BREAKING: Egypt Shuts Down Al Jazeera’s Cairo Bureau. Will They Stay Or Go?
January 30, 2011 No CommentUPDATE: So far, still broadcasting. This is reminiscent of the movie “Live from Baghdad,” which recreated the situation when CNN was the only news agency covering the first Gulf War war from within the Iraq capital, despite orders to leave. Will a defiant Al Jazeera pull it off? Will they leave the country? The Egyptian authorities are revoking the Al Jazeera Network’s licence to broadcast from the country, and will be shutting down its bureau office in Cairo, state television has said. “The information minister [Anas al-Fikki] ordered … suspension of operations of Al Jazeera, cancelling of its licences and withdrawing accreditation to all its staff as of today,” a statement on the official Mena news agency said on Sunday. In a statement, Al Jazeera said it strongly denounces and condemns the closure of its bureau in Cairo by the Egyptian government. The network received notification from the Egyptian authorities on Sunday morning. “Al Jazeera has received widespread global acclaim for their coverage on the ground across the length and breadth of Egypt,” the statement said. An Al Jazeera spokesman said that the company would continue its strong coverage regardless. “Al Jazeera sees this as an act designed to stifle and repress the freedom of reporting by the network and its journalists,” the statement said. “In this time of deep turmoil and unrest in Egyptian society it is imperative that voices from all sides be heard; the closing of our bureau by the Egyptian government is aimed at censoring and silencing the voices of the Egyptian people. “Al Jazeera assures its audiences in Egypt and across the world that it will continue its in-depth and comprehensive reporting on the events unfolding in Egypt.”
Continue reading …Do you think the Obama administration should have given more wholehearted support to the anti-Mubarak protests in Egypt? | Poll
January 30, 2011 No Comment
The Obama administration has sent out carefully moderated messages in favour of political reform in Egypt. Would you like to see more forthright US support for the anti-Mubarak protesters?
Continue reading …SNL Trashes Michele Bachmann: ‘Response to State of the Union Address – The Second Attempt’
January 30, 2011 No Comment
Predictably joining the media attacks on Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), NBC's “Saturday Night Live” began its most recent installment mocking her response to the President's State of the Union address last Tuesday. Actress Kristen Wiig playing the Congresswoman explained that as a result of technical difficulties in her first attempt, CNN gave her a second try at it. What followed was gaffe after gaffe in another segment by SNL designed to totally trash a conservative woman (video follows with transcript and commentary): ANNOUNCER: This is CNN. Tonight, a CNN special event. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s response to the President's State of the Union address – the second attempt. [Laughter] [Cheers and applause] KRISTEN WIIG AS REP. MICHELE BACHMANN, (R-MINN.): Good evening. I'm Congresswoman Michele Bachmann from Minnesota’s sixth district. Four nights ago on behalf of the Republican Party and the Tea Party, I delivered a response to President Obama’s State of the Union address. Unfortunately, that response was marred by some technical difficulties, and it seems that its core message was not properly conveyed. Accordingly I have asked for this time tonight in order to try again. Because, you see, the issues are simply too important and the stakes for our nation too high to do otherwise. So here goes. [Turns stage right facing away from the camera] [Laughter] Two years ago when Barack Obama became president, our nation's unemployment rate was already 7.8%, and our national debt an astonishing $10.6 trillion. The economy was headed for disaster as you can see from this chart. [Chart facing stage right, totally unreadable] [Laughter] Not a pretty picture, is it? Yet, instead of addressing our economic problems, this president's policies have made them worse, as this next chart clearly shows. [Chart facing upstage left, totally unreadable] [Laughter] That's right. Under our current president we've gone from this [first unreadable chart] to this [second unreadable chart]. [Laughter] But it doesn't have to be this way. By simply reducing spending and returning to the core governing principles of our Founding Fathers, we can have an economy