"This was the voice of moderation until 13 Sept, 2025"
Charles Bird It has to go to none other than Karnak himself. Regretfully, it’s also posthumous. My favorite: (closed envelope is brought to the forehead) "A triple and a double, catcher’s and fielder’s, and Dolly Parton" (rips open the envelope) "Name two big hits, two big mitts…..and a famous country singer!" It’s Friday, nigh on cocktail hour, … Read more
The answer is a lot. A couple of days ago, the Washington Post ran a piece on globalization by Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Paul L.E. Grieco, of the Institute for International Economics (Alan Greenspan is an honorary director). After a half-century of steady liberalization it is fair to ask, what do Americans have to show? … Read more
by Charles
This will be my last word on Amnesty International, unless the leaders of this organizational throw out another rhetorical Molotov cocktail like that "gulag of our times" nonsense. I’ll be touching on several issues that struck chords, and I believe it’s worthwhile to finish off with an appeal to conservatives to change this organization from within.
by Charles Yesterday, Judge John Bridges made his ruling, upholding the November 2004 election for Washington State governor. In a nutshell, Bridges set a high bar for overturning an election (too high in my opinion) and the Republicans fell short, the standard being "clear and convincing evidence" that the plaintiff had more total votes. He … Read more
by Charles When I first started writing at Tacitus, one of the first things I did for the benefit of the readers was to let them know where I was on the political spectrum (the link disappeared when Trevino switched over to Scoop). When I was graciously invited to Obsidian Wings (and by the way, … Read more
by Charles
Daniel Okrent started this tempest in his fare thee well column in the New York Times, with this sentence:
Op-Ed columnist Paul Krugman has the disturbing habit of shaping, slicing and selectively citing numbers in a fashion that pleases his acolytes but leaves him open to substantive assaults.
Okrent must have known the response he would get from this sentence, and he was brave for doing so. Not surprisingly, Dr. Krugman responded forcefully in the Times’ public editor web journal:
Mr. Okrent has so far offered only one example that, if true, would have justified his all-out attack on my ethics.
Krugman initially responded to the only example he thought was "significant", then later responded to Okrent’s specific example [sentence updated]. Leaving aside the notion that one sentence in a column with thirteen separate numbered topics constitutes an "all-out attack", Krugman does have a history of fitting his data to his politics. The liberal economics professor may consider the other criticisms a picking of the nits, but when you’re a columnist in the most prominent newspaper in the country, those nits aren’t so small. The fellas at QandO have been on a roll lately, and Jon Henke demonstrates how Krugman has sliced and diced in the "significant" example. Dale Franks hit Krugman on stagflation, and Henke provides a coup de grace in this detailed follow-up. Tom Maguire writes about his walk down memory lane with Krugman. Andrew Samwick adds a few observations, concluding with this:
Any time spent reading Krugman in search of an informed, liberal economist’s point of view is time that could be better spent reading Brad DeLong’s blog.
My post on the treatment of prisoners/detainees is up at Redstate, and I put it there instead of here because my primary audience is conservatives, a breed that is a distinct minority here. I welcome and challenge y’all to go over and converse with the other side. Or stay here and comment away.
by Charles
In the LA Times yesterday, a former official with the National Security Council made the case that, because the Bush administration is not making an "active effort" to negotiate with North Korea and Iran, the practical result is a form of "passive appeasement". He is right about Iran but dead wrong about North Korea.
by Charles
Rather than respond in comments, I thought I’d write some of my thoughts here as a counterpoint to Edward’s earlier post as it pertains to Amnesty International. The sentence most meriting a response is this:
It seems to me that Amnesty’s point was that as the world’s remaining superpower, the US bears a bigger responsibility than North Korea or Iran to set an example.
Unless it has changed its vision, Amnesty International has no business making such a point:
AI’s vision is of a world in which every person enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international human rights standards.
Emphases mine. There’s no cherry-picking here, and there’s no singling out a particular nation because that nation happens to be really, really powerful. The vision of Amnesty International is one standard applied to every person. To the extent that the leadership of Amnesty International has focused its ire on a country that has done more than any other on earth to advance freedom and human rights, it is an organization that has lost its bearings. To put it more forthrightly, the perspective of the leadership of Amnesty International is so whacked and so skewed that it’s credibility as a human rights organization is in mortal peril. Consider the statement made by the Secretary General, Irene Khan:
The detention facility at Guantánamo Bay has become the gulag of our times, entrenching the practice of arbitrary and indefinite detention in violation of international law.
