Yesterday, Estonia held its national parliamentary election. Prime Minister Andrus Ansip’s Reform Party increased its position from 19 to 31 seats in the 101-seat parliament, while their coalition partner in the previous government, the Centre Party, gained one seat to move to 29. The Union of Pro Patria and Res Publica holds 19 seats, the Social Democrats hold 10, and the Greens and the People’s Union of Estonia each hold 6 (the agrarianist People’s Union was the third coalition party in the previous government).

This is a remarkable gain for the liberty-oriented Reform Party, although it does not provide enough seats to form a coalition with only Pro Patria, a party more aligned with Reform than the left-leaning Centre Party is. It was Pro Patria’s Mart Laar who, before the union with Res Publica, implemented numerous market reforms largely influenced by Milton Friedman, and helped transform the former Soviet Republic into a rapidly growing Baltic Tiger. Thus, Ansip could form a coalition with Pro Patria and one other party — none is significantly libertarian — or continue the partnership with the Centre Party alone. It is unlikely that a Reform/Centre coalition would invite any other party.

The election comes at a time when Estonia is nearing entry into the Eurozone and when their relations with Russia are still simmering. Reuters notes in their story: “The tensions were sparked when parliament voted to remove a statue of a Red Army soldier from the center of the capital Tallinn because it was a reminder of 50 years of Soviet rule.”

Also of some interest, this was the first national election anywhere in the world to make use of Internet voting.

In summary, Estonia has made rapid advances since regaining independence, and with this election appears to continue in its desire to lead a path of freedom, at the forefront not just of the Baltics but throughout Europe and beyond. Their example has cleanly illustrated the links between minimal restrictions of individual liberties and an open, prosperous society.

Sokwanele has turned up with some incredible footage of undercover news shot in Zimbabwe and aired the ITV. The video features protestors running down the street as they flea tear gas being launched at them by riot police, along with interviews and a look at how Zimbabweans are forced to live nowadays. One man describes himself as already dead, a sign that there is so little hope for change in Zimbabwe under President Mugabe that the only thing people have left to do is fight.

This is a great video worth watching. What is possibly even more amazing is that it was posted on YouTube, so we all have the ability to see it freely. I would post it here, but I’d much prefer to see you check it out over at Sokwanele. They have some great news and content up these days so make sure to check out the rest of their site.

For at least two years in a row now, women have gathered by the hundreds, if not thousands, on June 12 to demand equal rights from the tyrannical Islamic government. They’re sick of being treated as second class citizens — no, animals — in their own society. Publius reported on these events, the first one in 2005 where demonstrators gathered to protest this gender apartheid. It was one of the first such large demonstrations by women, for women, since the revolution. In 2006, the event unfolded once again, with the women taking confidence from the year before that they could once again raise the issue.

Such a thing would prove to be too humiliating for the authorities, however. The women were rounded up, beaten, and taught a lesson that only strengthened their knowledge that the Iranian constitution, supposedly based on freedom and equal rights, is a load of hypocritical crap.

Unfortunately many of them are on trial for the simple act of protest. So today their fellow women came out to protest the impending convictions, only to prove once again that the Islamic regime in Tehran is relentless in repressing its own women.

March 5, 2007 (RFE/RL) — More than 30 Iranian women have been arrested in Tehran for protesting against government pressure being put on women’s rights activists.

The women had gathered outside a court in Tehran on March 4 to show their support for four women’s rights activists who went on trial that day for organizing a protest last summer against discriminatory laws. Reports say many of the protesters and the activists are now in jail.

The arrests are the culmination of a year of increasing pressure on women’s rights activists, who have been arrested, summoned to court, threatened, and harassed. Their protests have also been disrupted — in some cases violently — and their websites have been blocked.

Some observers believe the arrests are aimed at intimidating activists who were planning to hold a gathering on March 8 to mark International Women’s Day and to protest injustice against women.

The move is also seen as an attempt to silence activists who have been fighting for equal rights.

Many of those who had called for holding a protest in front of the parliament on March 8 are now in jail.

Iranian rights groups report that between 30 and 34 women who were arrested are being held in Tehran’s Evin Prison. Among them are four top women’s movement leaders: Noushin Ahmadi Khorasani, Parvin Ardalan, Sussan Tahmassebi, and Shahla Entesari.

They went on trial on March 4 in connection with a June gathering against laws that they consider discriminatory against women. Charges against them include acting against Iran’s national interests and participating in an illegal gathering.

