After a night of celebrations, citizens of Cairo turned out on Saturday morning to clean up after themselves, and their revolution. From repaving pavements broken during violent clashes to cleaning grafitti off the walls, Egyptians seem determined to start off their country’s new era on the right foot. Al Jazeera’s Jacky Rowland in Cairo has more.
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Click here to view this media After NRA lobbyist Wayne LaPierre attacked MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell at this year’s CPAC, O’Donnell responded in his Rewrite segment and pretty well ripped LaPierre to shreds for his part in contributing to the number of deaths after that tragic shooting of Congresswoman Gabby Giffords in Tucson, Arizona. O’DONNELL: Time for tonight’s Rewrite. In Washington during the Conservative Political Action Committee better known as CPAC, I actually made an appearance of sorts. It happened while Washington’s lobbyist in favor of murderers’ rights to always use the gun of their choice, Wayne LaPierre, the Executive Vice President of the NRA, was speaking about the calls for gun and ammunition control in the aftermath of the Tucson massacre. (cut to video) You just heard the NRA’s lie, now some facts. A Justice Department study on the federal assault weapons ban, which was law for 10 years found “Gun murders declined 10.3 percent in states without preexisting assault weapons bans.” 10.3 percent. Another study by the Justice Department in 2004 concluded “If the ban is lifted, gun and magazine manufacturers may reintroduce assault weapons models and large capacity magazines, perhaps in substantial numbers.” And that is exactly what the merchants of death did; reintroduced assault weapons and the high capacity magazines that allowed Jared Loughner to take 31 shots, 31, before he had to stop and reload. On the NRA’s web site, gun violence cheerleader Wayne LaPierre says “It’s time to acknowledge what we know in our hearts to be true.” That “The best way to stop a bad guy with a gun, is a good guy with a gun.” Wayne, there was a good guy on the scene that day, in Tucson with a gun, but there wasn’t anything he could do. It was too dangerous to fire. He could have hit an innocent bystander. A good guy with a gun did not stop Jared Loughner. It was the moment that Loughner had to reload that he became stoppable and he was stopped by a 61 year old woman who wrestled another high capacity magazine out of his hand as he tried to reload, and an unarmed 74 year old man, who had already been grazed by one of Loughner’s bullets. The second, the second Jared Loughner had to stop and reload, he became an unarmed man. Wayne LaPierre wants that reloading moment to come after crazed gunmen fire as many shots as the desires of high capacity magazines will allow them to. If Jared Loughner had tried to do this in 2003 when those magazines were illegal, he would have had to reload after firing 10 bullets. That means he would have been stopped, stopped, after firing ten bullets and Tucson would have seen fewer funerals. People in Tucson were shot and killed thanks to the relentless lobbying work of Wayne LaPierre and his blood-drenched organization. Wayne LaPierre has devoted his adult life, every day of his adult life since 1977, every working day, to making sure madmen in America can fire as many bullets as they want without having to reload. Wayne LaPierre runs an organization that is devoted to expanding the profits of the merchants of death. Gun manufacturers pay his salary so he can pretend to be representing the rights of hunters who in fact have absolutely no use for the kind of high capacity magazine Jared Loughner used. Wayne LaPierre is not your run of the mill lobbyist. Oh no. Most lobbyists are good and decent people in fact. Some are every bit as sleazy as you might imagine. And some are criminals, like Jack Abramoff, but none, none, have done more harm to America, than Wayne LaPierre. He more than any individual law maker is responsible for this country’s insane gun laws that allow insane people to mow down Congresswomen and nine year old girls in Safeway parking lots. Wayne LaPierre is morally guilty of being an accessory before the fact of Jared Loughner’s shooting spree in Tucson. And every member of Congress who welcomes him into the office for a little lobbying session, is taking one step closer to the devil.
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Egypt’s revolution is being celebrated across the Arab world, where people are lauding Egyptians’ show of people power, and also asking their own leaders to change their policies. Al Jazeera’s Nisreen El Shamayleh in Amman, Jordon, Anita McNaught in Istanbul, Turkey and Nicole Johnston in Gaza have more.