The Washington Post put it best:
OK, so try and keep up. When we first heard a guard had flushed the Koran down a toilet in G-bay, the account was dismissed widely by the Pentagon, leaving us to imgaine the detainee who reported it was a willful liar or deluded or whatever. Now we’re being told that same detainee has retracted … Read more
The problem with Uzbekistan is the problem with Pakistan is the problem with Saudi Arabia. The former Soviet republic is a repressed unfree country without a preferred opposition. According to Freedom House, it is solidly not free. Its economy is in similar straits, its press freedom rivals that of Russia and Belarus and it is … Read more
A guffaw or a loud snort should follow any statement that puts Iran and democracy in the same vicinity. Why? Because Iran is not free and it is not a real democracy. It’s a joke: Iran’s hard-line Guardian Council on Sunday rejected all reformists who registered to run in presidential elections, approving only six out … Read more
by Charles
Last January, I became convinced that Dino Rossi should contest the governor’s race and call for a revote. This Monday, the trial begins and Republicans will make their case that the 2004 election for governor should be canceled and that a revote be conducted. Most of the evidence will focus on lapses by King County election officials. While other counties also made mistakes, they pale before massive numbers of mistakes in King County. If anything, there are now many more and many larger errors by King County, in the form of illegal provisional ballots included in the vote tally, felon votes and discrepancies between the numbers of ballots and numbers of voters. While the N-word (negligence) has been used liberally and rightfully so in this mess, I had seen no evidence of the F-word (fraud). Until two days ago. In the Seattle Times:
Newsweek’s false story on alleged Koran desecration at Gitmo revealed several things. For one, when its editors said that Isikoff & Co. followed proper journalistic standards, then the logical conclusion is that Newsweek needs higher standards, especially when it comes to national security matters during a time of war. Taking the word of someone who … Read more
by Charles
It’s no secret that I’m not a Democrat and I don’t subscribe to most of their positions on issues. Nevertheless, the Democrats have done damn little to sell their ideas to me or to the American public. And that’s a serious problem. Ideas and ideals should be the coin of the realm in politics and political parties. The 2004 shutout in the presidency and House and Senate should have been a clear message that different methods need be tried.
But so far, that same old bus is being ridden on that same old route, with the same old results. Harry Reid’s body has been invaded by the spirit of Tom Daschle. Barbara Boxer has become the Senate version of Jim McDermott. And like a virgin vigorously protecting her maidenhead, Nancy Pelosi says "no" all day long. The prevalence in the Democratic Party is obstruction and opposition, not "we have a better plan", followed by actually spelling out what that better plan is. The Democrats continue to be the "No Party" instead of the "Better Ideas Party". Republicans propose, Democrats oppose. Instead of "ask not what your country can do for you", it’s another round of Fight Club. Instead of EFK (Everyone For Kerry), the moveon.orgers repeatedly called for ABB. What is animating and energizing the liberal activist wing seems to be the fight itself, not the platforms and guiding principles and ideals they should be fighting for. At least, that’s how I see it.
Many liberals will of course say that they do have better ideas. Fine. Then sell them. Prioritize them. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m not persuaded by hearing just opposing arguments without hearing what the better plan is. John Kerry kept saying he had better plans, but he failed to spend more time and money communicating them. The fact is that his better plan for Iraq wasn’t much different than the one Bush already had in place. Maybe his secret plans were better, but sadly they were kept secret. His better plan on Social Security was basically no plan.
Don’t believe me on all this? That’s OK, since I don’t expect liberals to believe me anyway. But believe James Carville and Paul Begala:
I’ve been doing some thinking lately about what it takes to kill your enemy during war, and keep killing them. I’m sure I have some more thinking to do on the subject (…hey, that’s what blogs are for, no?), but I’ve come to some preliminary conclusions I want to put out there.