that looks like this. [Upside down chart] [Laughter] [She’s then directed to look into the camera. She does briefly, and then turns stage left away from camera again] But let's be honest, before any of this can happen, we must first address the massive growth in entitlements, especially Social Security. I'm going to show you another chart of the projected growth of revenues into the Social Security trust fund. [Chart with no figures on it] [Laughter] It’s a little hard to see because I drew the line in white. Now, here is the same graph adding projected Social Security expenditures, also in white. [Chart with no figures on it] [Laughter] Sorry, that's not very clear. Should we show that last graph in black? Do we have that? [Graph is totally black with no figures on it] [Laughter] Okay. That's a little better I think. Maybe not. The point is the current situation is unsustainable. Consider this chart which shows the amount of federal spending devoted just to interest on the national debt. [Chart of completely smudged, illegible figures] [Laughter] This is the one I dropped in the snow. That's a shame. That was important. But the point is the American people don't need graphs or charts to tell us what we already know. Our country is headed in the wrong direction and we all remember what this president promised us just one year ago at his first State of the Union. [Video of woman with horse] Alright. Obviously, that's, that’s not President Obama. No, I know it's on this tape. I just don't know where. I don't have time to find it now. So let me just conclude by saying, I realize how much the American people are sacrificing during these troubled economic times. We Republicans get it. And we want you to know we're doing some belt-tightening of our own. For example, this presentation you just saw was done on a reduced budget. I'm not kidding. We didn't even hire a professional director. Seriously. Or a trained graphic designer. And here is something else, believe it or not, my makeup was done by a child. [Laughter] As God is my witness, she's 5 years old. So thank you for your attention. [Something crashes off screen] May God bless America, and live from New York, it's Saturday Night! In reality, if the folks at SNL had done their homework, they would have known that the real gaffe Tuesday night was made by CNN. As Breitbart reported hours before this was aired: Our sources tell us that CNN had originally agreed to use the live feed set up by Tea Party Express, which had a teleprompter running on the lens in which Rep. Bachmann was delivering her speech. But, when Rep. Bachmann left the camera set-up and sat in the House chamber to hear Pres. Obama's speech, CNN set up a camera of their own, just off to the side of the main, tele-prompter/camera. Thus, when CNN provided their network feed it ended up skewed and off-kilter. Here's what the real broadcast looked like Tuesday night: As such, SNL could have just as easily made this sketch about the hapless professionalism of CNN for not using the Tea Party Express feed instead opting to use its own camera in a fashion that would guarantee the speaker wasn't looking into it. The writers could have then had a field day mocking other such gaffes by the self-described most trusted name in news. That would have been a hoot, and quite contrary to how the rest of the media reported this incident. In fact, if SNL really wanted to be original, it could have trashed all the media outlets and members that blamed this on Bachmann instead of CNN. Now that really would have been something to behold. Alas, instead, NBC predictably piled on the conservative Congresswoman the media love to defame. Just how predictable was it? Well, a Twitter follower of MSNBC's Keith Olbermann sent a message to his hero Tuesday evening saying, “@KeithOlbermann Tonight's big winner from the Bachmann response debacle? – SNL's Kristen Wiig.” When people enamored with the former “Countdown” host can predict SNL's take on an event, and NBC unknowingly goes along with it, that has to be classified as too sophomoric for America's premier television comedy show. Unfortunately, having impacted the 2008 elections with Tina Fey's impersonations of Sarah Palin while similarly trashing Delaware's Christine O'Donnell during the last election cycle, SNL made it quite clear with this opening segment that it's going to do its darnedist to trash conservatives for the next two years regardless of how predictable the sketch is. The heads of Comcast must be so proud of their purchase.