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New leadership resists pressure from activists to hand power to civilian administration Egypt’s new military administration and the pro-democracy protesters who brought down Hosni Mubarak were at odds today over the path to democratic rule. The army sought to stave off pressure from jubilant protesters to swiftly hand power to a civilian-led administration by saying that it is committed to a “free democratic state”. The military leadership gave no timetable for the political transition, and many of the demonstrators who filled Cairo’s Tahrir square for 18 days rejected the military’s appeal to dismantle the barricades and go home. They said they were waiting for specific commitments from the military on their demand for a civilian-controlled interim administration, the lifting of the oppressive state of emergency and other steps toward political liberalisation. The shock waves of Mubarak’s fall were felt across the region today, particularly in Algeria and Yemen. Thousands of anti-government protesters, apparently inspired by events in Cairo, turned out in Algiers to confront the police. There were reports that hundreds had been arrested. In Sanaa, a protest by about 2,000 people to demand political reform was broken up by armed government supporters. Some of the organisers of Egypt’s revolution announced they had formed a council to negotiate with the military and to oversee future demonstrations to keep up the pressure on the army to meet the demand for rapid democratic change. “The council will have the authority to call for protests or call them off depending on how the situation develops,” said Khaled Abdel Qader Ouda, one of the organisers. Earlier, General Mohsen el-Fangari said in a televised statement that the military intends to oversee “a peaceful transition of power” to allow “an elected civilian government to rule and build a free democratic state”. He said the present cabinet would continue to sit until a new one is formed. El-Fangari announced that the widely-ignored overnight curfew imposed during the crisis would be shortened by several hours. The military council also sought to allay American and Israeli concerns by saying that Egypt will continue to respect international treaties it has signed. Israeli politicians had expressed concern that a new government in Cairo might abrogate the 1979 peace accord between the two countries. Israel’s finance minister, Yuval Steinitz, welcomed the announcement. “Peace is not only in the interest of Israel but also of Egypt. I am very happy with this announcement,” he told Israeli television. But there will still be concern in Jerusalem about whether a future civilian government will be as cooperative as Mubarak’s regime in isolating and undermining the Hamas administration in the Gaza strip. People continued to pour in to Cairo’s Tahrir square, in part to celebrate at the epicentre of the revolution against the Mubarak regime. But there was also concern among some of the core group of activists who helped organise the mass protests that brought down Mubarak at the army’s apparent intent to control the political transition. A group of the activists issued what they called the “People’s Communique No 1″ — mirroring the titles of military communiques – listing a series of demands. The included the immediate dissolution of Mubarak’s cabinet and “suspension of the parliament elected in a rigged poll late last year”. The reformists want a transitional administration appointed with four civilians and one military official to prepare for elections in nine months and to oversee the drafting of a new constitution. The Muslim Brotherhood, the banned Islamist group that has been the target of military tribunals aimed at suppressing it, sought to allay fears in Egypt and abroad that it will attempt to take power. It said it would not be running a candidate in presidential elections and would not seek to win a majority in parliament. It also offered unusual support for the military council. Reuters reported that the information minister, Anas El-Fekky, was placed under house arrest the day after the military barred some Egyptian officials, including former ministers and state bankers suspected of corruption, from leaving the country without the permission of the armed forces or the state prosecutor. Mubarak was believed to be at his luxury retreat in Sharm el-Sheikh. One of the most urgent tasks for the new Egyptian administration is to get the economy back on track. The protests of the past three weeks are estimated to have cost the country more than $300m a day, in part because of a collapse in tourism. The authorities announced that the stock exchange will reopen on Wednesday. Egypt Protest Middle East Hosni Mubarak Chris McGreal guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …There is a battle going on — a big one — and big battles have a lot of fronts. The big banks are doing whatever they can to fight back against consumers and homeowners who are desperately trying to curb the bankers’ abuses. The number of different fronts that have been opened up keeps growing. Here are just a few of the most important ones: 1. In D.C., the biggest battle is over the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Trying to build a new agency whose actual mission is to act on behalf of consumers in times like these is a treacherous undertaking, and Elizabeth Warren is battling on two major fronts of her own. The first is that the Republicans are trying to either strangle the agency at birth, or else rip its arms and legs off so that it lives but without much power to it. They are whining to high heaven that the budget for the agency is $379 million, which seems like it’s about the price of a Wall Street banker’s bonus check, but even worse for the poor Republicans is that they can’t touch that budget because of the way Warren brilliantly negotiated the language on it — it would be a set percentage of the Fed’s budget rather than being subject to the whims of Congress and the Wall Street lobby. The other CFPB battle is over who