These are people who don't just talk about democracy and ignore it, they live democracy. No flashy photos of inked fingers and no seats of honor at the State of the Union address. Just real people taking real initiative in the face of a violent dictator. Unlike Iraq where democracy is hardly of interest to anyone, the US included, the Zimbabwe opposition is standing firm in the face of a aggressive and often violent 'police' action. Can you imagine what we would see if the Chinese weapons had arrived?
Riot police in Zimbabwe yesterday raided the offices of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change as well as those of independent election observers, seizing computers and documents and arresting scores of people in the biggest crackdown since last month's disputed election.
Truckloads of officers surrounded the building in Harare during an operation that lasted several hours. MDC officials said police had taken away more than 100 people, including staff and party supporters who had fled to the capital to avoid a crackdown in the countryside.
The people who won are now being rounded up by Mugabe. It's no wonder the opposition leadership is staying outside of the country. What is it going to take for Thabo Mbeki to realize that his 'quiet diplomacy' is a failure? Robert Mugabe never shies from using violence and detention yet Mbeki stays quiet. He should be ashamed of his actions and turning his back on the people of Zimbabwe who are suffering from the dictatorship. The people of South Africa including others in his own party as well as dock workers all see the obvious, but not Mbeki. His 'quiet diplomacy' defies all reality, much like his weird beliefs on AIDS.
The latest new on the Chinese weapons ship is that it's headed to Angola. The people of Angola are among the poorest people though the 'communist' leadership is among the richest in the world courtesy of oil money. Naturally the Bush administration promoted Angola to a high trading partner level a few years ago despite no sign of the government investing anything in its people. I traveled along the border of Angola a few years ago and was shocked at the extreme poverty of its people. The country is littered with land mines so they can't safely farm and the ocean fishing rights have been sold to the EU so they can't fish. Something tells me this is a government that won't say 'no' to supplies of military repression for a fellow dictator. Isn't it time the US speaks out on this with it's special trading partner or is oil too valuable? After all, they're just people in Zimbabwe and how will they help fuel our cars?
I hate it when a kangaroo court fails. That said, I'm sure Bilal Hussein now has a much better idea of what Bush-style freedom and democracy is all about.
Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein was reunited with family and colleagues Wednesday, ending more than two years in U.S. military custody after Iraqi judges dropped all legal proceedings against him.
Even in the face of electoral defeat, Robert Mugabe will not go down easily. Using violence again the opposition has been a mainstay of the Mugabe period. After all, his military force has been fed a steady diet of military equipment thanks to the Olympic hosts China so he has the tools to clamp down and maintain control of his collapsing nation.
The opposition Movement for Democratic Change claimed a landslide victory and declared its leader Morgan Tsvangirai an outright winner. Spokesman Tendai Biti warned the government against stealing the election, saying: "Zimbabwe is on the edge of a precipice."
He said the people would not accept a faked outcome and vowed "peaceful protests" if his party was denied the win. A cabal of Mr Mugabe's top aides, including six cabinet ministers, the Vice-President and a former intelligence chief, have lost their "safe" seats already.
According to the Olympic Charter, established by Pierre de Coubertin, the goal of the Olympic Movement is to contribute to building a peaceful and better world by educating youth through sport practised without discrimination of any kind and in the Olympic spirit, which requires mutual understanding with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play.
China acknowledged Thursday that anti-government riots that rocked Tibet last week have spread to other provinces, while communist authorities announced the first group of arrests in connection with the violence.
Where are pro-democracy Americans now? You know, the ones who still talk about bringing democracy and freedom around the world? Where are they? Are they serious about democracy and freedom or only when it helps open up or expand business? Hypocrites.
And to think many find Bush's democratic ideas to be rubbish. Why bother to even hold elections if you are not prepared to live with the results? Musharraf was routed but in the Bush world, that doesn't matter.
Bush's policy of hanging on to Musharraf has caused friction between the White House and the State Department, with some career diplomats and other specialists arguing that the administration is trying to buck the political tides in Pakistan, U.S. officials said.
Officials in the White House and the intelligence community fear that the longer Pakistan remains without a new government, the deeper the gridlock, threatening the progress made in the elections toward greater stability and helping the country's Islamic extremists.
One Western diplomat said, however, that the strategy could backfire if Pakistanis feel betrayed after voting to kick Musharraf from office.
The US response still seems weak. Young Afghan journalist Sayed Pervez Kambaksh is currently being held in prison because he downloaded and distributed a report on women's rights. If the US is supposed to be bringing democracy, as the administration likes to tell everyone, they ought to be moving much more aggressively to assist Pervez who is sitting in miserable conditions. Is this the best Rice can do? From his family in Afghanistan:
While the international campaign to free Sayed Pervez Kambaksh grows, life in jail for the 23-year-old student is, according to his family, "nothing but enduring hell day after day".
