We cannot confirm when exactly, this footage was taken, but it appears to be either outside a court building or a police station, guarded by security forces. The protesters are yelling “Oh, Benghazi, where are you! Come see the oppressed people”, and ” Shame on you, you lied to us”
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Bahraini security forces have opened fire on anti-government protesters gathered in the capital, Manama. Hundreds of mourners were marching towards Pearl Roundabout when government forces fired live rounds and tear gas at them on Friday. The wounded were taken to the city’s Salmaniya Hospital, where protesters have gathered to offer blood and support. On Friday evening, Bahrain’s king asked his crown prince to begin a “national dialogue” with all parties over the continuing unrest in the country. Al Jazeera’s correspondent, who cannot be named for security reasons, reports from Manama.
Continue reading …NPR Promotes New Planned Parenthood Radio Ads Attacking Pro-Lifers After They Lose House Vote
February 19, 2011 No Comment
Planned Parenthood lost a House vote on Friday by a count of 245 to 180 that would strip its funding out of this year's stopgap spending bill. But they're not sitting still. Frank
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enlarge Outsourcing, as anyone who’s ever had to manage a project staffed in another country will tell you, is rife with all kinds of pitfalls — and it’s almost never cheaper, no matter what Tom “The World Is Flat” Friedman would like you to believe. Boeing learned the hard way: The 787 has more foreign-made content — 30% — than any other Boeing plane, according to the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace, the union representing Boeing engineers. That compares with just over 5% in the company’s workhorse 747 airliner. Boeing’s goal, it seems, was to convert its storied aircraft factory near Seattle to a mere assembly plant, bolting together modules designed and produced elsewhere as though from kits. The drawbacks of this approach emerged early. Some of the pieces manufactured by far-flung suppliers didn’t fit together. Some subcontractors couldn’t meet their output quotas, creating huge production logjams when critical parts weren’t available in the necessary sequence. Rather than follow its old model of providing parts subcontractors with detailed blueprints created at home, Boeing gave suppliers less detailed specifications and required them to create their own blueprints. Some then farmed out their engineering to their own subcontractors, Mike Bair, the former head of the 787 program, said at a meeting of business leaders in Washington state in 2007. That further reduced Boeing’s ability to supervise design and manufacture. At least one major supplier didn’t even have an engineering department when it won its contract, according to an analysis of the 787 by the European consortium Airbus, Boeing’s top global competitor. Boeing executives now admit that the company’s aggressive outsourcing put it in partnership with suppliers that weren’t up to the job. They say Boeing didn’t recognize that sending so much work abroad would demand more intensive management from the home plant, not less .
Continue reading …It’s rare that you can look at a current moment in time and recognize it for the historical significance it holds. 2011 is turning out to be the Year of the Protest, as people all over the world take to the streets, demanding fairness, equality and civil rights. In years past, groups like al Qaeda have capitalized on this unrest to make inroads with disaffected and radicalized individuals. How should the protests in Tunisia, Egypt and across the Arab world affect al-Qaeda’s thinking? Their Strategic Planning Cell (SPC) requested advice from the reliable SWISH (the South Waziristan Institute of Strategic Hermeneutics) consultancy, and their report is both telling and pessimistic over al Qaeda’s continued reach : Within this overall context, your movement has clear-cut aims. You seek, again within a decades-long perspective, the removal of unacceptable elite regimes across the heart of the Islamic world. The House of Saud is a particular targets, as has been the now overthrown Hosni Mubarak regime in Egypt; but others include the power-holders in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. These constitute your “near enemy”. You are bitterly opposed to Zionism and you also seek to offer support to movements outside the middle east, including those operating in the north Caucasus and southeast Asia. Behind the near enemy is the “far enemy” of the United States and its western European allies, with their interminable interference in the Islamic world. Beyond these (in your understanding) short-term aims is the much larger objective of establishing a pure and incorruptible Caliphate, centred on the middle east but eventually embracing the world. This fundamental purpose of your movement cannot possibly be achieved in your leaders’ lifetimes (or indeed your own) – but you do have eternity waiting. As you will recall, the assessment of your prospects in our most recent report concluded : “[You] have no chance of achieving your own ideological-strategic aim of an Islamist caliphate, which in any case rests on a false representation of Islam. However, we do not expect you to change” (“ The SWISH Report (17) “, 1 January 2011).