UPDATE 1645 GMT: The head of the electoral commission, Kamel Jendoubi, has announced that the turnout is approaching 70% and is near 80% in some districts. He said results would be declared on Tuesday.
UPDATE 1015 GMT: Two videos from today's voting --- Al Jazeera English correspondent Nazenine Moshiri outlines the system and talks to a voter:
Rached Ghannouchi, the leader of the al-Nahda Party, is told to get in the queue for voting after he apparently tried to cut into the line. Some in the crowd shout "Degage (Get out)!", the chant used against former President Ben Ali during the January uprising:
Homs is a city of 1.2 million people, larger than Washington DC and Boston combined. For weeks, it has been the target of a large scale military campaign. Syrian soldiers have defected, and have been hiding, and fighting, in the suburbs and rural pieces of Homs, but now, according to many eyewitness reports, and the claims of the videos below, it seems that the Syrian military, loyal to President Bashar al Assad, is targeting the entire city, with minimal discrimination and maximum malice. Communication has largely been cut, but activists are already reporting that at least 114 civilians have been killed and 2100 arrested this month alone in Homs.
These are the scenes of the shelling, and the aftermath, of the assault on Homs on Friday, October 21, 2011:
UPDATE 1956 GMT: Occupy London has released a letter to the people who run St. Paul's Cathedral, addressing the concerns that the church has been closed and attempting to get clarification on "health and safety concerns" that the church may have about the protest encampment. Read the entire letter here.
UPDATE 1948 GMT: Our EA Correspondent gives his analysis of how established the Findscury protest is:
"FS is looking established. Nearly 50 tents, 2 marquees, and a gazebo. And St. Pauls is now following a daily routine schedule."
He also describes the strange kind of democracy that the two camps have established:
Separate assemblies, at the usual times, meet in both camps.
But there is constant feedback between the two groups. When one Assembly votes on an issue, the other then votes on it as well... until a consensus is reached by the two groups.
Sounds complicated and time consuming, but who would have thought they could get the participatory General Assembly idea working without significant dissension as they have.
The Bab Amr District of Homs, Syria, is targeted by heavy machine guns, tank shells, and anti-personnel shells that explode overheadSee Also, Syria Video Essay: The Military Assault on Homs
1933 GMT: James Miller posts a video essay evaluating the assault by the Syrian military on the city of Homs and its aftermath.
1921 GMT: EA's source in Bahrain writes this report of what happened today:
Just came back from my last round in Bahrain. On my way out I saw groups of protesters (men and women) marching in Sitra, 7 villages, police vehicles chasing some of them. The roads looked like a war zone, sounds of horns honking the famous tune, "Tn.Tn.Ttn," AKA "down down Hamad" could be heard all around from protesters who were in the streets or up the roofs of the houses.
After managing to find a way out, I took the highway leading to the Saudi causeway. Police jeeps and traffic officers where all parking on both sides of the highway & at some checkpoints in the entrances to the villages. I noticed that the turn leading to Budayeh road (north of Bahrain) was open so I took it, and tried to get inside some of the villages there, like Karanah or Janosan, but it was no use. They were either blocked by police or by barriers that had been placed by protesters. So I had to go back from where I came.
I went back and took another road leading to east the of Bahrain. On my way I saw a group of protesters blocking the other lane of the highway near Athari village (police jeeps were just about 300m away!!). They used bricks, wood plats and 1 of them was pouring on the ground some kind of liquid -I think it was used car oil- they were fast and ran away immediately once they completed!
So I just contined on my way. I saw police SUVs heading toward the blocked road. I reached Juffair village, and I noticed the remainings of the roadblock that was done early this morning. There was a police SUV parked next to the scene, seems it was there to prevent protesters from doing it again, I continued until I reached Seef area (the place where protesters were determined to reach and gather). It was full, but with police thugs, not with protesters.
It's the last day of the weekend, people usually go out, malls are suppose to be full, but two main malls, Bahrain mall & Dana mall, were closed, and the other 2 big ones, Seef & City Center, the parking lots were almost empty!
That's when I decided to get back home, it's true that we couldn't reach the center point which we planned to gather in, but for sure and thanks to the huge security presence in all around Bahrain roads I can say with certainty that the Bahrain revolution is still alive and people are defiantly not going to give up. Government fears us, it fears our existence and fears our truthful movement for freedom and dignity.
Friday's two-hour gathering, organised by four main political societies, in the Bahraini village of Ma'ameer, "The path for democracy"
An EA source inside Bahrain summarises Friday's two-hour rally, organised by four main political societies, in Ma'ameer:
The event started at 4:00 pm with reading some of the Qur'an, after which two speeches where given, the first by Waad political society member, the lawyer Mr. Isa Ebrahim, and the second by Al Wefaq member and former member of Parliament, A. Aljalil Khalil.
1840 GMT: Economy Watch. Ayande News jabs at the official statistics on employment. While the Government centre claims 500,000, Ayande says the true figure is 2 to 4 million.
Bahrain Foreign Minister Al-KhalifaEarlier this week we wrote of how David Ignatius, the star columnist of The Washington Post, was being used by US and Saudi officials to spin the story of the Iranian plot to kill the Saudi Ambassador to Washington.
Indeed, Ignatius was doing much more: he put out the claim that Tehran was behind the slaying of a Saudi official in Pakistan (on 16 May in one paragraph of Ignatius' story, in July in another paragraph). Iran was involved in the 2005 assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and threats against Saudi Arabia’s Ambassador to Beirut. And Gholam Shakuri, the Qods Force officer indicted in The Plot, "had helped organize militant Shiite protesters in Bahrain".
Sunday, October 23, 2011 at 8:40