OxBlog

# Posted 6:44 AM by Patrick Belton

ALPINE BLOGGING: There's something rather ghastly about seeing a cloud float through your garden. If I held with such matters, I'd suspect it might be some alpinist whose luck ran out on the Jungfrau. Or, judging from the quantity that follow, perhaps an unlucky boy scouts' platoon after their leader.

On other notes, and to provide Sunday reading material for your own (hopefully unhaunted) gardens,

Carnegie's Nathan Brown, who researches Arab constitutions, has been following the drafting process of the new Iraqi draft constitution and offers article-by-article commentary on the draft.

Anders Åslund, director of Carnegie's Russia programme, says Putin's power base has been shrunk to a core of secret policemen from St Petersburg, and his regime is much more fragile than has been been generally understood.

Egyptian political scientist Amr Hamzawy analyses moderate Islamist movements in Morocco, Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, and Yemen and argues they've embraced democratic procedures and demonstrated strong commitment to the rule of law.

And on Irish radio today, producer Kay Sheehy documents the Haitian struggle for democracy by interviewing people who lived through the prisons of Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier and their private army the Ton Ton Macoutes, and tracks the rise of democracy through interviewing people who participated in the Creole movement, Radio Haiti and clerical and secular associates of Fr Jean Bertrand Aristide.

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