[..] It might be expected, at least on a superficial level, that your movement would be overjoyed at these developments. The Arab (and overwhelmingly) Muslim people are awakening, and speaking out against their corrupt rulers; their determination and strength of numbers have overthrown two unacceptable regimes; and there is every prospect of more to come, if not immediately then certainly within months. Yet we are aware of an interesting and palpable sense of unease within your movement. Indeed, your very request for a preliminary assessment from us, and your intention of retaining it within the SPC, strengthens this view. This reaction, it may not entirely please you to note, places you alongside rather than against other actors with a deep interest in these ongoing events. Almost all of them, within the region and beyond, are worried about these expressions of “people power”. True, Barack Obama made a famous speech in Cairo in June 2009 about repairing relations between the United States and the Islamic world; and his administration accepted, if rather late in the day, the need for Mubarak and the system he represented to go. But the US as a political entity has consistently entrenched and indulged autocratic regimes across the middle east, and continues to back them with all its military and political might. The European political leadership too, for all its declarative support for the protests, is nervous, or so our offices in London, Paris and Berlin report. Within the region itself, leading states such as Israel and the House of Saud are acutely concerned at the popular revolt. Iran may express formal support, but this stance both reflects political calculations and is coloured by fear of the local impact of the Arab demonstrations. Your position shares something of this ambivalence. You profess enthusiasm for the display of resistance; but you are clearly also troubled by the awkward reality that the removal of illegitimate governments – an aim you also aspire to – has been successfully accomplished by a people’s mobilisation in no way rooted in or guided by an Islamist worldview . This is a very grim development for your movement, in two ways. First, you are failing to lead or inspire a rapidly escalating revolutionary process, and as a result risk being seen as irrelevant. Second, and even worse, as the regimes fall or shake you are in danger of losing a vital pillar of support for your cause: namely, the idea that people’s hatred of these regimes could only be channelled effectively by embracing your version of Islam. The revolts demonstrate that you are clearly not the only alternative – and this is very bad news indeed.Indeed, the current tumult holds out the possibility of even graver developments that could end any serious prospect for your entire movement. So for all the fear mongering on American television, remember this one sentence: The revolts demonstrate that you are clearly not the only alternative What US policy makers must keep in mind is that too much imperious interference and not enough support for these protesters looking to make their lives less oppressed and improve the future for themselves and their children can and will serve the purposes of al Qaeda and other radical groups.
Continue reading …The echo of Egypt’s revolution is rocking despotic regimes from Algiers to Damascus It is just one extraordinary week since the fall of the Egyptian president. For 30 years Hosni Mubarak had been the region’s representative figure of the west’s way of doing business. Like the ocean after an earthquake, the shock waves of his fall have grown in violence until now they are rocking despotic regimes from Algiers to Damascus. Some of the UK’s closest allies – old friends in Gulf states like Bahrain and new ones like Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi – are brutally repressing protests, potentially using teargas and other material legitimately imported from British companies. This looks like a street-level Arab revolt, each uprising different in origin but all sharing the common denominator of youth and the inspiration of Tunis and Cairo relayed by text message and internet. The protesters are confronting rulers who have been courted by generations of western politicians. The result is an almost unprecedented challenge to postwar foreign policy. It demands a response which recognises that there will be no return to business as usual, and that the conversation can no longer be restricted to a narrow elite. It is time to