the agency director will be. Word from the Senate is that Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee Ranking Member Richard Shelby is pulling out all the stops to keep the White House from making Warren the permanent head, threatening all kinds of things if she is nominated or given a recess appointment. Now I am not stuck on Warren doing this, even though (full disclosure) she is my good friend. No one is indispensable. But here’s the deal: The White House needs to look at the politics of this. There is not a shred of doubt that she would be the director Obama should pick, because the whole thing is her brainchild, and because she navigated the politics of getting it passed so masterfully against huge odds. Shelby is not going to okay with anyone who is actually acceptable to those of us who are advocates of Warren and the idea of a strong agency that she represents. And with Warren and the agency itself having become such a huge symbol of standing up to Wall Street, if Obama screws her over and then appoints someone weak enough to make Shelby happy, Obama is going to look awful — not just to the base but to the middle and working class swing voters desperate for someone to take on Wall Street and look out for their interests. The fact is that this fight with Republicans over Warren is a fight that would politically help the White House. Yes, Shelby can block the nomination in the Senate, but then Obama simply gives her the recess appointment in June, after a politically valuable Wall Street vs. consumers floor fight in the Senate. Here’s the other interesting thing: I have been hearing from friends in the politically powerful community banking world that they actually like dealing with Warren a whole lot more than they originally thought they would. They have come to figure out that even though she is a regulator, the regulations she is pushing actually will help them in their battle for survival and market share with the big Wall Street bankers, and that she is far easier to work with than they thought she would be. If the community bankers don’t side with Wall Street in opposing Warren, the Big Six banks really will be politically isolated, as will the Republicans walking the plank for them. 2. The mega-death battle being waged in courtrooms all over the country, in the state AGs’ negotiations with bankers, in demonstrations and corporate campaigns and city council resolutions against JPMorgan Chase , and inside the Obama administration is the battle over mortgage modifications. A quarter of American homeowners have mortgages that are under water, with less equity in the house than the house is worth because of collapsed housing prices. The experts I’m talking to on this think this is the key moment: Do we get stuck in a minimum of one million-plus foreclosures a year dragging over the next decade, leaving our entire housing market in a hole we can’t climb out of, which in turn would be a severe decade-long drag on our broader economy (can you say Japan’s Lost Decade)? Or do we force the bankers to do a very big number of mortgage write-downs that will actually jolt the system enough to change the dynamic? The AGs, if they bargain aggressively enough and don’t buy this bankers’ idea that we should only look forward rather than dealing with the massive fraud and market problems they have already created, could force the banks to write down large numbers of mortgages. So could the Obama administration, if it admits the Home Affordable Modification Program isn’t working and finally turns the regulatory screws on the Big Six banks plus Fannie and Freddie, which collectively dominate the market. This battle is the sleeper issue of the next couple of years, and if we blow it, we are most likely stuck with a Lost Decade scenario — or maybe worse. 3. The banks are doing everything in their power to squeeze every penny they can from consumers and small businesses without the market power to fight back. One of the most egregious areas they have done this is in “swipe fees” on credit and debit cards. Sen. Durbin succeeded at getting a bipartisan amendment passed to finally regulate this practice, which banks have been abusing without shame for years, but now the bankers are whining (or maybe wining and dining; a banker recently bragged about closely “collaborating with regulators on this issue) to Federal Reserve regulators about rolling back regulations to make swipe fees “fairer.” Winning this battle for consumers and small businesses would mean a $15 billion-a-year jolt to the Main Street economy. 4. All over the country, as part of national organizing efforts or just on their own, activists and local elected officials are taking on the six biggest Wall Street banks (who own assets equaling 64 percent of the USA’s GDP). The JPMorgan Chase corporate campaign is a great example; activists are taking on that company with abandon, and have sketched out long-term plans to keep after them. The Hawaii state House just passed a foreclosure moratorium , and local governments all over the country are taking their money out the Big Six banks. I am even hearing more and more talk of a movement around strategic default by underwater homeowners. I think a lot of people have decided that these big banks — who took down our economy with their recklessness, got bailed out with no strings attached, and then immediately started rewarding their executives record bonuses while unemployment is still above 9 percent (and a lot higher if you include discouraged, temporary, and part-time, not-by-choice workers) — need to be brought down and replaced with a banking system that actually helps the real economy become healthier. People are feeling deep in their gut that these big banks are out of control. They have too much power over the market and way too much over the politicians. And when bankers push back against even modest reforms and regulations that have been put into place, even after all the damage done to this economy by deregulation of the financial sector, it just drives the point home. The time is now to take on these big banks.
