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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: longnshort who wrote (18729)	4/6/2007 6:23:37 PM
From: Mr. Palau	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

you poor desperate dweebs

To: longnshort who wrote (18729)	4/26/2007 11:24:09 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

Syrians Riot Over Rigged Elections Bashar Assad has some riots on his hands after an attempt to hold a rigged election (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/26/wsyria26.xml) in Syria. He had to bring in the army to put down protests in the north, and apparently the army fired live rounds into the crowds: Violent protests broke out in northern Syria amid accusations of vote rigging following Sunday's parliamentary elections. Five protesters were left seriously injured, including three men who suffered gunshot wounds and remain in hospital, after the army was brought in to quash the demonstrations. There are unconfirmed reports that two people were killed. Anti-riot police and security forces were called to the main road linking the north-eastern cities of Raqqah and Deir Ezour on Tuesday afternoon, where 700 tribesmen staged a sit-in and destroyed nearby poll centres. Protesting later spread to the centre of Raqqah when a further 3,000 people gathered near the Governor's home. Six people were injured and a temporary curfew was imposed on the city. What prompted the riots? It turns out that the tribesmen of the region had the audacity to elect non-Ba'athists to local offices. That was enough for Syria's government to throw out the results from 21 precincts after the polls closed. That action caused the thousands of Syrians to march openly against their dictatorship, a breathtaking development for a society that lost thousands of dissenters at the hands of Assad's father. Even more interesting, the region in which this took place seems near the footprint of Syrian Kurdistan. Raqqah and Deir Ezour sit on the Euphrates; north of that, the Kurds populate the region. The Kurds in the region have reacted to the liberation of their Iraqi cousins with the hope of freedom for themselves. The election of independent candidates in that area, and the protests that followed, may have been an indicator that the Syrian Kurds will assert themselves more in the near future, although it should be noted that Kurds make up a lesser percentage of the population in Syria than they do in Iraq. Rigged elections spelled the end of oppressive and/or corrupt regimes before, notably Ukraine. Whetting peoples' appetite for self-determination and then stealing it from them is an inherently destabilizing act. Assad may yet pay the ultimate price for his tease. Posted by Ed Morrissey at 04:56 AM \| Comments (4) \| TrackBack (0) sphere.com