substitute a new era of shared values for the old one of national interest. It is too soon to try to say how that response should be framed. At least the foreign secretary, William Hague, and his minister Alistair Burt have promised that export licences will be closely scrutinised from now on. They have rightly called on Arab leaders to show restraint and reform, but the real power lies in Washington, where the dilemma of how far and how fast to withdraw support is visibly straining the administration. All the same, the events of the past month have once again drawn attention to the seamier side of the realpolitik that has always shaped Britain’s approach to the Middle East. As the former foreign office minister Kim Howells has argued, the flip side of supporting stability is repressing democracy. Focused on the threat of Islam, we have, it appears, been too slow to appreciate the simmering secular unrest, let alone to try to pre-empt it. If it is too soon to be prescriptive, however, one thing is clear. It is barely a month since the BBC announced that its Arabic short-wave service would, with Russian language services, bear the brunt of overseas cuts. Happily, it is a decision it is not too late to reverse . Meanwhile, tough new controls on the number of overseas students will mean fewer young people able to take advantage of higher education in the UK. The British Council faces cuts too. Yet we can no longer sustain our strategic interests through the barrel of a gun. Britain is in a unique position to project soft power. It is only part of the answer. But it has to be a reasonable starting point for a new Middle East policy. Egypt Middle East Arab and Middle East protests Bahrain Yemen Libya BBC Foreign policy guardian.co.uk
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Despite receiving the backing of 14 out of 15 members of the United Nations’ security council, an Arab-sponsored UN resolution branding Israeli settlements illegal was vetoed by the United States. Instead, the US defended a weaker, non-binding presidential statement that effectively rejects the legitimacy of Israel’s settlements. Al Jazeera spoke with Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the United Nations, about the Obama administration’s first veto casted in the United Nations security council.
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Click here to view this media Joe Scarborough was really on a tear this morning. This clip is about his third rant in 45 minutes about how those poor Wisconsin children aren’t learning a thing because the selfish, piggish teachers are protesting at the Capitol. All morning long, he framed the issue as a benefits issue. This is not — I repeat, NOT — a benefits issue. It is a question of the governor of a state spending that state’s surplus in order to create a crisis for the sole purpose of breaking unions. When it was clear he wasn’t getting traction with his rants on the selfishness of teachers with regard to benefits, he ramped it up when he laid down an ultimatum: Public workers can live by the same rules as private workers or be unemployed. Funny how Joe is so upset over workers protesting in Wisconsin, and places the blame squarely on them instead of the overreaching reactionary governor who manufactured a crisis to break unions. Back in the days of the health care town hall protests, he couldn’t wait to blame President Obama , calling him “the most polarizing President in history.” Oh, I forgot to mention this, too. Joe just thinks these protests make Democrats look terrible, awful. Au contraire, Joe. It makes Democrats look like…Democrats. Which I suppose would look terrible to a conservative. Full MSNBC transcript follows: Do those kids in the streets really think Andrew Cuomo or Jerry brown are doing this for their health. The teachers ought to be in classrooms today. Children are not learning in Wisconsin today because teachers don’t want to pay the same benefits — same money for benefits that rest of Americans have to pay. How sick is that? Far less. They pay nothing. They pay 0%. Chris Christie tried to do 2% and they are streaking out. They want public employees to pay 5. 6% in health care plans. They would have to pay 12%. 5.6% is the pension. 