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In China, a country of more than a billion people, the search for kidnapped children has been described by many as hopeless. For one family, however, perseverence has paid off. Al Jazeera’s Melissa Chan has more from Southern China.
Continue reading …NBC’s O’Donnell Insists Obama’s ‘the Same Centrist He’s Always Been,’ Not Even Maher Buys It
February 12, 2011 No Comment
President Barack Obama is “a pragmatic centrist,” Norah O’Donnell, NBC News reporter/MSNBC chief Washington correspondent, insisted Friday night on HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher , though not even Maher bought the claim Obama is a centrist. O’Donnell noted “they're trying to make inroads” into the business community with outreach to it as evidenced by hiring Bill Daley and speaking to the Chamber of Commerce, but she contended “other than that tonal switch, he's still the same centrist he’s always been.” Maher countered: “But he's not really. If you woke him up in the middle of the night, of if you gave him sodium pentothal, I think he’s a centrist the way he’s a Christian – not really.” O’Donnell pleaded: “Don't you think it's a pragmatist?” To which, Maher recognized: “Yes, that’s different, he’s pretending to be a centrist.” From the Friday night, February 11 Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO: BILL MAHER: Do you think he is moving to the center? That’s what I hear all this month – Obama’s moving to the center, as if he had been listening to Dennis Kucinich and Noam Chomsky and now he saw the light and he’s suddenly a- NORAH O’DONNELL: He's a pragmatic centrist, I mean that’s who he is. MAHER: For real? O’DONNELL: Yeah, I do. I think, though, that this was more tonal than anything else – moving to the center. I do think the White House maybe wanted it to get out there. I mean the President and the White House made clear he was bringing the Ronald Reagan biography on vacation. And, you know, look, they hired Bill Daley as the chief of staff, someone with business ties. They brought in the CEO of General Electric, Jeff Immelt, he gave a speech before the Chamber of Commerce. So I think, you know, they're trying to make inroads, but that's a specific community, the business community. But other than that tonal switch, he's still the same centrist he’s always been. MAHER: But he's not really. If you woke him up in the middle of the night, of if you gave him sodium pentothal, I think he’s a centrist the way he’s a Christian – not really. O’DONNELL: I think he’s a pragmatist. Don't you think it's a pragmatist? MAHER: Yes, that’s different, he’s pretending to be a centrist. — Brent Baker is Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Click here to follow him on Twitter.