In the "Who Defeated the Nazi’s" thread, constant reader Phil posted an excerpt from a review of a book by Uwe Timm, a German whose brother died trying to kill Russians, but not before complaining about the way the English were bombing Germany in a letter:
The diary also reveals what Timm regards as German disregard for suffering anywhere except in Germany. [His brother] Karl-Heinz writes, " I’m worried about everyone at home, we hear reports of air raids by the English every day. If only they’d stop that filthy business. It’s not war, it’s the murder of women and children — it’s inhumane ." To which Timm responds:
"It is hard to comprehend and impossible to trace the way sympathy and compassion in the face of suffering could be blanked out, while a distinction emerged between humanity at home and humanity here in Russia. In Russia, the killing of civilians is normal, everyday work, not even worth mentioning; at home it is murder. . . . I have now read other diaries and letters of the time; some observe the suffering of the civilian population and express outrage, others speak of the killing of civilians — Jews and Russians alike — as the most natural thing in the world. The language they’ve been fed makes killing easier: inferior human beings, parasites, vermin whose lives are dirty, degenerate, brutish. Smoking them out is a hygienic measure."
That strikes me as the essence of maintaining the will to kill: "the way sympathy and compassion in the face of suffering could be blanked out," but whereas Timm feels it’s impossible to trace, I feel there must be some identifiable paths to this state of mind.
So I asked myself: If you want to maintain your nation’s willingness to kill other people, what emotional strings do you pull? What tools do you use to blank out sympathy and compassion in the face of suffering?
Now you all know I opposed the invasion of Iraq, so I’m not going to pretend I’m objective here. I will attempt to be fair though. I think there are three primary tools nations can use to maintain their populace’s will to kill: fear, information operations, and the rhetoric of "the other."
by Charles
A few weeks ago, Michael Fumento asked why HIV is so prevalent in Africa, and it got me to thinking about our approach there. No small part of the problem is the quality of information that comes to us, but there are also more steps that can be taken. While the ABC approach is a sensible one for dampening the spread of AIDS in Africa, it seems like a few more letters should be added to the alphabet soup. Here are mine:
The acronym, DEABCETA, is long, unwieldy and does not roll off the tongue, but it strikes me as a better plan. For those whose first response to eschew is "gesundheit", stop right here. For the rest…
by Charles While working on a longer and most likely controversial piece, several articles caught my attention in the margins, so here goes… Since my last post on the subject, I’ve read little on the travails of Ward Churchill, figuring nothing really important will happen until the committee investigating his work concludes its task. But … Read more
During the election season, factcheck.org (not factcheck.com, Dick) did a stellar job at evaluating the truthfulness of advertising and claims made by the respective presidential campaigns. After the election, the non-partisan group did not go completely dormant, and has set its primary sights on the Social Security reform debate. Importantly, the organization has taken no positions yea or nay on Social Security, seeing its role as debate referee. In its first entry, the group analyzed an ad produced by the pro-reform group Progress for America Voter Fund, and one made by AARP agin the Bush reform package:
A pro-Bush TV ad gets the central fact right about Social Security: by the time today’s young workers retire there are projected to be only two workers paying Social Security taxes for every one person receiving Social Security Benefits. Today there are 3.3 workers per beneficiary.
But a different ad opposed to Bush’s efforts uses a misleading photograph. It shows wild trading in commodities like cocoa futures to depict the risk that workers could face with private Social Security accounts. Actually, what’s being proposed is not investment commodities, but in far less risky stock and bond mutual funds, which would be broadly diversified.
