In Which Ash Recovers from Dropping the Ball on the Protest Movement, Rounds That Collective Craziness Up and Tries to Achieve Some Sense of Scale of the thing.
So I took a little vacation for a few days and travelled haphazardly around central Ontario, and when I finally came to rest in the fine nation's capital and decided I might need to check my email, I checked the news in the Middle East.
Silly Ash, being MIA during the middle of a burgeoning regional revolution.
Suffice it to say that shit's going down.
Wanna hear about it?
(Note to the Geographically Spooked: If you feel like you've never heard of any of these countries, that's fine--the clickable wonder of wikipedia in each header will help with that. Go do some map-learnin! We live in interesting times!)
Algeria
Protests started early and strong in Algiers, and
the 19th's demonstration came up against 30,000 riot cops. They stopped them from marching, but it's unlikely they'll stop protesting. If this is surprising to you, you haven't been paying attention.
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| Bahrain |
Bahrain
Manama's
been through a lot in the last few days, largely from police firing into swelling but peaceful crowds.
Folks seem to want the monarchy and the attendant government out, and are having a good ol' Tahrir-style love in at Pearl Roundabout to make their point. Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims, usually a little tense around each other in Bahrain, are coming together quite nicely. Apparently nothing builds community like a good old democratic revolution. Oh, and there's a national general strike! Those are fun!
China
Whaaaaat? China?? Apparently so! Under the Great Firewall squeaks the
rumours of brewing protests in the now-familiar flavour of Jasmine Revolution. Mmm mmm good. Watch this space, if the news can escape the great google-scramblers of Mao and co.
Djibouti
East Africa has actually been protesting since Jan 28th! Who knew? Tired of
Ismail Omar Guelleh for President,
demonstrators surrounded a stadium and don't want to go home until they get what they want. Then again,
they're being beaten with batons and tear gassed.
Iran
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| Marraketch in Morocco |
Protests in Tehran are being menaced by
basiji militia tear gas and batons and a bunch of people detained in Shiraz. However, Iranians are my personal heroes for being
the original face of Middle Eastern protest movements, so I've got significant faith that they're not going anywhere. Even though there are 1984-esque stories coming out of the unofficial state media that
there are no protests happening anyway. Sure.
Iraq
Oh my god, they want better government services and for someone to handle unemployment--say it ain't so. People in
Basra and other large cities took to the streets in the thousands. Also, someone wrote the word "Governor" on a donkey in the middle of a square in Kut. Cheeky.
Jordan
For the last seven weeks,
Friday has been "quick!-flood-the-square" day in Jordan, but the demonstrations against the absolute monarchy aren't quite at the same level of cohesion as some of the other places on this illustrious list. They also appear to be getting more violent, slowly. Lame.
Libya
After Four days of crazy,
there are loads dead. The Guardian says that "talk of massacres is not exaggerated"--the army keeps firing on protestersin Benghazi. Media's not blacked out, although reports fly that they're trying. You may remember their president from his cablegate-publicized botox and hot nurse: after 42 years in power, Muammar al-
Qaddafi's still a big jerk. Protests have
spread to Tripoli, and are not slowing down.
Morocco
With the wholesale rejection of
"a constitution made for slaves",
thousands turn out for peaceful protests in a bunch of Moroccan major cities.
Marraketch has apparently degraded into violence, with protesters sacking the police station and government buildings. The
state media is covering it, though, which may give credence to the government's insistence that it's much more liberal than the rest of these goons running the Mid East. Protesters still
want a new constitution, a change in government, and for the overall smog of corruption to clear though.
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| Yemen |
Yemen
Sanaa's been protesting for 11 days now, and
3,000 students in the streets have pushed President Saleh past his initial concessions ("I swear I won't run after 2013 guys. Unlike the last 30 years, I'm super serious this time.") and into claims he's ready to dialogue. It's actually pretty complicated, though, so
AJE breaks it down with the usual insight and grace.
Extra Credit:
Tunisia
Pakistan: Remember the CIA-contractor jerkoff that killed two Lahore motorcyclists in January execution-style? The CIA guy, a one Mr. Raymond Davis formerly of Blackwater, was investigating the radical Pakistani Islamist group Lashkar when the shit went down and inflamed angry discussion about how far diplomatic immunity actually goes. Now he's out of prison, everyone's still pissed about it, and the families of the men killed were paid $2.3 million dollars. For context, the average suggested pay to families of innocents killed in US ops hovers around $5,000.
America: The Foo Fighters recorded their latest album in Dave Grohl's garage, did a documentary about it for SXSW, and are doing a tour of concerts in peoples' garages. That you can maybe have in YOUR garage. After a day of bad news, how effin' cool is that?
