"In the most amazing (and selfless) part, Richard Kiyabo, the chairman of the party in question, has said they are ready to provide technical support to other parties to teach them how to use the same system of registration."

"I'll get straight to the point: Paul Kagame and his RPF are employing the same mechanisms and tactics of social and political control and ethnic exclusion that Habyarimana's regime did before the genocide."

Erik Hersman on how tech can address a host of election monitoring issues.

all of Uzbekistan's telecoms companies will text Uzbek mobile phone users later this week, reminding them to vote on Sunday

"A Catalan newspaper is reporting that Honduran authorities have seized computers...belonging to deposed president Mel Zelaya. ...These computers, according to the news report, contained the official and certified results of the illegal constitutional referendum Zelaya wanted to conduct that never took place."

"While there’s no shortage of pride over the Obama visit, there’s a darker tone as well to many of these conversations. This is the third US presidential visit to Ghana, and while Obama is a rock star to an extent that George W. Bush never was, there’s a sense of inevitability to some of these visits."

scary: Iranian officials have a web site with photos of protesters; asking public to identify them

"So when a government censors the Internet, it had better think twice: 'Cute cats are collateral damage when governments block sites,' Mr. Zuckerman wrote for a recent talk. People who could not 'care less about presidential shenanigans are made aware that their government fears online speech so much that they’re willing to censor the millions of banal videos' and thereby 'block a few political ones.'"

"Look for sources that disprove your thesis. Go outside the country and outside your comfort zone. See what, say, China's news agency reports about the protests."

"Several news site and blogs such as 3vomiband209 report [fa] that a few hours before Iranian presidential election SMS is blocked in country and several political blogs are not available."

"'Together we have changed the landscape of European politics,' Pirate Party leader Rick Falkvinge told file-sharing news Web site TorrentFreak after the win."

Not sure how I feel about this.

"More American ambassadors have died violent deaths since World War II than our admirals and generals combined."

Oh my god, do I ever miss Aaron Sorkin.

best. campaign. ever.

clinton's role in foreign policy, torn apart. three cheers for obama

Includes a map of ethnic migrations in Kenya since the elections

",,,the medium is hard to dismiss as a reporters' tool, particularly in countries where cell-phone networks reach farther than the internet. At 4:53 am local time on January 18th Juliana Rotich, a blogger in Kenya, tweeted in her own cablese, “in town n

Democrats living abroad may vote in their party’s 2008 Global Presidential Primary.

op-ed on Kenya by the author of The Zanzibar Chest

dirt from Ron Paul's old newsletters, researched at the KU libraries