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The Egyptian president angered not only protesters but the army when he failed to step down the first time Perhaps only Hosni Mubarak imagined he had put an end to the revolution as he addressed an expectant nation on Thursday evening. Buried in his defiant, self-justifying televised speech was a short, almost mumbled line about transferring his powers to the vice-president, Omar Suleiman. Mubarak was declaring that he would be president in name only. The man who ruled for 30 years thought it would satisfy the protesters while still allowing him to go with dignity by keeping his title, if not his powers, for a few months more. But it didn’t satisfy the people, and so it didn’t satisfy the army. The organisers of the protests that had rocked Egypt for nearly three weeks said from the beginning that the revolution was not about one man, but a system. Mubarak’s transfer of power to Suleiman – the former intelligence chief who played a leading role in suppressing political opposition and was America’s point man in Egypt in the rendition and torture of alleged terrorists – was not an acceptable alternative. To the protesters, Mubarak had merely rearranged the deckchairs. Far from being placated, many saw his speech as further evidence of the regime’s vulnerability and their anger strengthened their determination to bring it down. Mohamed ElBaradei, the former nuclear inspector who earned some credibility in Egypt for standing up to the US over weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, openly called for an army takeover. As hundreds of thousands of people pushed in to Tahrir Square on Friday morning, the military leaders met. Clearly, they had expected something different from Mubarak. The supreme military council had put out a statement before his speech saying it had intervened to protect the interests of the people. That had prompted a buzz that the military had stepped in to take control. A senior army officer had told the crowd in Tahrir Square that their demands were about to be met, further raising the expectation that Mubarak was about to quit or be forced out. Major General Safwat el-Zayat, a former senior official of Egypt’s General Intelligence, told Ahram Online that the military leadership, like the people, had thought Mubarak would resign . Zayat said Mubarak’s speech — and one that followed by Suleiman — “was formulated against the wishes of the armed forces, and away from their oversight” and amounted to an unprecedented breach between the president and the military. In short, the army that had kept Mubarak in power had lost confidence in him. Evidently alarmed at the anger among protesters, who spilled beyond Tahrir Square and surrounded the state television building, the army issued a statement promising that the commitment to free elections would be fulfilled. But again it was not enough. The streets of Cairo continued to fill. The protest leaders warned of mass civil disobedience, a general strike, shutting the country down. The military’s supreme council concluded that the only way to deal with the crisis was for Mubarak to go and to be seen to be gone. He and his family were packed on a plane and dispatched to his palace in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. It was noted on the streets of Cairo, but after the disappointments of the previous 24 hours, few dared to believe. Then came the announcement that the man all Egypt had feared for 30 years really was history. Hosni Mubarak Egypt Protest Middle East Chris McGreal guardian.co.uk
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Although this year’s CPAC convention has been strangely void of any formal discussion about the events unfolding in Egypt or jobs for unemployed Americans, Tim Pawlenty did manage to remind us all of what these last three weeks would have looked like if George Bush had been in office. In his speech today, Pawlenty slammed President Obama for allowing Egyptians to determine Egypt’s future in their way and their time. “Bullies respect strength, they don’t respect weakness,” Pawlenty said in a speech to the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington. “So when the United States of America projects its national security interests here and around the world, we need to do it with strength. We need to make sure that there is no equivocation, no uncertainty, no daylight between us and our allies around the world.” Pawlenty called it a simple principle that the White House “doesn’t seem to understand.” “We undermine Israel, the U.K., Poland, Czech Republic, Colombia, amongst other of our friends,” Pawlenty said. “Meanwhile, we appease Iran, Russia, and adversaries in the Middle East, including Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. “Mr. President, with bullies, might makes right. Strength makes them submit. We need to get tough on our enemies, not on our friends. And, Mr. President, stop apologizing for our country,” Pawlenty said in one of his speech’s biggest applause lines. “The bullies, terrorists and tyrants of the world have lots to apologize for. America does not.” It’s worth contrasting that with President Obama’s speech made shortly after TPaw’s spew: (More follows) And above all, we saw a new generation emerge — a generation that uses their own creativity and talent and technology to call for a government that represented their hopes and not their fears; a government that is responsive to their boundless aspirations. One Egyptian put it simply: Most people have discovered in the last few days — that they are worth something, and this cannot be taken away from them anymore, ever. This is the power of human dignity, and it can never be denied. Egyptians have inspired us, and they’ve done so by putting the lie to the idea that justice is best gained through violence. For in Egypt, it was the moral force of nonviolence — not terrorism, not mindless killing — but nonviolence, moral force that bent the arc of history toward justice once more. And while the sights and sounds that we heard were entirely Egyptian, we can’t help but hear the echoes of history — echoes from Germans