· September, 2006

Stories about Politics from September, 2006

Turkey is Typing…

  30 September 2006

As that transition from the lazy days of Summer turn into Fall, a gloomy spell has fallen over the Turkish bloggers this week…and actually, I can agree with them myself. Murat from American Turk writes about the frustration of the day to day mundane of the office: I'm unhappy at...

DRC: Tshisekedi Should Save the Nation by Supporting Mbemba

  29 September 2006

On UDPS Liege, Florent Mukonkole writes(Fr): “Any Congolese with any sense of nationalism should rally around Mbemba [in the upcoming runoff against Kabila]to save the nation.” He then asks Etienne Tshisekedi, leader of opposition party UDPS, to do the same and implies that a recent press release by the leader...

Poland: Coalition-Building Crisis

  29 September 2006

The beatroot reports on Poland's government crisis: “So even the Peasants don’t want to get into bed with PiS, it appears. Which shows how bad the image of the government has become: in the past 17 years since parliamentary democracy began in Poland PSL have been known to get into...

Belarus: Protest Diaries and Opposition Leader

  29 September 2006

Ivan Lenin of Rush-Mush reports that the online diaries of a Belarusian protester Dasha Kostenko have been published in Moscow. He also criticizes the opposition leader Milinkevich: “It's a big shame that the brave Belarusians who were risking their health, their freedom, and their very lives didn't have a better...

Nigeria: Vice-President in self-denial

  29 September 2006

Aba Boy argues that the Nigerian Vice-President, Atiku Abubakar, is in self denial: “His fight to clear his name has led a few to believe that his denial is taking the form of spreading outright falsehood, and by implication refusing to address the facts. Reading his letter, one could easily...

Iran:Ganji's letter to America

  29 September 2006

Nim Negah has published an excerpt of Akbar Ganji's, Iranian journalist and human rights activist, “Letter to America” in Washington Post. Ganji asked for a direct and transparent talk between US and Iran.The blogger published following part of the letter :” It is both possible and desirable to solve the...

Barbados: Land sale

  29 September 2006

Barbados Free Press employs a bit of allegory to highlight possible flaws in the logic behind the government's decision to sell the island's lands to foreign investors.

Indonesia: New Political Parties

  29 September 2006

Indonesia Matters lists newly registerd political parties in Indonesia. The blogger also taks about how the explosion in the number of parties is causing parties to come up with similar sounding names.

China: Killing chickens, not for bird flu

  29 September 2006

A corruption probe has led to the dismissal of Chen Liangyu, the highest-ranked Communist official in Shanghai and key member of former Chairman Jiang Zemin‘s Shanghai Gang, a rival faction to the current administration headed by Chairman Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao. Where the hundred million dollars has gone...

Serbian Blog Roundup

  29 September 2006

A house at the Golija Mountain – by Bogdan Cirovic At English section of Serbiancafe discussion board, Toshiba blogs out: Village of Rudno at Golija mountain is at altitude of 1200 meters. You would need four hours from Belgrade to get here by car. Beauties of one region are not...

Ethiopia: were blogs blocked?

  28 September 2006

“One day Ethiopia had one of the busiest and fastest-growing blogging scenes in the whole of Africa. The next, more than two-thirds of its online journals simply disappeared,” begins the BBC's Focus on Africa magazine article about the great Ethiopian blog blockage.

Nigeria: corruption in high places

  28 September 2006

Oloniyi David Ajao writes about corruption in high places in Nigeria, “Accusations have been that the Vice President is corrupt, and should not be allowed to stand as president in next year’s election. Gbenga Obasanjo (President Obasanjo’s son) accused him, as did the President himself. Several such accusations have been...

Syria: Democracy vs. Engagement!

  28 September 2006

While the Democracy Faith seems to have been based on the assumption that authoritarianism and corruption in the Broader Middle East and North Africa region seem to play a role in encouraging international terrorism, the Engagement Faith is premised on the assumption that authoritarian regimes are much more capable of...

Palestine: Citizen Profile

  28 September 2006

Are Palestinians still romanticizing with the fantasies and daydreams of complete liberation and the return to a land they only heard and read about? Maybe these daydreams were legitimate and reasonable in the previous era of the struggle, but under the current necessity for re-evaluation, the options for realizing the...

India: Education and English

  28 September 2006

The government in Karnataka flexes its muscles by quoting a specific rule and shutting down schools. More at the Indian Economy Blog – “The point of contention behind closing the schools is apprently a rule dated 1994 that mandates that “children attending government schools must be taught only in Kannada...