The four leaders were arrested after they left the court and joined other women who had gathered outside Tehran’s revolutionary court. They were reportedly holding banners that said: “Holding peaceful gatherings is our absolute right.”

Activists say the Iranian Constitution ensures the right to holding a peaceful gathering. Yet police forces disrupted the activists on March 4 and drove the women away in minibuses.

Peyman Aref, a student activist in Tehran, told Radio Farda that police used force against demonstrators.

“They were threatened and they were also beaten up,” Aref said. “The crowd — ÄwhichÅ included more than 50 people — tried to resist by sitting on the ground and not reacting to the beatings. Finally, around 10:00, female police came and the activists were arrested.”

Despite the regime’s best attempts, women’s rights activists are making great headway these days. Women’s groups are pushing some major ground campaigns, including ending the practice of stoning and gathering one million signatures to end the discriminatory laws passed against them. The problem for the regime is that these days such ideas are becoming quite popular. Using force is the only way to silence them, in the regime’s eyes.

But these women don’t fight back. When they are attacked, they sit on the ground and pray for it to stop. Cowardly as it is, the government will then send in female riot police so that it looks more like one big catfight rather than a bunch of crazed maniacs with truncheons bulldozing over someone else’s wife.

It’s absolutely despicable, but nobody is fooled. These women are on the front of the lines fighting for freedom in their country. They’re the ones raising the future generation and they’re the ones taking the beating. It is no wonder that, finally, their cause is beginning to make headway.

Last week, we informed readers about aggressive efforts by and on behalf of Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin to punish Internet scribes who dare to criticize the Moscow regime with brutal personal attacks. In other words, demand-side pressure on Kremlin critics. The ultimate expression of this strategy was the murder of Anna Politkovskaya, though for sheer malignant, bloodthirsty sadism nothing can match the killing of strident Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko in London — a killing which MSNBC reported last week has been confirmed by British authorities to have been a state-sponsored Kremlin whack job (as the Conjecturer blog reminded us recently, there are dozens of relatively unknown victims of this burgeoning holocaust, and shame on us if we let them be anonymous). No sooner had the MSNBC report gone public than, terrifyingly, one of the main sources, Paul Joyal, was shot near his home in Maryland. It’s not known yet whether the incident was a random street crime, but the timing is truly terrifying.

Now, this week, let’s look at the supply side element of the Kremlin’s strategy.

It must be acknowledged that the Kremlin is not one-dimensional, and doesn’t try to solve all its problems with the use of brute force. Just like Marlon Brando in “The Godfather” (award-winning pundit Charles Krauthammer recently said “President” Putin’s “more accurate title would be godfather”), before the Kremlin kills you it will leave the head of a dead horse in your bed, and before it does that it will offer to buy your soul. If you won’t sell, they figure, that’s your problem.

If the killing of Anna Politkovskaya was the ultimate expression of the demand-side strategy, then surely the grandest manifestation of the supply-side approach was when the Kremlin went out and bought itself a German Chancellor, namely Gerhard Schr????der (shown literally at Master Putin’s beck and call in the cartoon above). The cost was a $300,000 annual salary as head of a Russian energy consortium, and ever since then Schr????der has proved a loyal minion of the Kremlin. His response to the Litvinenko killing was this: “Unfortunately, journalists die quite often in other countries, but why doesn’t anybody try to accuse the government Äof wrongdoingÅ in those situations? In Russia , no matter what happens, it’s Putin.” Herr Schr????der apparently has not heard that, according to the Paris-based international organization Reporters without Borders, Russia isn’t just like lots of other countries where this kind of brutality is concerned. Rather, it is among the world’s very most most dangerous countries for the media, along with Iraq and Mexico. At least 20 reporters have been killed in Russia since President Vladimir Putin took office in March 2000, including three last year. The International Federation of Journalists puts the figure at 40.

And just as is the case with the supply-side strategy, there are many grass-roots level events that fly low under our radar. Let’s review a few of them.

The story begins with the Kremlin’s creation of its own satellite TV station for the projection of propaganda across the world in English, a station known as “Russia Today.” Aggressively engaged in an effort to “rebrand” Russia in the West, with the help of gun-for-hire Western PR firms, Russia Today first bought itself a nucleus of Russian journalists and then starting putting out the good word on Russia. Naturally, it doesn’t let pesky little things like facts get in the way of its reporting. For instance, as Radio Free Europe recently reported a particularly flagrant example of neo-Soviet “journalism”:

Following the killings of journalist Anna Politkovskaya and former security services officer Aleksandr Litvinenko, the FSB has also been in dire need of an image makeover. And, like the Kremlin and Gazprom, it too has initiated a public-relations campaign, although its effort has a more unorthodox flavor. At the center of its campaign has been an expedition to Antarctica, the declared purpose of which was to reinforce Russia’s claim to that frozen wasteland, undermining the United States’ “monopoly” over the South Pole.