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As police disappear from residential streets, communities take law into their own hands against armed gangs The security of most neighbourhoods in Egypt lay in the hands of its citizens last night, as residents responded to the disappearance of the police force by setting up makeshift barricades and beginning local patrols to protect themselves from violence. In extraordinary scenes repeated across the country, communities formed spontaneous militias armed with sticks, knives and guns, and worked through the night to man roadblocks and maintain order on the streets, from which the government security forces are now almost entirely absent. The army remains in place on major highways, squares and public buildings – but away from main roads local residents were left to defend their families and property from looters. As reports filtered in of gangs attempting to rob and terrorise neighbourhoods in different quarters of the capital, some pointed the finger at escaped prisoners and opportunistic criminals, though many more claimed that groups of policemen, now wearing civilian clothing, were behind the attacks. There were claims that some of those captured by vigilantes were found with police IDs. In the Marouf neighbourhood of downtown Cairo, the Guardian witnessed residents distributing metal rods and kitchen blades among local young men, who used car tyres, traffic barriers and debris from the day’s street battles to block access to roads and check the identity of anyone attempting to enter the area. “We are looking to see whether we recognise the person, and if not we ask them questions to test their knowledge of the area,” said Mahmoud Omar, a 35-year-old film-maker who was using his camera tripod as a weapon. “Everybody is very tense, because it’s dark, it’s cold, and it’s very disorientating out here – we are very wary of any approaching cars or motorbikes. Earlier some thugs on a motorbike attacked a lone soldier and stole his weapon; luckily we apprehended them and tied them to a lamp-post, and then helped the soldier back to his tank.” In the early hours shots rang out from surrounding streets, and armed groups were seen chasing targets down alleyways. “Tonight we are disorganised because we are not experts in urban security, we’re learning as we go,” said Omar. “Tomorrow will be different, we’ll have signalling and identification systems set up, and work out a better distribution of weapons.” The Guardian collated reports from eyewitnesses across the capital to build a picture of how Saturday night unfolded. In the eastern suburb of Heliopolis one residential building came under attack from armed men who demanded that every apartment turn its lights on and throw down money to the street; the attackers were repelled by residents who threw stones and threw boiling water from their balconies. Across the Nile in the middle-class neighbourhood of Dokki, residents were strengthening their defences in anticipation of another night of violence on the streets. “I’ve picked up a pistol and a shotgun, and we’ve also got walkie-talkies so that we can keep contact with the other patrols and work together more effectively,” said Nabil Habib, a 26-year-old software engineer. “It’s a strange feeling defending your own community, fear mixed with intense pride,” he added. “People are coming together in a way they never have previously. It’s really liberating – before we lived in fear of the police and never had the chance to take responsibility for our own communities, but now we are in control. You see the same sentiment among all the volunteers who are going around picking up trash and debris from the streets. It’s a continuation of the revolution, bringing it out of the main squares and into our homes.” But not everyone shared his optimism. “It’s a deliberate ploy from the government to try and suck the energy out of this uprising,” said Karim Ennarah, a 27-year-old protester. “We are now seeing army officers, state television and state radio all saying the same thing: do your patriotic duty, go home and defend your families. They’re appealing to our nationalist sentiments, calling on ‘true Egyptians’ to leave the streets, broadcasting phone calls from crying housewives who declare ‘I’m scared, it’s all gone too far’. We must resist the rumour-mongering and see this through until Mubarak falls.” By morning many of the street barricades were removed, though vigilante groups continued to patrol local neighbourhoods. In Sayeda Zeinab, a residential area just south of the interior ministry in Cairo, the Guardian watched a suspected robber and two female accomplices being apprehended by armed locals, who dragged them to the neighbourhood’s burnt-out police station. There furious discussions among the crowd ensued, before the women were eventually released. The alleged robber was bound with rope and marched away, to be delivered to the nearest army checkpoint. Outside Cairo, similar scenes were repeated across the country. Speaking by telephone from the town of Sheikh Zoueid in northern Sinai, Khalil Sawarka, a local Bedouin leader, said that the region’s tribes were now in full control of security in most of the peninsula, which has seen major clashes between Bedouins and government security forces for many years. “We have distributed weapons and are maintaining order. But we are worried about the food situation; no supplies are reaching us and we fear that our people may start to go hungry if the situation doesn’t ease in the next few days.” Egypt Middle East Jack Shenker guardian.co.uk
