Egypt fell under martial rule as Mohamed Morsi, the Islamist who just a year ago became Egypt's first democratically elected President, was deposed by his own generals.
(Reuters) SYRIA: CALL FOR FREEDOM -- Syria's leading intellectuals demanded an end to martial rule in an expression of public discontent unseen in 30 years.
Bahrain's ruler, for example, brought himself immense popularity three years ago by ending martial rule, inviting exiled dissidents home, and running free elections for half the seats in the national legislature.
The lifting of martial rule would, he hoped, be a sign that peace and normality would prevail.But reconciliation between the two main Muslim sects is still a distant prospect.
The international community is ramping up pressure to avoid prolonged martial rule or further unrest in Burkina Faso, a country of relative stability in a volatile region marked by coups and power grabs.
He justifies his martial rule on flimsy grounds: to protect the country; to prevent international terrorists from threatening world peace; and, incredibly, to build genuine democracy - the same argument he used when he took power eight years ago.
Although clearly undemocratic, the Navy justified military government by asserting that while the native people of Guam, the Chamorros, were "becoming more like Dad (Uncle Sam) every day," they were not mature enough to become American citizens and were therefore safest under U.S. martial rule.
In The State of Martial Rule: The Origins of Pakistan's Political Economy of Defense, Ayesha Jalal notes that the Pakistani government has faced a menacing set of challenges on the domestic, regional and international fronts that have tipped the balance in favor of the military and civil bureaucracies which were not elected democratically.
The epic story of Taiwan's post-World War II martial rule requires an epic medium, which Storynest director Hsin-Chien Huang delivers with an interactive projection-mapped spectacle based on his memories and state-sanctioned history archives of the early Kuomintang regime.
But this audio recording provides the first opportunity to hear Manning, in his own voice, explain his actions; that, presumably, is why whoever recorded Manning's statement risked violating the court-martial rules to do so.