12% into the health care plan. The average in the public sector, you pay 20% into the health plan. So all they are trying to do in Wisconsin, john meacham, is try to get public employee unions to pay half of what the rest of Americans pay for pensions, and these teachers, over 1,000 of them, had sickouts yesterday. The democrats fled to Illinois, another state, and now teachers are not going to allow students to learn today in classrooms, because they may have to pay half of what everybody else pays in benefits. This doesn’t seem like a go ahead thing for democrats to do to gain upper hand in democratic politics. I don’t think it’s an image win. The optics as we say are not great. You know, if the government which is one of the largest employers — federal governments, state governments, if they don’t make the same adjustments that the private sector has been forced to make by market sectors in a more complicated time, then you’re going to have more and more of this, and i think that you have to talk about it, you have to explain it. I don’t know the details that the governance of Wisconsin, but on the merits of it, everybody has to be paying more. The governor is characterizing this as a modest proposal. If they fight it, it will be the end of it. It is a modest proposal. Do you know what a fair proposal would be? Make them live by the same rules that every other person in Wisconsin lives by. So do they want fairness? Let’s give them fairness. Let the public employee unions and members pay the same into pensions and pay the same into retirement and health care that everybody else in Wisconsin pays. Let’s have fairness. Let’s have a level playing field. What’s wrong with that? Do you see why they are upset? No. They have a free ride because past governments, past state legislatures were afraid. By the way, i’m not backing the union. When i ran, i had a lot of union people. I don’t trust corporate interests. I don’t. I mean, you need that balance. But this is — again, we said all the time, willy, this is about math. You can’t get by with these types of pension programs that first destroyed Detroit, which Detroit now understand and now is destroying the balance sheets of every state in America. And the irony is if you believe governor walker’s logic is he has to do this to save the jobs of public employees. Because they are going to run deficits so high they have to have layoffs. So he has to get through to them if you take this cut and pay a little more in, we can save — it’s not a little bit. We can save more jobs, and we will see this across the country. From new jersey to new york to California, we’ll see the scene play out. We know people who have lost their jobs or had to take some reduced set of circumstances in the last three years. Right. In the private sector, and particularly in the fields which we’re most associated. If the government doesn’t react to the new economic realities this is not 2007. I will tell you, one of the big things going on in wisconsin, the governor is trying to eliminate collective bargaining, which raises a much larger question. Raises a much larger question, should public unions have collective bargaining? And i think that’s what the huge battle is right there. Listen, private unions, yes, because i think we all understand conferenc corporations need to be checked. Especially when ceos destroy companies and get golden parachutes of $200 million, $300 million. The pay inequity for workers and people running corporations absolutely sick, and it’s inequitable. So — but like we’ve been saying here, everybody has got to take cuts. And these public employee unions have to play by the rules won’t stop the changes. In wisconsin, we’re seeing a pretty natural reaction to what is not a modest proposal, but perhaps a necessary one. I won’t argue that. Protests are spreading. Ohio is likely to vote within weeks on a similar limit on public employee rights. Do you think public union members should live by different rules than other people in wisconsin? Or should they pay the same for their pension plans, which are better than a lot of private pension plans, and their health insurance, should they pay the same percentage that the rest of wisconsin people pay? I think it’s understandable that if there is a drastic change, their financial situations and the way they organize their future they might be a little bit upset. Whether or nottith fair th it’s fair is not what’s going on here. I can this as somebody whose father lost their jobs. You know what’s worse? Not having a job. And they have a choice right now. They can either be unemployed or live by the rules that everybody else lives by. What do you think of the democrats. We’re out of money. What do you think of the democrats leaving the state as part of this? It’s stupid. And it’s stupid for these teachers, john, not to be working today. It makes them look greedy. Selfish. Selfish. People in wisconsin, democrats and republicans are like are going to go wait a second. Not teaching my kid today because they may have to pay half of what i paid into my pensions? What percent of people in wisconsin with kids in school today have to take a day off from work and lose a day’s pay because they have to stay home with the kids. That is not good p.R. They lose a day’s pay and they start working back tomorrow — well, 20% of that pay goes to pensions and health care, while these people are protesting because the governor is trying to make them pay half. It’s stunning to me. It’s stunning. Hey, john, you’re the historian of all things. Let’s talk about collective bargaining and unions. When did that start for public employees? Oh, god.
