albania

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Tunisia, Algeria, Yemen, Albania...

Berisha accused the socialist opposition of wanting to trigger "a Tunisian-style scenario for Albania" by staging "a coup to seize power by force," AFP reported.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets for an anti-government protest called by the socialist opposition on 21 January. The demonstration ended with violent clashes between protesters and the police, and three people were killed. ...

Berisha and opposition Socialist Party leader Edi Rama blamed one another for the deaths, with each side promising new rallies in an escalating political row. ...

In a move to bolster support, Berisha on Saturday gave a bonus of one month's wages to security officials who patrolled the protest on Friday, and four months' wages for police officials who were wounded.

Security officials have placed coils of barbed wire on the ground around government buildings on the capital's main boulevard.

They're trying to give all kinds of fancy excuses—corruption, bogus elections, partisan bickering, housing, human rights—but the bottom line, the motive force in all these places seems to be FOOD.

[THE CORPORATION, two and a half hour documentary that does bear on all this....]

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UPDATE — And Egypt....

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love, 99
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predators and prey

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It is not enough to riot and revolt, people need to keep at it until the danger of the wrong changes moving in has passed. This would be why movement leaders need to be clear on the goal before they urge people to the streets. Yes, sometimes the people don't wait for enlightened leadership to emerge, and sometimes I wonder if enlightened leadership is even possible anymore, those tending toward it being either completely disinclined to leadership or not enlightened in fact, but more corruptible power freaks is the norm. It's the norm that needs overturning. This means the people have to lose their default settings along with their patience for tyrants.

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Three people were shot dead as protesters fought police outside Albanian Prime Minister Sali Berisha's office on Friday during a rally to demand the government resign over corruption allegations. ...

This would be the prime reason no one in the United States wants to get out there to demand the resignation of our corrupt government. Fat people find it safer to use sophistry to avoid risk than to eliminate it. The harder it is to reconcile such an attitude with facts, the more superior the tone of the sophistry becomes. When the facts keep heaping up—despite the most elaborate and finely-wrought sophistry, complete with experts—the tone turns shrill, lots of sanctimony gets thrown in for good measure, and polemics turn to hard and heavy shit-slinging. If none of that works, it gets still louder, loftier on one side and lower on the other, by turns, and yet less amenable to even short lulls. We couldn't be lucky enough to have another civil war... let alone another revolution.

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love, 99
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