The purpose was twofold. To show that the FSB is at the frontline of Russia’s national interests and revive the Soviet-era “heroic” image of the KGB. In 2003, FSB head Nikolai Patrushev made similar efforts and erected, with a group of FSB officers, a Russian flag at the North Pole, and, in 2004, an elite FSB force led by Patrushev put a Russian flag at the peak of Mount Elbrus, the highest mountain in Europe. So on January 3, two FSB MI-8 helicopters flew from Punta Arena in Chile with Patrushev, First Deputy Director and Federal Boarder Guard Service head Vladimir Pronichev, and other assorted FSB officers on board. The expedition landed at the South Pole on January 7, where Patrushev telephoned Putin to extend his best wishes for the Russian Orthodox Christmas. Russian television channels covered the FSB expedition extensively, noting that the trip was wholly supported by private sponsors and that the Russian flag planted at the South Pole symbolizes the restoration of Russia’s superpower status.

Russian television broadcasts, however, failed to inform viewers that Patrushev was calling from the permanent U.S. Amundsen-Scott South Pole station, staffed by almost 100 U.S. citizens. Patrushev’s team was bivouacked there waiting for suitable flight weather. And the phone he used to call Putin? That was actually borrowed from a U.S. explorer, according to NTV.

Then Russia Today started branching out. It bought itself a Western “journalist,” one Peter Lavelle, to write a blog on its website. In the first entry on that blog, written January 12th, Lavelle wrote of Russia’s efforts to weaponize its energy resources and terrorize the former Russian slave states in Eastern Europe and Central Asia: “Russia is correct to maintain its position that all its customers pay world prices for energy. If that causes pain for the former republics of the Soviet Union, so be it.” It formed a nexus with a blog published by the nefarious Discovery Institute, whose main reason for existing is to ban the teaching of evolution in schools in favor of intelligent design and which is mired in ethical controversies, and this promptly turned into “The Real Russia Project.” And it established its own blog, Russia Profile, seeking to make insidious connections with the well-known e-mail newsletter published by David Johnson of the Center for Defense Information and the publisher of the Moscow Times newspaper, Independent Media — all of whom are affiliated with the project. Russia Profile’s advisory board includes Konstantin Kosachev, a sitting member of the Russian Duma and a Kremlin henchman, and Yuri Fokine, a Kremlin apparatchik. Shockingly, Russia Profile also lists Leon Aron of the prestigious and conservative American Enterprise Institute as a member of its advisory board, the only member of the group who might be expected to have critical views of the Kremlin. Whether Aron even knows what Russia Profile is doing under his name is anyone’s guess; if he doesn’t, somebody should tell him — if he does, somebody should let him have it.

A few weeks ago, Russia Profile had a banner advertising campaign running on various websites touting a conference it was sponsoring and at which Schr????der and Kremlin insider Igor Shuvalov were to lecture anyone who would listen about how Russia is a “reliable partner” in the energy field. In other words, RP was acting as the direct agent for Kremlin-sponsored PR campaign. So much for “journalism.” RP maintains an “Experts Panel” feature that provides a token Russophobe voice surrounded by a sea of Russophiles and Russian nationalists. In the most recent installment, entitled “Friendless in Moscow: Does Russia Need Allies?” the lead entry is from the lunatic Russophile Eric Kraus, a stockbroker who spends most of his time convincing hapless foreigners that Russia is a great place to plop down their money. It maintains a blog by one Dmitry Babich, which offers such posts as “Whose Double Standards: Far from showing Russia????????s unreliability as an energy supplier, Gazprom????????s recent threats to suspend natural gas exports to Belarus have only exposed the hypocrisy of the West” and one claiming that since Yegor Gaidar stated publicly that the Kremlin didn’t try to kill him, that made it a fact and Gaidar man “worthy of respect.” No mention of the possibility that Gaidar might have caved in to Kremlin threats.

A recent article from the International Herald Tribune points out that the Kremlin is plying the supply-side tactic in the Russian blogosphere as well. The article states: “Some bloggers close to the government admitted that in order to insure that certain news is spun a certain way, or that certain items get leaked, money does change hands. Ivan Zassoursky, a marketing director at SUP-Fabrik and a media expert, says, ‘Can you give someone money to organize a demonstration? Sure you can. So why can’t you give someone money to write something on Äthe Russian blogosphereÅ?”