Continue reading …Charles Krauthammer calls CPAC a ‘weird,’ ‘fringy group’ after he disses Ron Paul on Fox
February 18, 2011 No Comment
Click here to view this media Charles Krauthammer took major shots at CPAC and almost everybody who attended when he he came on with Bill O’Reilly Tuesday night to discuss the 2012 GOP presidential field. Ron Paul winning the CPAC straw poll for a second year in a row is really bugging the grand poobahs of the conservative movement. O’Reilly: It’s kind of a weeeeird straw poll, isn’t it? Krauthammer; That’s because it’s a weird group that we’re talking about . These are Ron Paul Libertarians we’re talking about. …. I’m not sure where Ron Paul is on the Louisiana Purchase, but I’m sure it’s a kind of iffy position. And what you got of the group, CPAC, what you’re talking about is a lot of college students who all want to be Ayn Rand and soon they’ll grow up and become conservatives, so I wouldn’t put a lot into this poll because the group is a kind off a fringy group . It’s not Twilight Zone fringe. It’s more off shore, you know floating on a raft out there in the Gulf of Mexico. Mainline Conservatives are not going to elect Ron Paul, nobody heard of Ron Johnson and legalizing pot is not going to be a big agenda for Republicans in 2012. He could have let up after he called them fringy and weird, but that wasn’t enough disdain for him so he painted a bleaker picture for The Factor’s audience. by comparing them to an off shore, you know floating on a raft out there in the Gulf of Mexico type of crowd. Fox News has loved to use Ron Paul after Obama was elected to help whip up the frenzy against him, and they continue to do so, but during the 2008 Republican primaries, Fox wouldn’t even invite him to their candidate forum because they thought Paul was pretty much a nutcase. Now they are praying that he doesn’t run in 2012 because it will help split GOP votes away from their preferred choices like Romney and cause all sorts of problems in the upcoming primary. Paul supporters are, as we’ve seen, incredibly vocal and show up to support him with as much passion as Tea Partiers did during the despicable August health care town halls. If Fox disses him again it’s not going to play this time and these college kids will never support the standard Conservative line. Just ask Rudy Giuliani. By the way, BillO attacked all Democrats who attended Netroots Nation and skipped the DLC, but it’s just fine for Mitt Romney and John Thune to show up at CPAC. He hasn’t met a double standard he doesn’t love. Charles in Charge then rated the current crop of GOP candidates that could or will run for president if you care to hear his analysis. By the way, Krauthammer just loves Paul Ryan as a potential Prez, so that makes him as fringy as the CPACers, in my view.
Continue reading …Wisconsin Budget Law Would Put Governor In Charge Of Medicaid — So He Can Stop Health Care Law
February 18, 2011 No CommentIt’s pretty clear that the end game for all this is to defund state Medicaid programs and make it impossible to serve as part of the new health care safety net. What, you thought Republicans were above dirty tricks like playing with people’s lives? CHICAGO — The 14 Democratic state senators who left Wisconsin to avoid a vote on Thursday said that they will only return when Gov. Scott Walker is ready to talk. That’s according to Sen. Jon Erpenbach, of Middleton, one of the absent lawmakers, who is currently in Chicago. Earlier on Thursday, all 14 senators had been together at the Clock Tower Resort hotel in Rockford, Ill. The legislators were fanned out across Illinois on Friday morning. “This is an extreme piece of legislation, and this was our only option, as extreme as it was,” he said. Walker said he’s looking at legal options to bring the missing lawmakers back to the Capitol, but no Wisconsin law can compel Erpenbach and the other 13 Democrats who fled the state to return. “(Walker’s) job is to lead responsibly; his job is to lead by consensus, if at all possible. It’s his job to sit down and talk to people about here’s where we are, how are we all going to get where we all need to be”, said Erpenbach. He’s concerned about what many protesters may not know, that the budget bill does more than strip away public workers’ collective bargaining rights and increase their contributions to their health care and pensions. It also leaves the future of the state’s health care programs up in the air. “There are some substantial Medicaid changes in here where the governor, all of a sudden, is in charge of Medicaid, which is SeniorCare, which is BadgerCare. And he has never once said what he intends to do,” said Erpenbach. For those who felt the move by the group, now dubbed the “Wisconsin 14″’, was a sign of their unwillingness to bend, Erpenbach said this: “In the end, what’s going to happen is the public employees are going to pay on their pension and pay on their health care. We all know that, they all know that. They’re OK with that. The one thing the public employees do not understand is why (Walker) is going after unions.”
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