The AARP ad was misleading because it showed commodities traders whooping and hollering in a trading pit free-for-all, inaccurately portraying the actual proposal of investments in bond and stock mutual funds. In factcheck.org’s next offering, Bush and Cheney are taken to task for claiming that Social Security faces an $11 trillion shortfall if no action is taken:
by Charles (Just to preface things, this post is addressed primarily to my fellow Republicans and conservatives. I’ll be writing more on this subject down the road in less liberal venues.) I’ve had it. Enough already. At the very minimum, Tom DeLay should be in House leadership no more. I’ve been following the issue peripherally … Read more
by Charles
Aside from filibustering judicial nominations, one of the other items loaded into the Democratic Obstruction Machine is the thwartation of nominee John Bolton as UN Ambassador. Steven Clemons at the Washington Note is on an anti-Bolton jihad (the non-violent kind of course), as is Bush-hating George Soros and his Open Society Policy Center (they published a 60-plus page "briefing book" chock full of opposition research and liberal talking points). TAPPED is also on the anti-Bolton bandwagon, with obsessive numbers of anti-Bolton posts, and there is also stopbolton.org and Arms Control Wonk and a raft of others. One of the apparent strategems is to pressure liberal Senators such as Lincoln Chafee and moderate Republicans such as Chuck Hagel into voting "no" against Bolton in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
To be sure, there are questions that need answering, and his confirmation is not a sure thing. In Newsweek, Mark Hosenball brought up allegations that Bolton "pressured intel specialists on Cuba". In the WMD report, the commission concluded that intelligence analysts were not pressured by Bush administration officials on Iraqi WMDs, but it did specifically point out that Christian Westermann, a CIA analyst specializing on Cuba, testified that he was pressured by John Bolton on the matter of Cuba and germ warfare. Another unnamed intelligence analyst also had a run-in with Bolton and it was not pretty. In the New Yorker, Seymour Hersh raised the issue of stovepiping, documenting the conflicted relationship between Greg Thielman, a State Department intelligence liasion, and John Bolton.
Bolton needs to answer the questions relating to the two CIA analysts and Greg Thielman, and he also needs to answer a whole host of other questions, such as:
And many more. But the problem with this tempest is that politics have completely swamped it. Former Secretaries of State (all Republicans) have weighed in favor of John Bolton, although Colin Powell is not one of the five. In response to the letter signed by 59 ex-diplomats opposing Bolton, Frank Gaffney of the Center for Security Policy produced a letter signed by 85 "security policy practitioners" endorsing Bolton for the job. Steven Clemons is right that most of the signatories are also on Gaffney’s advisory council, and why Gaffney thought that crackpot Alan Keyes was a good choice to be on the endorsement list is mystifying. However, when Dave Meyers at TAPPED wrote the following…
Compare this group to the signatories to the letter opposing Bolton, which is not only non-partisan, but was signed by more Republican appointees than Democratic.
…he was both lying and distorting. The facts are these.
Just as Gaffney has partisans on his list (and a crackpot or two), the same goes for the 59 ex-diplomats. Below are summaries of the more colorful ones.
by Charles
"I praise the jihad against the occupiers in Iraq. Throats must be split and skulls must be shattered."
"There is nothing wrong with [suicide attacks] if they cause great damage to the enemy."
"Jihad against the occupiers is a must. [It is] not only a legitimate right but a religious duty."
The first two quotes were spoken by Saudi clerics on Arabic TV, and the final quote came from a religious statement published last November and signed by 26 Saudi clerics, according to MSNBC. Saudi Arabia is purportedly an American ally, yet its religious leaders continue to encourage its citizens to kill American soldiers and to execute terrorist attacks. Some of those clerics are on the Saudi government payroll. Most galling–and most deserving of my nomination–is the official Saudi response:
He [a "senior Saudi official"] says the government cannot control these clerics because most are not on the payroll, and they are exercising their rights to free speech.
by Charles
Eleanor Clift is not a pundit I admire (and that’s putting it mildly), but I respect the compassion and dedication she had in handling the final months with her husband, who succumbed last Wednesday to cancer. Her role, unpleasant and painful as it was, was as it should be in a husband-wife relationship. They were as one flesh, living under the implicit premise within the bonds of marriage that each would act in each other’s best interest. Ms. Clift did everything she could to make the waning days of Tom Brazaitis’ life as comfortable and noble as possible, and I pray that she can find comfort in the loss of "the person I have been closest to for more than 20 years."