Russia Today is only in its infancy, yet it already has a handful of Western bloggers in its pocket and a pocketful of cash to buy more. How many Western journalists is it seeking out furtively, with offers of money in return for positive coverage? How many secret threats is it dispatching? Are we watching closely enough to make sure we aren’t taken in by these neo-Soviet snakeoil purveyors?

Time will tell.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. –Benjamin Franklin

High-level talks have resumed between the two Koreas under the old “sunshine” policy, which can only mean that what has happened before in the past is bound to repeat itself very soon. North Korea’s supposedly impending nuclear disarmament is going to bring about all of the usual fringe benefits of duping the West through blackmail and coercion. The United States, for one, has trashed its previously assertive position with the north and is now considering early provision of fuel aid. The south, meanwhile, will eventually be resuming rice and fertilizer aid as soon as the deadline for disarmament passes.

We’ve seen this story before. It’s been on repeat for decades. The modern world cuts off the aid, North Korea begins to collapse, North Korea makes a grand threat, and the modern world caves. See the pattern? There was nothing to say before the Kim Jong-Il won’t decide to restart uranium enrichment in the future, just as there was never any precedent for it in the past. What happens when he decides there isn’t enough rice to feed his military? Fifty bucks says we’ll be repeating this scenario in a few years!

If Benjamin Franklin could see how we’re handling North Korea, he would surely describe our behavior as insane. The rational thing to do would be to find an alternative plan that doesn’t involve propping up the North Korean regime with aid. In fact, regime change by allowing it to quickly collapse on its own would be the best solution. There are tons of worries that people have, like the huge influx of refugees that China would face, but these are all minor compared to the long-term disaster that is Kim Jong-Il. Swiftly dealing with the aftereffects of collapse and stabilizing the country is much more desirable than allowing that tyrant to stay in power.

The only reason why I can imagine we aren’t doing this is because the insanity of doing so is nothing compared to that of Kim Jong-Il. If the United States is continually willing to give in, it must be because, in fact, because we are being blackmailed into allowing him to continue ruling. At least this is the valid excuse I am giving the Bush administration, because I want to believe that this opportunity was given up for a good reason. Otherwise, this is just a game of who can up the ante with the most insanity.

As the Bush administration moves towards disengagement in the Middle East from those regarded as extremist — including Syria, Iran, Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias in Iraq, Hamas in Palestine, and Hezbollah in Lebanon — the result has been a vacuum of power left from the absence of traditional diplomatic channels. In the post Cold War era, this meant typically working with, and in the least, involving the United States. But in recent months as American policy becomes more rigid and inflexible, Middle Eastern diplomatic channels have rerouted outside of Washington and back into the Middle East proper. In this capacity, Saudi Arabia has emerged as the new bridge where the forces of moderation can work within the framework of Middle East reality — a reality where extremists unfortunately are popular and united — and work on successful compromises.

The Saud’s have also acted as the defacto go between for Iran and the West as issues continue to flair revolving supposed Iranian involvement in the Iraqi civil war, the pursuit of nuclear technology, and of the funding and support for Shiite proxy groups. Stated by the Washington Post:

Saudi diplomats, including former ambassador to Washington Prince Bandar bin Sultan, are also deeply engaged in talks with Iran. The contacts began with a visit to Saudi Arabia by Ali Larijani, the head of Iran’s national security council. Prince Bandar subsequently visited Tehran and, according to a report in the New York Times, King Abdullah received leaders of Hezbollah. Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran back opposite sides in the escalating sectarian conflicts in Iraq and Lebanon, but the talks show that both governments are interested in tamping them down. Though there have been no breakthroughs, the diplomacy seems to have succeeded, at least, in cooling the situation in Lebanon, where a Hezbollah campaign against the Saudi-supported, pro-Western government led to several days of violence last month.

The continuation of this was seen in early February in talks initially balked at by Condoleezza Rice but brokered by the Saud’s between the almost-at-civil-war Hamas and Fatah Palestinian political groups. Instead of direct mediation by the Bush administration, the middle ground is reinvented by the parties involved:

America is holding back from serious involvement while it sees what else Saudi Arabia can do. King Abdullah and his energetic security adviser, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, a former long-time Washington ambassador, may try to stick another feather in their caps at next month’s Arab League summit. They want to revive and perhaps refine the Arab League’s 2002 proposal for all Arab states to normalise relations with Israel if Israel withdraws from all the territories it occupied in 1967, both Palestinian and Syrian.

