As Andrew Sullivan has chronicled, it has been a couple of exciting weeks for those who hope technology will unleash a wave of democratization.  Texts, tweets and technorati have surely played a role.  At the same time, Marx predicted the railroad would lead to the dictatorship of the proletariat, and we all know how that [...]

We’ve seen a number of regimes fall because of popular protests: Serbia, Ukraine, Georgia, yadda yadda. We’ve also seen several that have not fallen: Burma, Armenia, Greece. Which one does Iran more resemble? Or, to put it another way, what are the common factors?
Here’s a first attempt at classification. Political scientists [...]

The Georgian opposition is generally described as a loose alliance, united mainly in their distaste for current president Mikhail Saakashvili and their somewhat greater distaste for Russian domination. In the latter they are in harmony with the vast majority of Georgians, while the former is not so clear. But they are divided on many more [...]

The Russian judge was unimpressed by both the technical merits and the artistic program of the UN resolution to extend the observation mission in Georgia’s breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. 0.0 all around, or Géorgie, nul point.
Since 1993, UN observers had worked both sides of the lines to keep tabs on troop movements [...]

For a banned demonstration called off by the opposition candidate, this looks pretty big. New York Times says “hundreds of thousands,” i.e., more than came to see Obama in Berlin.
Government apparently continuing to try to crack down on media. Much information still coming out, but verification in the old media sense is difficult, and the [...]

Tehran tense, says CNN. Unrest challenges Iran’s republic, says the BBC headline writer, choosing understatement. The reporter, Jon Leyne, is less restrained: “As demonstrations against the Iranian election result continue, the situation in Tehran is becoming unpredictable and potentially explosive.”
The story got close to a third of Germany’s main news broadcast last night, too, with [...]

It’s polling day in Iran and

I’ve been asked to crosspost this from my blog…
Resistance - The Essence of the Islamist Revolution is Alistair Crooke’s survey of modern Islamist thought. It would be clearer to say it is a couple of books occupying the same space; one would be a history of Islamist thought since the origins of the Iranian Revolution, [...]

Story on the geopolitical angle from Foreign Policy today. And it’s better than any story you’re likely to find in a major newspaper, too.

Possibly not the best result for a sitting government.
(That’s how British people do understatement, right?)
It also shows at least one of the perils of writing headlines. UKIP did well in 2004, so this result gains them one additional seat in the European Parliament. The Conservatives, who placed first, also gained only one seat, as did [...]