Blogging the democratic revolution
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…
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…
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…
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…
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,…
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…
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…
No, its not pornography or terrorist websites. It’s Publius! Check out this new website, GreatFireWallOfChina.org, and type in any website to see if it’s blocked in China. What can I say? It’s an honor that the Chinese government thinks we’re influential enough that we deserve to be blocked. Cheers!
It’s one thing to use multiple IDs as a mere blogger, and quite another to use such devices in real life explicitly to scam a pedastalled world organization to line one’s silky pockets. But that’s what a top United Nations official has been caught doing, just like some seedy barrio gangster, using multiple id’s in a bid to extend his retirement date and collect fatter pensions from the UN money stream. The creep’s name is Kadir and he works at the World International Property Office in Switzerland. Being from Sudan, his contribution to invention resides not in industrial innovation but…
Venezuela: Where products are generic – and customers are branded Source: Anibal Barreto, Correo de Caroni, via Feathers In the slums of Caracas, Chavista grocery patrons are now being branded on their bellies (food goes into your belly, right?) with indelible ink by store personnel to ensure that they do not buy more chicken than the government arbitrarily allows. Since at least the beginning of the year, Venezuela’s groceries have been wracked by food shortages due to Chavista price controls and controls on foreign currency. Beef, sugar, pork and coffee have disappeared from store shelves. Meanwhile, at state-controlled Chavista stores,…
In September of last year, a the Russian human rights organization “Gulag” published a lengthy treatise on efforts of Vladmir Putin’s secret police to seize control of the Internet by using a cadre of “brigadniki” thugs to harrass anyone who dared to express opinions critical of the Kremlin. The lead of the piece, Anna Polyanskaya, was formerly on the staff of Russian Duma deputy Galina Starovoitova, who was murdered in November 1998 for speaking out against the rise of dictatorship in Russia. She belongs in the line of heroic Russian women that includes Anna Politkovskaya and has been previously described…
In a ruling more than a decade in the making, whose length is so long that most people will only ever read the summary, the International Court of Justice in the Hague has decided that Serbia can not be held directly responsible for ethnic cleansing and genocide that occurred during the war in Bosnia, but should have used its influence to prevent it. The focus on the ruling also mainly focused on Srebrenica as the major case in which it happened. February 26, 2007 — The United Nations’ highest court ruled today that Serbia was not directly responsible for genocide…
Two days ago, I reported on my blog the news of the decision of current Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi to resign. Here’s the text I had written: The Left lost at the Senate over a vote on the Italian Afghanistan mission. Now it????????s up to the President of the Republic to accept the resignation (he????????ll most probably do so) and decide whether to schedule new elections (I don????????t think he????????ll do so, as he is from a party of the current gov????????t). If elections are scheduled, they might be held in a few months. And, according to all polls,…
Richard Fernandez at the Belmont Club posts about a subject close to home — about a document called the Melo Report released yesterday in the Philippines. It’s the result of a fact-finding investigation conducted by former Supreme Court Justice Jose Melo into extrajudicial killings committed by both the military and communist rebels. The result is interesting, but my historical standards, not too surprising. By and large, the communists have killed far more people than their right-wing adversaries. There is evidence that the military “allowed, tolerated and even encouraged” political assassinations, and that retired Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan was among those…
Cradle-robbing dictator Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe cuts into a huge birthday cake. Courtesy AFP. Mugabe turned 83 on Wednesday — one year closer to his sweet, sweet death (unless he’s a robot like Castro). It promises to be a time of celebration for a few dozen millionaires. This Saturday is the big event! It’s a party worth over $50,000 dollars, enough to pay for the drugs of a few hundred AIDS victims for a year or even tons of grain to feed his people. Meanwhile, the rest of Zimbabwe isn’t doing so well. Inflation is up 1600% in the last…
If there’s one thing we seasoned Russia-watchers who have spent considerable time “in country” really really cannot stand (no matter whether we be Russophobe or Russophile, we can always reach perfect agreement on this), it’s when someone who hasn’t spent real time at ground zero starts pontificating his “insights” about the place, especially about what the people who live there think and feel and why they act the way they do. For instance, the author of the blog Scraps of Moscow recently wrote the following about New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s first column based on a recent trip to…