…So was the Fatah-Hamas deal in vain? And why did Condoleezza Rice, the American secretary of state, fly all the way to Jerusalem to see Mr Abbas and Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, and on to Jordan to see America’s other Arab allies, to tell them something she could have fitted into an SMS text message?

While it is important that America acts against those committed to reckless ideology, it is increasingly important in the context of prolonged American involvement in Iraq and NATO involvement in Afghanistan that hostility does not boil over to conflict before it has the chance for diplomatic resolution. The ramifications of a sectarian Middle East become more visceral, the role of Saudi Arabia will grow as the leading voice as both a moderate country and the largest Sunni country.

Sources

Saudi Arabia’s Diplomacy, Washington Post.

Banking on the Saudis, Economist.

Decisions Deferred in Mideast Talks, Council on Foreign Relations.

Arab states watch Iraq with dread, BBC News.

A holy but puzzling alliance, Economist.

Originally posted on PBH.

The organized campaign to see Egyptian blogger Kareem Amer, who was jailed this month for insulting Islam and the government, is quite a thing to behold. Between FreeKareem.org, online petitions, blog posts, and articles in huge publications like the Washington Post, rarely has there been such an interest in the blogosphere as a whole on one human rights issue involving one person in a country so far away.

I think it’s great! Bringing attention to these kinds of things is exactly how to get them changed. Otherwise, the Egyptian government will continue to its war campaign against civil society and human rights in its country. If democracy and liberal ideas are ever to take root, they cannot be ripped from the ground and thrown in jail as Kareem has been.

But what about all the others?

The only political alternative to Mubarak at this point that has any credibility and influence is the Muslim Brotherhood, an organization that seems willing to work within a democratic framework minus liberal ideas. Yet since they scored 20% of the seats in Egypt’s parliament during the last election, Mubarak has cracked down on them hard. Hundreds if not thousands of its members have been rounded up and tossed in jail, left to face beatings from inmates and torture from guards, all the while awaiting their fate to be handed down to them from a military tribunal.

Where is the outrage at this? Who is standing up for them?

The hard truth is that nobody is. There are probably many reasons for this, but here are a couple that I’ve thought of when compared to the campaign to free Kareem. They are listed in order of importance, without mentioning limited time and resources:

1. The American blogosphere and Kareem are more ideologically similar especially when compared to the Muslim Brotherhood, so the sympathy leans toward Kareem.
2. There is a high amount of interest in Kareem to a large degree because he is a blogger, so there is a great connection there.

It only makes sense that American liberals will rush to defend their fellow liberals who are under attack from their despotic governments. Kareem’s sentencing is a perfect example of everything that is wrong with the Egyptian government. Defending him highlights these issues, bringing them to the table, with the hope that both Kareem will be freed and the Egyptian government will begin to liberalize. However, when members of the Muslim Brotherhood are jailed, never is such a stink made. Simply said, most American bloggers are not going to sympathize with Islamists, so they are either unwilling to publicize such things or just don’t care to do so to such a degree as we do with Kareem. Does a Republican read the New York Times editorial page just for fun? Of course not. Kareem’s own father wants the security forces to treat him extra harshly so that the ideas will be beaten out of him. This is not a guy that’s easy to sympathize with.

Unfortunately, the word “universal” is attached to the phrase “human rights,” and regardless of political orientation, Kareem as well as the Muslim Brotherhood alike should be defended on equal grounds based on equal rights. Otherwise, we only serve to affirm those who believe the United States to be hypocritical in its application of pressure regarding human rights. We have to do it, even if we know they might not do the same for us in the future.

Being a blogger also gives us a reason to fight for Kareem. There are currently many issues revolving around blogging in the United States, and with its inherently cheap freedom of expression under attack in many countries, we want to make sure that everyone has the ability to blog. That Kareem is being prosecuted for what he has written on his blog is particularly heinous and a terrible precedent for what is to come. Yet it is not the only precedent. As Marc Lynch points out, there are plenty of bloggers out there who are members of the Muslim Brotherhood. You can bet that they are being monitored and prosecuted as well for sharing their ideas. What if one of them is put in jail for criticizing the government, as Kareem did, but instead also took on Christianity or Judaism?…

Kudos to FreeKareem.org for the great work they’ve done trying to get him free. It’s not their fault people don’t care about the whole picture. But who is there to defend the rest? That’s why I highly doubt we’d see a reaction from the American blogosphere, which leads me to believe, in the end, it is less about blogger solidarity and more about highly selective application of outrage.