THINGS ARE HEATING UP IN LEBANON:

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Syrian-backed government banned protests planned for Monday (local time) but a main opposition figure vowed the Lebanese would take to the streets to demand who killed former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri.

Interior minister Suleiman Franjieh called on security forces in a statement on Sunday “to take all necessary steps to preserve security and order and prevent demonstrations and gatherings on Monday”.

Opposition groups have called a protest at the central Martyrs Square by Hariri’s grave and a one-day strike to coincide with a parliamentary debate on the killing that for many recalled Lebanon’s bitter 1975-90 civil war.

Government and Syrian loyalists, meanwhile, planned to descend on central Beirut to protest against US deputy secretary of state David Satterfield’s visit to Lebanon as part of growing international pressure.

Clashes between the two sides were feared.

More here, with a prediction that tomorrow is going to be quite a day.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, this report from Bahrain seems like positive news:

The Arab world must shun extremism which breeds violence, His Majesty King Hamad urged yesterday.

Extremism and violence are alien to the principles of Islam, he said in an address read out at the opening of a regional forum held in Bahrain.

“The region has a civilised and open-minded heritage that is based on the respect of people’s rights and aspirations by promoting insight and sound guidance in line with the teachings of the Holy Quran,” said the King. . . . He said that Bahrain was hosting the forum at a time when its ceiling of political and intellectual freedom had increased and the channels for dialogue were open for everyone.

More like this, please.

ANOTHER UPDATE: More here. Hmm. Maybe those crazy neocons had a plan after all . . . .

BILL HOBBS is less positive about Phil Bredesen’s Presidential possibilities than I have been. It’s certainly true that if Bredesen fails to fix TennCare, his prospects will be poor.

BUSH AND PUTIN: David Adesnik has some thoughts on what happened at Bratislava.

ROGER SIMON is live-blogging the Oscars. So is Mark Coffey. And Ann Althouse!

Oscar preview here. And don’t miss this related take from Kid Rock. More here.

NEW DEVELOPMENTS in Burmese newspaperdom, complete with a PDF.

NEW OPENINGS FOR ARAB DEMOCRACY: A Christian Science Monitor roundup:

In a surprise announcement Saturday, Egypt’s long-ruling president, Hosni Mubarak, ordered constitutional changes that would open the door for the first-ever multiparty presidential elections in the world’s most populous Arab country. The move is the latest indication of a cautious democratic shift under way in the Arab world.

Since the beginning of the year, the region has seen national elections in Iraq and the Palestinian territories, landmark municipal elections in Saudi Arabia, and unprecedented mass demonstrations in Lebanon calling for an end to Syrian tutelage.

The question remains whether these developments are truly the initial flourishings of a nascent democratic transformation or merely halfhearted measures by autocratic regimes which have no intention of promoting genuine change. What happens next is key, observers say.

True enough. Democratization is a process, not an event, as I’ve noted before. But at least it’s a process that’s under way.

Jeff Jarvis, meanwhile, has a roundup of what Egyptian bloggers are saying.

MORE EMBARRASSMENT for the U.N.:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.N. officials fear the sex-abuse scandal among peacekeepers in Africa is far more widespread and appears to be a problem in each of the global body’s 16 missions around the world.

Indeed it does.

ELECTION NEWS ROUNDUPS for Kyrgyzistan and Tajikistan.

CAPT. ED NOTES that the pressure is beginning to tell on Syria.

UPDATE: John Cole has thoughts on what it means. And here’s some perhaps-triumphalist history.

TIM WORSTALL has another BritBlog Roundup posted.

THOUGHTS ON JOURNALISTS IN IRAQ:

Elections are one of the few news occasions that provide editors and reporters with the clarity of numbers to help us to judge whether or not we are doing a decent job. January 30th turned out to be a better day for Iraqis than it was for reporters.

The failure of “hotel journalism” might be forgivable if it were truly about prudence or even laziness. But there has been something wilful about the bad reporting of this story. It is weirdly personal: Iraq must fail. It is in fact the press that failed, on a scale for which I cannot think of a precedent. Will the big media outlets demand the same accountability of themselves that they demand of everyone else? They should, for the success of these elections was not so surprising to those who dug below the surface of Iraq.

Yes, it became clear that those who read blogs — especially blogs from Iraq — had a better picture of what was going on than those who read, say, Newsweek.

More thoughts on the press’s failure in Iraq, here.

