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 …Egypt coverage is mostly celebratory today—”a new dawn,” is the phrase of choice for both al-Jazeera and the Guardian , while the New York Times has it that a “new era dawned”—as attention turns to the what-comes-next question. Along those lines: The main coalition of protest groups says it…
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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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Now there’s a man who can give a speech,…and with a claim we endorse mightily. Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : ♆ The Macho Response ♆ Discovery Date : 12/02/2011 17:10 Number of articles : 5
Continue reading …Mark Zuckerberg is, in Facebook-speak, “in a relationship.” Aol News introduces us to the Facebook founder’s “no-nonsense” girlfriend, Priscilla Chan, with five fun facts: They’ve been together since college : Where they met at a party, in line for the bathroom. Chan told the New Yorker Zuck seemed like a “nerdy…
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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 …From Tahrir Square to Algeria’s May 1 Square: Thousands of demonstrators inspired by Egypt marched in Algiers today despite an official ban on protests and a huge police presence, reports AP . Estimates of the crowd ranged from 10,000 to 30,000, and rights activists say at least 400 have…
Continue reading …When you have one family in charge, soaking everyone in Egypt for the right to do business, why, I can see how people might get a little angry about that : Mubarak — who stepped down on Friday in the wake of massive protests that have gripped Cairo and Alexandria for weeks — and his family have a net worth of at least $5 billion , analysts tell The Huffington Post. Recent media reports pegging the family fortune at between $40 and $70 billion are considered to be exaggerated. Much of their fortune has reportedly been invested in offshore bank accounts in Europe and in upscale real estate. On Friday, Switzerland froze accounts possibly belonging to Mubarak and his family, a spokesman told Reuters, under new laws governing ill-gotten gains. Last month, the Swiss froze the accounts of Mubarak’s ally, ousted Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, whose overthrow inspired the first protests in Cairo. The Mubarak family reportedly owns properties around the world, from London and Paris to New York and Beverly Hills. In addition to homes in the Red Sea resort of Sharm al-Sheikh and the upscale Cairo district of Heliopolis, they also have a six-story mansion in the Knightsbridge section of London, a house near the Bois de Bologne in Paris and two yachts. Largely through Mubarak’s two sons, Gamal and Alaa, the family controls a network of companies that earn money through concessions wrangled from foreign companies that do business in Egypt, according to prominent businessmen and “Corruption In Egypt: The Black Cloud Is Not Disappearing,” an investigative report compiled in 2006 by a coalition of opposition groups. (The report, which names the companies allegedly owned by the Mubarak brothers and details multiple instance of corruption by government officials, has been cited by numerous international good government groups, such as Transparency International, but it was taken offline and is no longer available on the Internet. The Huffington Post obtained a copy, replete with rhetorical flourishes and thinly-sourced allegations, which is available here .) “Egypt’s state under Mubarak’s regime is an embodiment of corruption,” concludes the report, with descriptions of numerous allegations of corruption involving bribery, undue influence and nepotism. In the 1980s, Mubarak seemed sincere in his desire to crack down on corruption in an effort to distinguish himself from Sadat, says an Egyptian-American businessman who often does business in the country. “But as time went on, the cronies around him started taking advantage of the system,” he says. “And the other factor was his children got into business, taking commissions out of each and every company that comes to Egypt. The way they have amassed that money is not by stealing but by ensuring that businesses that want to operate in Egypt pay from 5 percent to 20 percent commission to a company formed by Gamal Mubarak. I know businessmen who have been squeezed this way.” Some of the family’s wealth is also believed to be through partnerships with foreign companies — under Egyptian law, foreign businesses are required to give a local partners a 51-percent stake in their Egyptian operations. “According to this law, any multinational company needs to have a local sponsor, and this local sponsor usually goes through members of the family or powerful people in the ruling party,” says Aladdin Elaasar, the author of “Last Pharaoh: Mubarak and the Uncertain Future.”
Continue reading …In sickness and health, sure, but nobody said anything about when your husband gets caught trying to pick up women on Craigslist with the worst frat-astic cell-phone pic ever. Nevertheless, Michele Lee is “crushed,” but standing by former Rep. Chris Lee, who a friend says “was supposed to be her…
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