And that is exactly what has bothered me about Michael Schiavo choosing to end the life of his wife, Terri Schiavo. While the courts consistently ruled that Mr. Schiavo had the authority–because of the marital relationship–to act on behalf of Terri, the presumption that he would act in her very best interests does not and cannot hold (I’m speaking on a moral plane here, not a legal one). In effect, Mr. Schiavo is either a bigamist or he is a widower who became de facto married to Jodi Centonze, whom he has lived with since 1995, has called her his fiance since 1990 and now has children with Ms. Centonze aged one and 2½. Michael Schiavo emotionally, spiritually and physically moved on over a decade ago. Three years into his effective marriage with Ms. Centonze, Mr. Schiavo petitioned the court to starve Terri to death in 1998, based on hearsay evidence that Terri would have wanted it that way. The age-old phrase "you cannot serve two masters" applies here, or in this case a man cannot serve two wives because one of the spouses is going to get the short end. Tragically and wrongly, Terri got the short end, and the fatal end as well.
by Charles Maybe the better term is democra-twister, since it drops on some countries–destroying tyrannies and kleptocracies–but leaves other countries untouched. Unfortunately, the word sounds too much like a Milton-Bradley game for egalitarian teenagers. In Iraq, the insurgents are trying to figure out an exit strategy for their failed bid to restore Sunni-Baathist dominance. Perhaps … Read more
by Charles
Nicholas Kristof was right when he wrote the following:
The U.S. environmental movement is unable to win on even its very top priorities, even though it has the advantage of mostly being right. Oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge may be approved soon, and there’s been no progress whatsoever in the U.S. on what may be the single most important issue to Earth in the long run: climate change.
The fundamental problem, as I see it, is that environmental groups are too often alarmists. They have an awful track record, so they’ve lost credibility with the public. Some do great work, but others can be the left’s equivalents of the neocons: brimming with moral clarity and ideological zeal, but empty of nuance. (Industry has also hyped risks with wildly exaggerated warnings that environmental protections will entail a terrible economic cost.)
The basis for his op-ed is a lengthy article titled the The Death of Environmentalism, which attempts to analyze the root causes of the failures of the environmental movement’s quest to quell global warming. The authors’ main thesis is that the movement is a victim of its own success, that it needs to define itself more broadly and that it needs to find new ways to achieve political success. Personally, I think they’re long on identifying the problem but frustratingly short and vague on ways to solve it. Heretofore my own disjointed and rambling thoughts on the problems of the environmental movement and what can be done.
by Charles Yesterday, a group of millionaires–most of whom are or were articially enhanced through the miracles of medical technology–sat before a Republican Congress and wasted a whole day. Secondary matters such as war, budget deficits, the economy, the environment and terrorism took a back seat. While there is a history of governmental involvement in … Read more
by Charles
The appointment of State Department veteran John Bolton to the UN ambassadorship was a bold one. You don’t select a guy like Bolton and expect milquetoast. Quite the opposite. While there is no shortage of tut-tutting and worries from unnamed sources, Bolton is just the guy to challenge the waning moral authority and ineffectual leadership of this bloated bureaucratic body, as Anne Applebaum aptly noted. So, in keeping with the spirit of this choice, I propose a bold three-point initiative for Mr. Bolton after his confirmation. These are the sort of right-off-the-starting-block actions that will set the right tenor between the US and UN for the remainder of Bush’s term. Two of the three are deliberately confrontational. As they should be, since the UN has more often than not worked against American and global interests than with them.
by Charles BBC reports on a study which links the lengths of mens’ finger lengths and their levels of aggression. The length of a man’s fingers can reveal how physically aggressive he is, Canadian scientists have said. The shorter the index finger is compared to the ring finger, the more boisterous he will be, University … Read more
by Charles Concerning the murders of the Armanious family, I wrote a post here, titled Sharia Vigilantism in New Jersey? which raised the question as to whether this was a Muslim-on-Christian hate crime. I wrote this: "He paid for those beliefs in full, not only with his life but his family’s", and then linked to … Read more
by Charles
It’s one thing for LA Puppy Trainer Times staff writer Barbara Demick, in the unrelenting quest to find newsworthy material, to get so dazzled by an "affable" North Korean "businessman" that she in effect becomes a mouthpiece for Kim Jong Il’s propaganda. It’s another thing altogether when editor John Carroll puts the North Korean party line in undiluted form on the front page, without even a whiff of skepticism or suspicion or doubts. I’m sure the current California governor would have been thrilled to have gotten such fawning press treatment in the run-up to the recall election. The piece, titled From North Korea With Love N. Korea, Without the Rancor, is an astounding example of either monumental bias or ignorance or worse.