UPDATE: All I can say is I told you so.

ASTROTURF SPAM aimed at blogs? Bigwig thinks he’s found an example.

I don’t think, though, that this is the first such effort. At least, Mickey Kaus reported that Sid Blumenthal was behind some anti-Trent-Lott blog-email, as was James Carville.

MARK STEYN HAS REMOVED ANY DOUBT about where he thinks Europe is headed:

Most administration officials subscribe to one of two views: a) Europe is a smugly irritating but irrelevant backwater; or b) Europe is a smugly irritating but irrelevant backwater where the whole powder keg’s about to go up.

For what it’s worth, I incline to the latter position. Europe’s problems — its unaffordable social programs, its deathbed demographics, its dependence on immigration numbers that no stable nation (not even America in the Ellis Island era) has ever successfully absorbed — are all of Europe’s making. . . .

Until the shape of the new Europe begins to emerge, there’s no point picking fights with the terminally ill. The old Europe is dying, and Mr. Bush did the diplomatic equivalent of the Oscar night lifetime-achievement tribute at which the current stars salute a once glamorous old-timer whose fading aura is no threat to them. The 21st century is being built elsewhere.

Personally, I hope that Austin Bay’s more hopeful view turns out to be right.

UPDATE: Mark Steyn responds to Austin Bay in Austin’s comments.

ANOTHER UPDATE: A more positive take on Europe, from an American serviceman serving there, can be found at Amy Ridenour’s blog.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: More on Europe, in a less hopeful vein, here: “One interesting angle in the story is the way in which the phenomenon of mass immigration has now intersected with membership of the EU to make an already tricky problem unmanageable.”

MORE: Beldar comments on the debate. And this post from Ann Althouse is worth noting, too.

STILL MORE: Brian Dunn quotes Victor Davis Hanson and observes:

I don’t believe that Europe is beyond another bout of internal bloodletting. Just because Europe since 1945 has only seen war in the Balkans does not mean war is banished. Europe went through a period from 1815 to 1914 without much large-scale war. France versus Prussia, Austria versus Prussia, Russia versus Britain and France, French versus Italians (I think). It sounds like a lot, but over 99 years and considering the violent past of Europe, that really wasn’t much. So I’m not convinced that Europe has had war bred out of it. They have a violent past and the very zeal they look to Brussels is a sign that Europeans don’t think war is bred out of them. Otherwise why would they seek suppression of national conflict through a super-state entangling them all in rules and treaties?

And if Europe isn’t immune from warlike impulses, I don’t think it is safe to assume that a revival of war impulses couldn’t be directed against us. We could be blamed for their problems. They blame us for so many things already, why not?

Well, that’s cheerful.

JOHN LEO: “We are seeing the bitterness of elites who wish to lead, confronted by multitudes who do not wish to follow.”

INTERESTING BIT of behind-the-scenes maneuvering:

President Bush’s speech to European leaders last week was toned down at the last moment to avoid giving his support to the proposed EU constitution, after a strenuous lobbying campaign by conservative activists in Washington.

Leading British Euro-sceptics were enlisted to help win a battle within the White House over how far Mr Bush should go in endorsing a more unified EU, after reports began to circulate in Washington that his planned speech would express backing for the constitution.

Of course, a strong Bush endorsement might have led Chirac and Schroeder to reconsider their support . . . .

PLAME UPDATE — Advantage: Zonitics!

The degree to which Josh Marshall has lost interest in this story — which he once found compelling — surprises me. At least, reading his earlier posts on the Plame affair, I never would have expected him to become so consumed with Social Security reform that Plame got eclipsed.

UPDATE: Here’s a big Plame roundup with lots of historical perspective, helping to fill the vacuum left by Josh’s non-blogging. And, by way of background, don’t forget this Plame timeline from Tom Maguire.

GAIMAN ON GORMAN:

You know, I love librarians. I really love librarians. I love librarians when they crusade not to be stereotyped as librarians. I love librarians when they’re just doing those magic things that librarians do. I love librarians when they’re the only person in a ghost town looking after thousands of books. I love the ALA and am proud to be on one of their posters.

