaring inflation, and reduced purchasing power, impoverishing the poor most of all. Venezuelan is a high importer of…
Senator John McCain, my senator in Arizona, issued a statement on the recent elections in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. And it was the right oneto make.
Blogger Randy Paul from Beautiful Horizons has a welcome perspective on Uruguay and its new president, Tabare Vazquez, a leftist, whose party is unpromisingly identified on the radio here as a collection of ‘communists, socialists and tupamaro guerrillas.’ Understandably, Vazquez is a cause for alarm to some – even some Uruguayans. But Randy checked around, and so did I, and the most likely outcome is Vazquez will be a pragmatist – more Lula than Chavez. Randy outlines several interesting reasons why. Randy’s Uruguay analysis isn’t firsthand but he’s got a good feel for much of the region and his take…
Alek Boyd has located a disturbing new story out of Rome about a member of Chavez’s trusted inner circle – a presidential guardsman charged with protecting Chavez’s life, who’s now charged with drug trafficking among Europe’s dangerous syndicates. In light of recent stories about Chavez’s permitting FARC Marxist drug lords like Rodrigo Granda to walk freely in Venezuela with a cheaply bestowed passport, this could signal Chavez’s growing involvement in narcotrafficking on world markets. We should all be concerned.
One of the best Venezuelan bloggers has today’s pickings from Hugo Chavez’s latest lunatic ravings. The unpopular Venezuelan dictator’s going off the deep end.
Val Prieto, who writes the more-than-excellent Babalu Blog, outlines an old story for Cuban-Americans – the blindness of those who will not see Castro’s atrocious tyranny. Miami Cubans, more so than many exiles on the freedom fighting frontier, run into these dictator-worshipping jackasses all the time. Val’s exchange with one of them is worth reading here.
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…
First the revolution; now the aftermath. Well, for Syria that is. Just about everyone and their mother is taking shots at what soon will be the next regime to surrender in the war of ideas. NEWS: The Lebanese opposition is keeping up the front, and have put forward a list of several basic demands that must be met to continue the activities of government: After a joint meeting at the mountain home of opposition leader Walid Jumblatt, they called on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to announce a troop pullout from the country and for the resignation of security officials there.…
Winds of Change has a huge roundup of news concerning Iran. That and Wednesday’s briefing from Regime Change Iran complement each other nicely.
This is the guy that China put into power in Hong Kong after it was handed over from the British in 1997. After some protests against him, the Party promoted him out to a position in China. Bill thinks it has something to do with preventing a democratic push in light of events elsewhere in the world. UPDATE: Looks like a lot of people are taking notice here.
If you are prominent, you get arrested. If you are not, you get the death squad. Hundreds of complaints about dozens of discovered bodies signals an extremely alarming new development out of Venezuela. The details are atrocious. UPDATED
These are dark days for Venezuela. Dictator Hugo Chavez has ordered a terrible string of arrests of some of the country’s most prominent journalists, bankers, union leaders, lawyers, and political leaders. I have never seen anything like this, coming in such a sudden, synchronized wave. This is a dark night of totalitarianism descending.
One of the worst canards out there, sponsored by pro-Chavez leftists, is the repetitively boring claim that Venezuela’s opposition “has no ideas” other than to get rid of widely despised Marxist dictator Hugo Chavez. Alek Boyd at VCrisis has an interesting outline of proposals he thinks would benefit Venezuela in a post-Chavez area. It’s a fascinating glimpse of what’s likely to come and I enjoyed the read.
I was just sitting here a couple hours ago reading and thinking about doing a roundup on elections in Moldova, which are a week from now, but Lyndon Allin beat me to it.
A series of posts I have been reading over at David McDuff’s blog. Part six is up, and he has links to the other five parts. Check that out.
Nathan has a bunch of follow up news to the recent election there. Some are saying that democracy is on the march there as well!
Now this is news! Except that you have to wade through paragraph upon paragraph of details about bombings and missing people to see it. The writers at the AP really need to stay on focus before. Like I was taught in elementary school, “Opening, support, closing.” You’ll see from the article that their’s is more like “Opening, several paragraphs unrelated to the headline whatsoever, small snippet of relevant information.” I’ll put three dots for every paragraph skipped to get there: BAGHDAD, Iraq – More than 2,000 people demonstrated Tuesday at the site of a car bombing south of Baghdad that…