The opening teaser: "A businessman speaks his mind about the U.S., the ‘nuclear club’ and human rights issues." How does Ms. Demick or Mr. Carroll know that Mr. Anonymous is a businessman? They don’t. They just accept it at face value. What is the man’s stated background? He "spent much of his career as a diplomat in Europe." If this is true, you don’t get to be a diplomat unless you’re a high-ranking official in Kim’s Kommunist Klub. How can Mr. Anonymous be a "businessman" when he has "been assigned to help his communist country attract foreign investment." When you’re assigned to a task by your authoritarian government superiors–thereby rendered no choice in the matter–the term "businessman" is profoundly misleading. There is no delicate way to put this: Ms. Demick and Mr. Carroll are misleading its readers by uncritically calling this government apparatchik a "businessman".
How did Mr. Anonymous come into contact with Ms. Demick? She doesn’t say. Where did they meet? In Beijing, at a restaurant/karaoke bar owned by the North Korean goverment. Why did Mr. Anonymous come forward but withhold his name? "He said he did not want to be quoted by name because his perspective was personal, not official." Yet this agent’s "personal views" did not depart one jot or tittle from current North Korean dogma. The only difference between the Dear Leader and Mr. Anonymous was that the latter packaged his views in prettier, more "affable" packaging. Here’s how the reporter and the operative interacted regarding North Korea’s abysmal human rights record:
The story of Judge Joan Lefkow and the execution-style slaying of her husband and her mother reminds me of a similar revenge murder story that took place in the county where I live*: This is the story of Renae Wicklund. Renae lived in a cute little country house set back from the road. She had … Read more
by Charles So far, I’ve been liking Condi Rice’s moves as Secretary of State. It’s no coincidence that when Ms. Rice canceled her trip to Egypt, Hosni Mubarak made the decision to open up his country to elections. She’s working with Canadians on ballistic missiles. She’s involved in the Israel-Palestinian peace process. While I’m sure … Read more
The Dutch Reporter has been keeping tabs on Islamic extremism in the Netherlands, in particular the travails of two politicians under virtual house arrest for fear of terrorist attacks against them. The Washington Post wrote a piece last month on Geert Wilders, who has taken a strong stance against extremism within Dutch borders. He is literally living in a prison:
Parliamentary representatives Geert Wilders, who receives many dead threats from Islamic immigrants is already for months housed in prison camp Zeist. A high secure prison that was also used for the Lockerbie terrorists. Wilders has to sleep in a prison cell…Representative Wilders is told, that he has to stay in jail until September before he can get other housing. Five years a go this prison was used to hold the Libyan terrorist who blew up a plane above Lockerbie. After the Lockerbie trial the prison has been used for drug traffickers from Schiphol. But at this moment it is used for illegal aliens and other criminals.
Fellow parliamentary member Hirsi Ali–who wasn’t murdered by Mohammed Bouyeri because Theo Van Gogh proved an easier target–was "housed on a heavily guarded Marine complex in Amsterdam". Ironically, the imprisoned legislator just received an emancipation prize from a Dutch feminist magazine.
by Charles
It’s fun watching dictators squirm. The assassination of Rafik Hariri is turning out to be one of Bashar Assad’s biggest miscalculations in his short career as Syrian strongman. The evidence of course isn’t all in, but clearly the motivation for the assassination lies with the Syrian government. They thought they could get away with it.
In a quasi peace offering yesterday, Assad offered up Saddam’s half-brother and 29 other Iraqi Baathists to the Iraqi government. Apparently the group was arrested over the weekend, but the real question is how long Assad allowed these Iraqis to freely operate within Syrian borders. I suspect Assad has let this happen since April 2003. This one-off gesture is nowhere near good enough. Syria sponsors and harbors terrorists and terrorist groups, they provide aid and comfort to Iraqi "insurgents", they keep Lebanon under lock and key, and they are responsible for attempting to scuttle the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. From the Washington Post:
Palestinian and Israeli security forces arrested seven Palestinians on Saturday in connection with a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv the night before, while leaders of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Syria asserted responsibility for the attack.