On the other hand, I feel the love diminishing a tad when I read an article by the president-elect of the ALA, and find myself unable to decide whether it’s mostly that a) he’s simply a very, very bad writer, or b) he lacks any skills of a diplomatic nature, or it’s just c) he really believes that statements like “Given the quality of the writing in the blogs I have seen, I doubt that many of the Blog People are in the habit of sustained reading of complex texts” are somehow going to disabuse people who keep blogs, journals and such from believing or repeating the calumny that “Michael Gorman is an idiot” (someone apparently said this on a blog, he tells us, expecting us to feel an outrage on his behalf I somehow wasn’t able to muster).

Indeed. Did I mention how much I liked his American Gods?

I WISH I HAD ONE: Photo-enthusiast reader Jim Herd emails:

Nikon’s new 12MP $5000 D2X finally released. Hardwarezone’s 19-page review: “Nikon’s Top Dog Arrives.”

Amazon is backordered. So is B&H Photovideo, but at least they’ll give you the price: $4,995.

I’d like one, but not at that price. (I hope this won’t get me accused of Nikon-centrism again).

DEMOCRACY-SPREADING UPDATE: Here’s a report, with photos, from a Free Lebanon protest in Canada.

And here’s a Kyrgyzistan pre-election roundup. Observation: “One of the most counterproductive ways of reporting the story of the election would be to cast the affair as two cleanly defined sides fighting for power. On the one side there would be the local and foreign NGOs working together, allied with Western governments and protected by OSCE observers. On the other would be the CIS bodies, the Kyrgyz government, and its allies all working in concert. Sounds nice, but that’s not how it actually works.”

Meanwhile, David Warren says there’s a new wave going on. Read this, too.

UPDATE: From Ezra Levant: “There was a ‘free Syria’ rally on Parliament Hill. Still waiting for the CBC to give these folks a minute of airtime.”

NEW EUROPE:

At last President George W Bush found some European fans yesterday. After three days of muted receptions, Mr Bush received a far cheerier welcome behind the old Iron Curtain as enthusiastic Slovaks applauded him for visiting them on the last stop of his tour across the continent.

Thousands of Slovaks defied swirling snow and a bitter wind to wait for several hours to hear Mr Bush speak in the heart of their capital, Bratislava.

The Slovak prime minister, Mikulas Dzurinda, set the tone when he introduced Mr Bush to the crowd with an implicit comparison to the late Ronald Reagan, who devoted much of his presidency to combating and denouncing the Soviet Union. For the White House, it was a reassuring reminder that Mr Bush’s stock remains high in New Europe, as Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, famously described the more recent East European members of the EU and Nato.

(Via No Pasaran, which observes that this didn’t get much coverage in Old Europe.)

UPDATE: Reader Chris Buchholz emails: “It didn’t get much coverage here either. All day all I’ve seen on TV is how Bush wore his gloves.”

ANOTHER UPDATE: Austin Bay thinks that this proves Mark Steyn wrong.

MORE: Reader Mark Hessey emails: “Hmm, I guess I read Steyn’s closing sentence wrong: ‘This week we’re toasting the end of an idea: the death of “the West”.’ I thought he meant that the idea of the death of the West was what died; that Bush was glad-handing Chirac because anything else was futile, but smiling internally in his confidence that his initiatives are going forward, almost on auto-pilot at this point.” Hmm. I never thought of it that way.

FAKE ART creates an angry reaction.

UPDATE: The Belmont Club says it looks as if Ward Churchill is taking the University of Colorado to the cleaners. On the other hand, the video linked above doesn’t seem to portray the reaction of a man who’s sitting pretty . . . .

ANOTHER UPDATE: Heh.

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Heh, again! That’s quite ironic.

PLAME UPDATE: Tom Maguire observes:

There is nothing like the prospect of an imminent hanging to concentrate the mind; apparently, the prospect of having one of their reporters go to jail for eighteen months has concentrated the minds of the NY Times editors on the legal subtleties of the Valerie Plame leak investigation.

Shockingly, the leak may never have been a crime! And thus does the NYT catch up to a theory that has been circulating on the blogosphere for a year. As I’ve said before where the Times is concerned, better late than never!

HOSNI MUBARAK experiences Condi’s displeasure.

FORGET TED RALL’S CHALLENGE, which seems to be bogus anyway, as he’s bouncing the emails: Tom Maguire is running a more constructive contest.

UPDATE: Heh: “Ah, yes, Ted. Forgotten, but not gone.”

D’OH! I forgot to post a link to this week’s Blog Mela earlier. Be sure to check it out.

UPDATE: And here’s a look at the Indian economy. Also, don’t miss this South Asia roundup from Winds of Change.