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Peter Beaumont hears from first aid workers at a makeshift treatment centre at a mosque in Cairo while Jack Shenker describes the chaotic scenes Peter Beaumont Jack Shenker Phil Maynard
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Click here to view this media Noted Egyptian journalist and speaker Mona Eltahaway takes CNN to task for their sensational descriptions of the events in Egypt and call it for what it is: a people’s uprising and revolution. The New York Times describes an interview on CNN with Mona Eltahawy: Eltahawy … appealed to the media to not fall for what she described as a Mubarak regime plot to make the protests in Egypt seem like dangerous anarchy. “I urge you to use the words ‘revolt’ and ‘uprising’ and ‘revolution’ and not ‘chaos’ and not ‘unrest, we are talking about a historic moment,” she said. Moments later, as Ms. Eltahawy suggested that looting and damage to the Egyptian Museum in Cairo shown on Egyptian television was the work of “the police and the thugs of Hosni Mubarak,” the lower third of the screen displayed the banner headline: “EGYPT IN CHAOS.” She added, “Egyptians want to fix Egypt, they don’t want to destroy Egypt.” The network then displayed video from Egyptian state television of damage to the museum, which has been shown around the world on Saturday. Less than hour later CNN finally smartened up (a little) and began calling it what it is, as Robert Mackey noted. Less than an hour after Mona Eltahway, an Egyptian blogger and journalist, appealed to CNN to stop focusing on looting and security problems in Egypt following the government’s decision to withdraw the police from the streets, the broadcaster has changed its onscreen headline from “CHAOS IN EGYPT” to “UPRISING IN EGYPT.” enlarge
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An Al Jazeera online producer in Cairo captures video of the jets flying overhead on the afternoon of January 30, 2011, as citizens patrol their neighborhood.
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Satellite TV channel’s Egyptian bureau closed and licenses and accreditation withdrawn from staff Egypt today shut down the operations of the Arabic satellite TV channel al-Jazeera, blaming it for encouraging the country’s uprising – and demonstrating that the repressive powers of central government are still functioning. The state-run Mena news agency reported that the information ministry had ordered “suspension of operations of al-Jazeera, cancelling of its licenses and withdrawing accreditation to all its staff, as of today”. The Egyptian government has never made a secret of its dislike for the channel, but the final straw may have been an interview it broadcast yesterday with the popular cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who called on the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak, to leave the country immediately. Al-Jazeera has faced interference with its communications from Egypt since Friday. The Qatar-based channel immediately denounced the closure, but insisted that it would carry on regardless. “Al-Jazeera sees this as an act designed to stifle and repress the freedom of reporting by the network and its journalists,” a statement said. “In this time of deep turmoil and unrest in Egyptian society it is imperative that voices from all sides be heard. The closing of our bureau by the Egyptian government is aimed at censoring and silencing the voices of the Egyptian people. ” Al-Jazeera correspondents have been reporting round the clock, in Arabic and English, from Cairo, Suez and Alexandria since the unprecedented unrest erupted early last week. Qaradawi, often described as the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood – formally banned but still powerful in Egypt – addressed the president bluntly, saying: “Go away, Mubarak, leave the people alone. Enough – you’ve ruled for 30 years already. Dozens have been killed in one day. You cannot stay.” The Egyptian national, who now lives in Qatar, called on Mubarak to follow the example of the Tunisian president, Zine al-Abidine Bin Ali, and leave honourably. No country is more important to the Arab world than Egypt, and audiences across the region have been riveted by the unfolding drama on the satellite channel, popular precisely because it is so different from the normal run of self-censoring state media. It is not the first time Egypt has cracked down on al-Jazeera. The