tearing down a wall, Indonesian students taking to the streets, Gandhi leading his people down the path of justice. As Martin Luther King said in celebrating the birth of a new nation in Ghana while trying to perfect his own, There is something in the soul that cries out for freedom.” Those were the cries that came from Tahrir Square, and the entire world has taken note. For TPaw, respecting Israel et al means showing force, shaking our guns at whoever they call enemy instead of respecting the right of people to determine their government. How is it disrepecting democracies to support democracy? When I read what he said, I was whisked back to the days of George W. Bush. In 2002, he gave a speech where he called for Palestinians to enact true political reform, including free and fair elections. He promised that if they did so, the United States would support them. In 2006, the Palestinians elected Hamas in elections supervised by the UN and deemed to be free and fair. In a press conference following the elections, Mr. Bush paid lip service to the democratic process and then refused to acknowledge the Palestinians’ duly elected representatives. Juan Cole, writing for Salon: In a mystifying self-contradiction, Bush trumpeted that “the Palestinians had an election yesterday, the results of which remind me about the power of democracy.” If elections were really the same as democracy, and if Bush was so happy about the process, then we might expect him to pledge to work with the results, which by his lights would be intrinsically good. But then he suddenly swerved away from this line of thought, reverting to boilerplate and saying, “On the other hand, I don’t see how you can be a partner in peace if you advocate the destruction of a country as part of your platform. And I know you can’t be a partner in peace if you have a — if your party has got an armed wing.” So Bush is saying that even though elections are democracy and democracy is good and powerful, it has produced unacceptable results in this case, and so the resulting Hamas government will lack the legitimacy necessary to allow the United States to deal with it or go forward in any peace process. Bush’s double standard is clear in his diction, since he was perfectly happy to deal with Israel’s Likud Party, which is dedicated to the destruction of the budding Palestinian state, and which used the Israeli military and security services for its party platform in destroying the infrastructure of the Palestinian Authority throughout the early years of this century. As Orwell reminded us in “Animal Farm,” some are more equal than others . Which is precisely what TPaw said in his speech. Some are more equal than others. Poland, the UK, Columbia, Israel. Those democracies are just fine. But in Egypt’s case, we should have been strong, firm, unequivocal in our undying support for the dictator. Because THAT would somehow have protected our national interests. Democracy is democracy, regardless of whether this country likes the outcome. As President Obama said, the way forward for Egypt won’t be easy, and I expect it also won’t be pretty, because democracy means letting everyone have a voice, even when you don’t like what they say. This is what conservatives and TPaw really don’t understand at all. In their minds, we should undermine and starve any democracy that isn’t aligned with our express (white, Anglo-Saxon, conservative Christian) ideals, because we don’t like it. This clip with The Nation’s Katrina VandenHeuvel puts an exclamation point on it: Click here to view this media TPaw’s speech is nothing more than a living example of that. From the day Barack Obama was elected, they have worked to de-legitimize his presidency. Birthers. Glenn Beck. Fox News. They work with one goal, to undermine a democratically-elected president that they don’t happen to agree with. Who are the real dictators here?
Continue reading …Krauthammer Tells Inconvenient Truth About Egypt and Muslim Brotherhood Media are Ignoring
February 12, 2011 No Comment
Most of the media were predictably jubilant and giddy on Friday when it was announced that Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was stepping down. Acting as the voice of reason was syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer who on PBS's “Inside Washington” spoke some inconvenient truths about the Muslim Brotherhood and Egypt's similarities to pre-Islamic Revolution Iran that America's press have been dishonestly downplaying for weeks (video follows with transcript and commentary): CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Everything said about Egypt – the educated population, the proud history, the long civilization – all of it applies to Iran in 1979 as well, and it ended up hijacked by the Islamists. That’s the threat in Egypt today. The Brotherhood wants the institution of Sharia law. On its website it says that no Christian or woman can be the president of Egypt. This is not the Salvation Army as described by our director of National Intelligence who ought to be canned for the testimony he gave the other day about how benign and secular an organization it is. It wants the institution of Sharia law. Our job is to strengthen the democrats, of which there are many in Egypt but who need help, organization and assistance so they can challenge the Brotherhood and create a democracy that is actually going to live and not be one man, one vote, one time. Rather than share this real threat with their readers, listeners, and viewers, America's Obama-loving media have castigated those that have as being right-wing extremists and fear mongers. But the job of a journalist should be to explore all possibilities of a developing situation rather than just those they either hope will happen for the good of the society or wish for in order to assist a president they support. For the most part, the coverage of this crisis since the moment it began a little over two weeks ago has been deplorable. From blaming it on former President George W. Bush to tying the unrest to global warming, what we've witnessed from our press has been laughable.
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