He shares a cell meant for four people with 30 others at the prison in Balkh province where he has been held for more than three months. In that time he has been attacked by Taliban prisoners who have been told by officials that Mr Kambaksh is guilty of blasphemy. His food has been contaminated by guards, he has lost weight, and is traumatised.
Let's just say the reviews are about as positive as they have ever been in the region. That reminds me...no news on the Saudi blogger being imprisoned.
Seldom has an American President's visit left the region so underwhelmed, confirming Bush's huge unpopularity on the street and his sagging credibility among Arab leaders he counts as allies. Part of the problem was the Administration's increasingly mixed message, amplified by the intense media coverage of his trip. For example, in Dubai he gave what the White House billed as a landmark speech calling for "democratic freedom in the Middle East." But during his last stop in Sharm el-Sheikh Wednesday, he lauded President Hosni Mubarak as an experienced, valued strategic partner for regional peace and security and made no mention of Cairo's ongoing crackdown on opponents and critics - and the continuing imprisonment of Mubarak's main opponent in the 2005 presidential election.
The December election was a blowout, with the opposition party somehow being blocked out with nothing more than promises of power sharing, just as on previous occasions. The US government has promoted reconciliation and asked both parties to work it out though this again runs contrary to the big talk about democracy. Power-sharing has never gone beyond talk and the US and EU have not taken any action to further the promises. Probably they just assumed that Kenya would remain peaceful without following rumblings on the ground. Nothing excuses the horrible acts that have been reported from Kenya though this poll adds more context to the story.
For years Kenya has been a peaceful, functional country but the recent events are pushing the country to the edge. The US and EU need to step up political intervention now before a bad situation becomes worse. Let's quit talking about democracy and do something real and constructive to promote democracy.
Bush has been big on talk when it comes to democracy, but despite what he says in America, he's been terrified to speak as boldly with American "allies" in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia and Egypt are both holding bloggers in prison so we ought to be hearing something from the man who loves talking about democracy, shouldn't we? Even in Bahrain, the US could not even accept a letter from a human rights activist without extended debate. Even then, Bush went on to praise the local government despite the lack of democratic reforms.
Bush can talk all he wants about democracy but it's obvious to the world that he's a hypocrite who has little interest in democracy. It's the same old Bush that we already know, which is all talk and no action. What leverage does he even have with discussing democracy? He's running a trashed economy that is burdened with debt and addicted to oil. Even Wall Street is in the Middle East begging for cash. It's not as though he can use the US as a shining example of freedom and democracy, now that he's crossed all of the lines and spies on American citizens. Our own human rights record - including in neighboring Iraq - is not much of an example either. Are we ever going to see him walk the walk?
I missed this initially, but via the peerless Kevin Drum comes the news that Senator McCain criticized the situation in Iraq for having no political progressfailing US strategyreligious and sectarian violence too many ministries. No, seriously. And he wasn't shy about saying so, telling a group of journalists, "Whoever designed that government ought to be taken out and shot."
Two things about this: First of all, the idea that the number of ministries somehow causes corruption, as McCain indicated, is pretty silly. There's corruption because there's no functioning political system, which is a result of a bad electoral system and concurrent Iraqi and US failures to establish any workable compromises on the major disputed issues. Number of ministries? Really? For those keeping track, there are 31 of them, and while I'm not sure, for example, why Iraq need a Communications Ministry *and* a Communications and Media Commission Ministry, the list doesn't really seem particularly unreasonable. For comparison, the US has 15 cabinet-level Departments and literally hundreds of other federal departments and agencies (everything from NSA to IRS to National Weather Service).
More importantly, though, the idea that some random, nameless, faceless person designed the Iraqi government is absurd. Who designed the Iraqi government? Uh... we did. At the very least we created the political structure and midwifed the executive branch into being, which is where the ministries reside. And I'm pretty sure the United State Senate has some ability to affect and oversee US policy, and I don't recall Senator McCain saying much about these problems to which he now objects as they were being established and institutionalized. It's really amazing to hear the presidential candidates talk about "Washington" this and "the government" that. Y'all are in it! Do something!
President Hugo Chavez suffered a stunning defeat Monday in a referendum that would have let him run for re-election indefinitely and impose a socialist system in this major U.S. oil supplier.
Voters rejected the sweeping measures Sunday by a vote of 51 percent to 49 percent, said Tibisay Lucena, chief of the National Electoral Council. She said that with 88 percent of the votes counted, the trend was irreversible.
Even just talking about eternal rule for any candidate is creepy and with Chavez in particular, yikes. I had flashbacks to my recent visit to Egypt where the locals complained about the eternal rule of Mubarak. Egyptians consistently grumbled about Bush/Blair though they always said "at least you can eventually get rid of those guys. We can't. We're stuck with Mubarak and his son forever."