I have to say that I am quite disappointed by the free world’s total focus on the Iranian nuclear issue (a pressing one, of course) while ignoring what goes on in Iran. It happens that, while all eyes are on whether the Mullahs are arming the Iraq-based terrorists (and they are, despite claims of the opposite by the Bush-haters) and their nuclear plans, ancient archeological sites dating back to the pre-Islamic invasion era are about to be flooded. I want you to just spend a few minutes to read my article published by the American Thinker on this topic and…
Speaking before an annual conference on international security in Munich recently, Russian President Vladimir Putin said this of the concept of “unilateralism” in an attempt to complain about the allegedly hegemonic position of the U.S. in the world today: It is world in which there is one master, one sovereign. And at the end of the day this is pernicious not only for all those within this system, but also for the sovereign itself because it destroys itself from within. He was talking without listening to himself, the signal hallmark of the old Soviet state that soon collapsed and disappeared.…
Sharia is the new sexy! Rather than bikinis, burkas are back in style. Fashion designer Louise Golden unveils a brilliant, untried fashion that is sure to provoke a flurry of sales and the unwanted attention of men everywhere. Let me introduce to you the 2007/2008 winter sharia collection! All courtesy of the Associated Press. Whether or not these outfits are really meant to be sharia ninja gear is up in the air, but Drudge says it is in his initial post. Unfortunately for the designer, if it is, she messed up pretty badly and I doubt these would sell at…
Throughout most of the Cold War, prevailing wisdom in foreign policy suggested that international relations between governments and the study of comparative politics should remain separate. The leaders of the United States spent most of their time meeting with, negotiating with, and occasionally threatening leaders from the Soviet Union. Whether or not people were being sent off to the gulag or purposely starved made no difference. Those people had no power, whereas the Politburo did. This went on largely until the Helsinki Accords were signed in 1975, effectively tying America’s foreign policy to the Soviets’ treatment of its own citizens.…
Do you recognize the gentleman in the foreground? Unless you are an avid follower of Russian politics, you may not. He’s Sergei Mironov, a high-ranking figure in the Kremlin’s power structure. He’s the leader of the “Russia of Justice” political party (a sham entity subservient to the Kremlin) and the Chairman of the Federation Council, equivalent to being the majority leader of the U.S. Senate. If, that is, George Bush personally selected all the members. Even if you are not an aficionado of Russian politics, you likely do recognize the gentleman in the background, with the red square around his…
Fausta has an impressive piece at Pajamas Media on how and why Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez was able to rise to absolute power as a dictator of Venezuela, which he announced on Jan. 9 and consolidated on Feb. 4. If you’re new to Venezuela, or if you just want to read something summed up perfectly, make sure to have a look at Fausta’s flawlessly written piece, one of her very best and that is saying a lot. Read the whole thing here.
Ziva at Babalu blog has found a Miami Herald exclusive, buried deep, about young Cuban conscripts who just blew away their senior commissar officers in Cuba. It’s a stunning development. Read it here. There are several interesting implications: 1. There may be more to come. People are less afraid to rebel these days and challenge communist authority. 2. A power void is being sensed. Obviously, Castro’s demise is creating less and less sense of direction, and people in leadership positions don’t know what to do, because they don’t know whether Castro will get well or not. If they make decisions…
After years of braying about ‘food security’ – Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has accomplished the opposite of that: widespread empty shelves for basic food stocks like meat and sugar, throughout Venezuelan grocery stores, duplicating Soviet-style food shortages. The next step will be rationing. As of now, only chicken feet can be bought, according to this AP report. The brutal dictator is repeating the failures of Castrodom in Cuba, as he completely politicizes the economic realm. Chavez is also yelling about ‘speculators’ when the fact is, these food shortages are the natural result of Chavista control over the economy. This goes…
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice Source: AP, via Yahoo! News U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice came out with strong and unambiguous language for Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, warning that he was trashing democracy and destroying his country. She went after him with a sledgehammer. Naturally, the Venezuelan thug will response with those weird kissing noises or perverse and undignified gibberings about his own sex fantasies, but that doesn’t reduce the power of the condemnation emanating from Washington. Rice warns that Chavez is a dictator, says he is wrecking Venezuela politically and economically and notes he is a menace…