channel came under fire during the Israeli attack on Gaza in late 2008 amid charges that it was lionising the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and aggravating the rift between moderate and rejectionist camps in the Arab world. In 2006, its bureau chief in Cairo was charged with the false reporting of bomb blasts in the Sinai desert. Egypt also came under suspicion of jamming al-Jazeera broadcasts during the football World Cup in South Africa last summer. Al-Jazeera, which is owned by the emir of Qatar, is often accused of promoting populist and alternative agendas by attacking repressive regimes and supporting Hamas or Hizbullah in Lebanon. It was blamed for inciting unrest through its vivid coverage of the Tunisian uprising and was attacked by the Palestinian Authority over its recent coverage of the leaked Palestine papers. Egypt Middle East Al-Jazeera TV news Ian Black guardian.co.uk
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Volunteer surgeons treat people wounded during anti-government demonstrations in Egypt Peter Beaumont
Continue reading …Egyptian protests turn place of worship into desperately chaotic hospital
January 30, 2011 No Comment
A mosque in Cairo has become a makeshift sickroom for the wounded and the dying, tended by crowds of volunteers The motorbikes skitter through Mohamed Mahmoud street and into a side alley, sending debris flying in their wake. Each one carries a lifeless figure, propped up between two others. They have to hang on grimly to the vehicle’s sides to avoid falling off; if it slows down even for a moment then the sniper shots or teargas may reach them. At the doorway of the Abad Rahman mosque, tucked in a back street behind Hardees burger restaurant, crowds of volunteers are waiting to receive the injured. The scene is desperately chaotic. Some young men have linked together to man a wooden barricade, ensuring only the medics and those in need of their help make it over the threshold; others are using sticks and rods to push back the throng, making space for ambulances to weave through the clutter. The Egyptian interior ministry, site of the day’s fiercest street fighting, is just a couple of blocks away, and the sound of live gunfire echoes off the walls. This place of worship is little more than a partially-roofed narrow passage between two tall buildings; now it has been transformed into a makeshift hospital, with blood soaking through the prayer mats. The muezzin’s microphone – normally used to send out the call to prayer – pressed into use by a thick-set, bearded imam who is shouting out instructions to the medics. Occasionally, he prays. “The police have been shooting at these people with live fire,” explains Dr Mona Mina, a paediatrician who had travelled from across the city to answer an urgent call for medical assistance. “I came down four hours ago, and I’ve seen six deaths here today – mostly from penetration wounds, but one was from gas suffocation.” As she talks a commotion breaks out near the doorway and a child is carried through, bleeding heavily. Dr Mina grabs a bundle of supplies from a nearby trestle table. “I have to go,” she says. On the white columns of the mosque volunteers taped IV drips and hung carpets to give some little privacy to the injured. Meanwhile bystanders joined hands to encircle those being treated on the floor and prevent them being jostled. “It shows the solidarity of the Egyptian people who are fighting for the end of this regime, and now for their lives,” Dr Ahmed Ali, an oncologist from the southern Cairo suburb of Maadi. “We’re advising people to halt the assault on the interior ministry because the police there have snipers and the youths have nothing but stones. They don’t stand a chance, but they keep going on anyway. And as long as they keep going we will too.” In the midst of one small group lay a man in his early 30s, his shirt pulled up to show a small ugly puncture on the right side of his stomach below his rib cage. A surgeon, still wearing his suit, is probing it with forceps while the man screams, pulling out a fragment of metal. “See this,” the doctor says holding it up. “Do you see this? They are shooting people with live rounds.” Another volunteer brings over a handful of .22 calibre shell casings. In a corner of the mosque a younger man is screaming as iodine is swabbed on his knee, punctured by a piece of buckshot. A young woman, inconsolable, falls into a faint after being told her husband has been killed. “Please, don’t stay here,” a volunteer implores. “It is too dangerous.” Half an hour later her husband’s blue jeans, now drenched red with blood, are hooked on to a stick and held aloft by a group of volunteers, who march out of the mosque and back round to Tahrir Square. ” Shaheed” – the Arabic word for martyr – is taken up by the crowd. It was not the first, or last time the cry went out on this day of violence in the capital. Egypt Middle East Protest Jack Shenker Peter Beaumont guardian.co.uk
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