Emphasis mine. The international lens on Assad and Lebanon is having its effect. Publius Pundit is reporting on protests by the Lebanese opposition, even though the government instituted a ban on such activities. Assad would only make it worse if he applied Hama Rules to these protests, especially now that the number protesting approached 200,000. In effect, Assad is losing control of Lebanon, and it’s about time. The Caveman in Beirut is also covering these historic events. Importantly, Lebanese business leaders are also in full support:
Leaders of Lebanon’s banking, industrial and commercial sectors said they would shut down next Monday to demand the country’s pro-Syrian government resign and that a "neutral" one replace it.
The strike would coincide with an expected vote of confidence in parliament, two weeks after the murder of former premier Rafiq Hariri in a bomb blast for which the opposition has pinned blame on the government and its Syrian backers.
[Update: The snowball is gathering speed. CNN has just reported that pro-Syrian Lebanese prime minister Karami has just resigned and his government has collapsed.]
If we were to conjure up a scorecard on the progress of freedom and the resistance to tyranny in the last twelve months, there are many nations we can put in the plus column.
Waving orange scarves and banners — the colors of Ukraine’s revolution — dozens of Uzbeks demonstrated in the capital Tashkent last week over the demolition of their homes to make way for border fencing. The protest reportedly compelled the autocratic government of Islam Karimov, widely condemned for human-rights abuses, to pay compensation.
Kyrgyzstan
In Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan, hundreds of pro-democracy activists rallied on Saturday to demand that upcoming parliamentary elections be free and fair. Registan is reporting favorably on the democratic direction this country is moving toward.
Moldova
From Kyrgyzstan on the Chinese border to Moldova, where Europe’s only ruling Communist Party faces elections next month, opposition parties are eagerly studying Georgia’s "Rose Revolution" and Ukraine’s "Orange Revolution," which led to the triumph of pro-democracy forces.
Over by the Martyr’s Monument, Lebanese students have built a little tent city and are vowing to stay until Syria’s 15,000 troops withdraw. They talk like characters in "Les Miserables," but their revolutionary bravado is the sort of force that can change history. "We have nothing to lose anymore. We want freedom or death," says Indra Hage, a young Lebanese Christian. "We’re going to stay here, even if soldiers attack us," says Hadi Abi Almouna, a Druze Muslim. "Freedom needs sacrifices, and we are ready to give them." Over by the Martyr’s Monument, Lebanese students have built a little tent city and are vowing to stay until Syria’s 15,000 troops withdraw. They talk like characters in "Les Miserables," but their revolutionary bravado is the sort of force that can change history. "We have nothing to lose anymore. We want freedom or death," says Indra Hage, a young Lebanese Christian. "We’re going to stay here, even if soldiers attack us," says Hadi Abi Almouna, a Druze Muslim. "Freedom needs sacrifices, and we are ready to give them."
Brave words, in a country where dissent has often meant death. "It is the beginning of a new Arab revolution," argues Samir Franjieh, one of the organizers of the opposition. "It’s the first time a whole Arab society is seeking change — Christians and Muslims, men and women, rich and poor."
While the assassination of Rafik Hariri was a major blow to the Lebanese independence movement, Druze Muslim leader Walid Jumblatt has had enough and he is emerging as a leading opposition voice. The world will be watching the elections in May, and I expect that Bashar Assad will keep a low profile.
[Update: Did the pressure brought to bear on Syria cause Assad to turn in Saddam’s half-brother and 29 other Iraqi Baathists to the Iraqi authorities? I believe so.]
Egypt
These boots are made for walkin’. Condi Rice canceled a trip to Egypt because of the arrest of an opposition politician, and Hosni Mubarak is feeling the heat for his autocratic rule, from within and outside Egyptian boundaries. Just yesterday:
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Saturday ordered a revision of the country’s election laws and said multiple candidates could run in the nation’s presidential elections, a scenario Mubarak hasn’t faced since taking power in 1981.
The surprise announcement, a response to critics’ calls for political reform, comes shortly after historic elections in Iraq and the Palestinian territories, balloting that brought a taste of democracy to the region. It also comes amid a sharp dispute with the United States over Egypt’s arrest of one of the strongest proponents of multi-candidate elections.
"The election of a president will be through direct, secret balloting, giving the chance for political parties to run for the presidential elections and providing guarantees that allow more than one candidate for the people to choose among them with their own will," Mubarak said in an address broadcast live on Egyptian television.
