Archives

Africa: Kenya's crisis continues, with a second opposition MP assassinated and African leaders making statements that have thus far been in vain. Ory Okolloh's Kenyan Pundit blog features yet another great submission from yet another Kenyan unable to believe the way things have gone.

Asia: The Atlantic Council and Oxfam worry that Afghanistan's future stability is slipping away. 

Further reading: Human Rights Watch accuses western governments of hypocrisy in their stances on rigged elections and political corruption. The Economist on the Soviet, and now post-Soviet, rhetorical tactic of whataboutism. Taiwan's independence a "pseudo-issue"?

Africa: Hopes that Kofi Annan's arrival in Nairobi might help resolve the post-election crisis gripping Kenya have thus far proven empty. Fresh violence has left dozens dead and the country effectively paralyzed. Kenyan Pundit pointed recently to a good blog with first-person accounts, none of them cheerful. The East Standard's plaintive editorial is a good indicator of how close Kenya is to the edge.

Europe: Russia decides to cut the number of election monitors for its March presidential polls to half the number who were present for the 2004 vote. The Kremlin also officially barred Mikhail Kasyanov from running, eliminating the only candidate with even a vague hope of challenging Vladimir Putin's hand-picked successor, Dimitriy Medvedev. Mark MacKinnon has a list of Russia's recent invocations of the old disqualified-candidate trick. In Turkey, a court gave a 15-month suspended sentence to a professor found guilty of insulting the founder of the country.

Asia: Dan Casey at Maisonneuve has a nice look at Canadian media following the global lead in polishing the turd that was Indonesian dictator Suharto. Seems you can slaughter a few million people and limit freedoms as long as you also improve the economy. UK PM Gordon Brown tells visiting Pakistan leader Pervez Musharraf that "credible elections" are probably a good idea. A TV cooking-show host and ally of exiled ex-PM Thaksin wins the Thai election.

Further Reading: Foreign Policy magazine on the best ways to steal an election. A great NYT magazine piece -- actually an excerpt from the new book by policy researcher Parag Khanna -- on the decline of US hegemony. And two pieces from Scientific American on Brazil's plans to prioritize science and education -- the first an overview, the second by three authors, including Brazilian President Lula da Silva. 

Africa: Kofi Annan and other African statesmen arrive in Kenya seeking a solution, while the opposition party files a complaint with the International Criminal Court in the Hague over police actions since the disputed election. In DR Congo, peace talks hit an impasse and a study shows that the ongoing conflict causes 45,000 deaths each month.

Europe: Observers fear more political intimidation from President Vladimir Putin as Russian prosecutors investigate former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov, who is running against Putin's choice for president in upcoming elections. Canadian journalist Mark MacKinnon predicted Putin's falsified signatures approach a week ago. Italian Prime Minister Antonio Prodi calls for a vote of confidence as his coalition teeters.

Australia: Tasmania becomes the only state to compensate indigenous Australians from the "stolen generation," who were forcibly removed from their families to be "integrated" into modern society.

FYI: Missed this earlier in the month -- On Jan. 4, Why Democracy guest blogger alumnus Robert Reich called an Obama-McCain presidential race.

Europe: Presidential elections in Serbia show nationalist candidate Tomislav Nikolic in the lead and heading towards a runoff poll. Serbia's vote is of interest because of an impending independence declaration in its disputed province of Kosovo and also the prospect of EU membership. Meanwhile, speaking of the EU, Britain is facing a showdown in parliament, with some MPs attempting to force a referendum on the Lisbon treaty (here's a good BBC Q&A), signed in December 2007.

Africa: Sudan's federal affairs minister names one of the leaders of the Janjaweed militia as an advisor. Human Rights Watch calls this "an affront" to victims of atrocities in Darfur. In South Africa, ANC officials have approached President Thabo Mbeki with demands designed to reflect the changed makeup of the party since Jacob Zuma's leadership win in December 2007. One request may be the appointment of party deputy president Kgalema Motlanthe as a second deputy president in government. A peace deal may be close in east DR Congo.

Further reading: The authors of Freakonomics on why some well-intentioned laws don't work. Ecuador's radical government as a model for Canada? And Michel Gondry, a favourite director of some of the Democracy House alumni, curates YouTube.

Statistics: Global freedom has declined alarmingly in the past year, a study from Freedom House, a think tank, declares. The study uses various criterai to designate countries free, partly free or not free -- 46 percent of the world's population is free, 18 percent partly free, and 36 percent not free. Setbacks in freedom were notable in parts of Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Africa: Protests in Kenya are again marred by police violence.Great coverage as always on Kenyan Pundit. Concerns in Rwanda that some students are still being taught "genocide ideology".

Asia: Britain's ambassador says he expects new protests in Burma. Will these lead, finally, to global action or just more cynical posturing? More bombings in Pakistan -- a further unravelling or is this merely back to  "normal"? 

Middle East: The majority held by Ehud Olmert's coalition in Israel is weakened by the departure of a right-wing party concerned about land-for-peace proposals. But one coalition member speculates this will assist the peace process.

Europe: A corruption investigation weakens the Prodi government's already-weak hold on power. 

Africa: Kenya's opposing sides face off in parliament, with the opposition winning an early point when one of its members was named speaker. Mass protests are planned over the next three days. More great stuff on Kenyan Pundit, who also points to Mars Group Kenya, a group using video and other media to target corruption -- they've been showing live clips from parliament, which can only be a good thing.

Asia: The Taiwanese Kuomintang (or Nationalist) Party swept parliamentary elections last weekend. The Kuomintang years ago fought the Chinese communists on the mainland, but now advocate a less confrontational approach and are not absolutely opposed to reunification. Michael Turton offers an interesting analysis of the DPP's loss in his View From Taiwan blog.

North America: Democratic leadership candidate Dennis Kucinich lost a battle with TV network NBC to be included in their televised debate on Tuesday night, which had gone to the Nevada Supreme Court. Nobody in the US thinks Kucinich has even a vague chance -- he's most useful as fodder for late-night TV (because he's short and has pointy ears) -- but what are the implications of a TV network making the rules that determine which candidates are seen and which ones aren't?

Eastern Europe: Supporters of Georgia's opposition rally en masse against presidential elections they say were rigged.

Africa: Human Rights Watch says Kenyan police used lethal force to stop protests in the wake of disputed elections. (Here's some background from South Africa's Mail & Guardian.) Also, Why Democracy guest blogger Kenyan Pundit (whose site has provided numerous first-person accounts from various Kenyans) points out the Ushahidi.com site, where Kenyans can report and map incidents and violence.

Asia: Former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina charged with extortion.

Further Reading: Tariq Ali on the Bhutto family in the London Review of Books, with an addendum written after Benazir's assassination. Steven Pinker in the New York Times Magazine on ethics and Clive Thompson on touchscreen voting machines.