Always eager to provide more reasons why the new EU is a joke, Gordon Brown's UK government is planning to limit the number of workers (read: poor) from Bulgaria and Romania. All of this happens just a week after Brown decided to scrap a democratic vote by the British electorate on the EU and just leave democracy to the same old ruling class, Parliament. They always seem to know better, don't they?
What strikes me as absurd is that the UK and other countries are only too happy to allow big employers move previously good paying jobs from their home countries to Eastern Europe for a few cents on the euro but heavens no, don't let those eastern Europeans come to the west. Absolutely not. Big business would much rather pay workers chump change in the east than pay even modest salaries in the west and they've done a brilliant job of convincing the EU governments to go along with this unfair plan. The double standard is really wearing thin but this explains why the ruling class of Europe is terrified of giving any more voters an opportunity to actually vote on what they think about the new EU.
Earlier this year there were numerous articles about George Washington's house in Philadelphia and the recent excavations linking the passage from the house to his slave quarters. The excavations launched a lively debate about Washington and his views on slavery as well as slavery in America. Washington supposedly soured on the idea of slavery in his final years and did in fact free them. Unfortunately he did not feel strong enough about the disgusting practice to take a stand while he was alive and waiting until after his death. He also did nothing about Martha Washington's slaves who remained after his death, which is not exactly the profile in courage that we like to think of with one of our founding fathers though it is the painful reality.
Much like the ongoing debate in Philadelphia, there is a fresh new examination under way at Mount Vernon as well. It may not be the glorified and sugary Washington that we heard about in grade school, but this debate is exactly what makes history interesting. History is always evolving and debating an important issue such as slavery and its lasting impact on America is healthy for all of us. Considering the pedestal that our current president was put on just a few years ago - and the trouble that presented for the country and the world - debates such as this can only help. Read on...
Perhaps the only people in the country formerly known as Burma that can get away with public protest are standing up to to the military junta with public protests. They are not completely untouchable - they have had issues with the security forces - but they are about as untouchable as it gets in the country. I recall being horrified a few years back when I saw photos of the Buddhist monks together with the junta leaders in the annual festival on Inle Lake, raising the question of their coziness with the brutal regime though that relationship appears to be frayed and deteriorating.
The Yangon march and rallies in other cities Wednesday were to protest hardship brought on by the government's economic policies, especially a sudden, major hike in fuel prices last month that first sparked the persistent demonstrations — first by pro-democracy activists and now primarily by monks.
In the central city of Mandalay, more than 1,000 monks marched, while about 100 others in dark saffron robes staged a peaceful march in the western Yangon suburb of Ahlone.
More than 100 Buddhist monks from some monasteries in South Okkalapa township in Yangon's northern suburbs also marched early Wednesday, later returning to their monasteries without incident.
"The monks are telling the public not to take part in the protests. They told onlookers that this is the monks' affair and that they would handle it themselves," a witness contacted by phone in Ahlone told The Associated Press. The person asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals.
He is kidding, right? Lecturing Putin about derailing democracy? Sorry, Mr. Bush, but Putin is doing exactly what you and Cheney and the Republicans have been doing in our country over the past six years. When the going got tough, you threw democracy under the bus. You and the Republicans are fair-weather democrats. You only believe in democracy when the going gets easy. When terrorists strike, when you fear for your nation's safety, you are the first to roll back democracy, to spy on your own citizens, to take away their rights to a fair trial, to try them in secret courts - just like the Soviets used to.
Remember that cute little phrase that the Republicans in the Senate all liked to quote in order to justify revoking our democratic liberties at home? You have no constitutional rights if you're dead. Here is the former Republican chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts, the guy who was in charge of making sure the Bush administration didn't violate our democracy by illegally spying on us just like the communists do on their own citizens:
"I am a strong supporter of the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment and civil liberties," Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) remarked at yesterday's Hayden confirmation hearings, "but you have no civil liberties if you are dead."
GOP Senator Jeff Sessions referring to the rightness of Bush's domestic spying after 9/11 declared melodramatically:
"Over 3,000 Americans have no civil rights because they are no longer with us."
...Senator John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, said on December 20, 2005:
"None of your civil liberties matter much after you're dead."
What they mean is, what's the point of upholding the Constitution's rights if we end up dying as a result? Well, I suspect Putin would argue that you have no fledgling democratic reforms if you're all dead. So spare us the lectures directed at Russia, Mr. Bush, a country that has suffered the same kind of terrorism that America faces, and actually suffers from greater instability than we do by far (they've even got a serious separatist movement). That certainly doesn't excuse Russia rolling back democratic reforms - I don't believe that any country should roll back democracy for any reason. It's not as if the Framers of the Constitution, the guys who signed the Declaration of Independence, were living during stable and secure times. Yet it was during times of trouble, times of uncertainty, times of danger that the founders of our country penned those very freedoms that Bush and Putin now believe aren't required during times of danger.
George Bush and the Republicans don't believe in democracy. They have no right to lecture Putin for doing exactly what they would do, exactly what they have done.
