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Hannity and Bozell bash media — especially Chris Matthews — for insffucient fearmongering over Egypt

Click here to view this media The right-wing Media Research Center’s Brent Bozell was on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show last night to talk about how horrible the American media have been in covering the situation in Egypt. How have they been horrible? Why, apparently because they aren’t being sufficiently Becklike in fearmongering over an imminent radical Islamist takeover: BOZELL: What happens when the government crumbles? What happens when this country is reduced to utter anarchy? What happens when the killings begin and the death begins? Are they still going to credit Barack Obama’s soaring oratory for that, or are they going to separate them? What happens if an Islamic caliphate takes over? Are they going to credit his soaring oratory at that point? No they won’t. And what happens, Brent Bozell, if the government remains standing but reconstitutes itself as a democratic republic? What happens when the violence subsides? Will you and Hannity be going on the air and abjectly apologizing to your audiences and the American public and President Obama and to your media colleagues for needlessly fearmongering and spreading panic? Um, no. You won’t. But Bozell reserved his special reservoir of venom for Chris Matthews, who dared compare the Muslim Brotherhood to the Tea Party. This, of course, made Hannity’s an Bozell’s collective pea-sized brains explode: BOZELL: Look, I listen to Chris Matthews and I have two reactions to that. My first reaction is, ‘Let’s put aside civility for just a minute and to say, I’m just so sick and tired of these disgusting, horrible, despicable attacks, I’m going to slug you and deck you one of these days.’ But that’s wrong. That’s the wrong reaction. The right reaction is to listen to him, and to listen to him clearly, and just start laughing at the guy. Look, if a meteor came out of the heavens and hit New York City, he would blame the Tea Party for it. He would blame Michele Bachmann for it. HANNITY: No. He would probably blame George W. Bush or Sarah Palin. Let’s be honest. BOZELL: Yeah, but if it hit Fox News, he would say it’s OK. Yeah, and if it his NBC News instead, Bozell and Hannity would say it was OK. Especially because we know that “first reaction” is, for right-wing clowns like these two, the one we’re going to get most of the time. Especially when it’s being encouraged by top-tier pundits on a cable network with an audience of millions. Oh, but if a liberal protester is overheard saying nasty things, why, that’s proof positive that it’s the “left” that cannot be civil.

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Hong Kong gadget flea market: a blast from the past

If you’ve seen our Hong Kong feature from awhile back, then you would’ve already heard about my favorite gadget hangout Sham Shui Po. By chance, my post-flight stroll in said district yesterday coincided with Apliu Street’s Chinese New Year flea market, which featured many vintage items like jade figurines, paintings, jewelry, video tapes, vinyl records, etc. Naturally, what really caught my attention were the old gadgets that were literally piled up along the street, and from just HK$30 (US$3.85), you could easily pick up an old classic such as a Sony Cli

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Tunisian cyber activists take on Egyptian cause

Social media played in organising the uprising in Tunisia, and now, activists there are focusing their technical skills on helping anti-government protesters in Egypt. Tunisian hackers say they will attack website belonging to the Egyptian government in solidarity with the pro-democracy activists protesting there. Nazanine Moshir reports from Tunis.

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Parliamentary republic ‘solution’ to Egypt’s woes

Moustafa Elgindy, a member of the Egyptian Coalition for the Opposition and a former member of Egypt’s parliament, said the pro-democracy protests will continue until president Hosni Mubarak leaves office. He said the solution is a parliamentary republic with a strong army and a prime minister voted on by the people. He spoke to Al Jazeera from Washington, DC.

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World Net Daily: Fourth Horseman Of The Apocalypse Spotted In Egypt

According to today’s top story on World Net Daily , eagle-eyed Christians have spotted the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse riding through a crowd of Egyptian protesters. The footage, provided by Euronews and subsequently seen on MSNBC, CNN and uploaded over a dozen times to the popular video sharing site YouTube, captures the fiery, violent protests in Cairo this past week … and something else. Between… Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Joe. My. God. Discovery Date : 05/02/2011 01:18 Number of articles : 3

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A restaurant in Hawaii is under review by the state’s Civil Right Commission because of its policy of adding a 15% gratuity to the bills of patrons who don’t speak English. The Waikiki eatery says the policy isn’t xenophobic—it’s just that many customers come from abroad where tipping isn’t…

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The More Moms Work, the More Kids Gain Weight?

The more years a mother works during her children’s growing-up years, the more likely the children’s weight is to rise, according to a new study.

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Back Pain May Be Inherited

New research suggests a role for genes in a major cause of persistent low back pain.

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It is right to be anxious about Egypt but not the weary, confused organisation that represents political Islam there Fear of political Islam is the pivot around which debate on Egypt’s future in the outside world often revolves. It is the spectre which a jittery Israel invokes, and it is still President Hosni Mubarak’s last card in arguing that the system which he and his predecessors created should survive more or less intact, even when he is no longer part of it. Al-Qaida’s Egyptian connections are remembered and the Iranian revolution’s tragic slide into religious fascism recalled. Thus it is that many who cheer on the Egyptian demonstrators feel anxiety when they ask themselves what comes afterward. Yet that anxiety is misplaced. It is misplaced in the very precise sense that it is right to be anxious about Egypt but not right to centre that anxiety on the rather weary, confused and unready organisation which represents political Islam in Egypt today. The Muslim Brotherhood will play a serious part in any new politics. But it is now less a radical organisation than a conservative one, striving to be relevant to modern needs, and divided on how far it can or should trim its policies. Its leadership looks back on several decades of hard decisions, as well as of hard times under a president whose instincts always tended toward persecution or exclusion rather than reconciliation. The most fundamental such decision was to abandon violence, both in practice and in theory, at least on Egyptian soil. Distancing itself from violent means was, quite apart from the question of morality, the right thing to do if the Brotherhood was to have standing among Egyptians, who have consistently shown that they find such means abhorrent. It earned the Brotherhood the hatred of al-Qaida, but that was a political help, not a hindrance. Since then the Brotherhood has

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Investors look for profits in crisis-hit Egypt

Fund managers hoping for a repeat of profits that followed uprisings in Thailand and China following unrest in Egypt Speculators are hoping to make a fast buck from the crisis in Egypt by buying shares in companies whose stock market values have been hammered by recent events. One senior financial adviser told Guardian Money that investors who bought after the Tiananmen Square massacre profited hugely from China’s economic rise while, more recently, Thailand has been one of the world’s best-performing stock markets since last April’s Bangkok riots. Mark Mobius, arguably the most renowned investor in politically risky emerging markets, told Citywire.co.uk that he was “looking to buy” in Egypt when the stock market reopens. Shares in Egypt fell by 11% on the last day of trading before the crisis forced the exchange to close. Mobius told Citywire he was looking for stocks to fall a further 10-15% before he started buying. Before the crisis, the Middle East had become the focus of several fund launches aiming to exploit its growing economic strength. These “MENA” – Middle East and North Africa – funds have been called the final frontier in emerging markets investing. The funds were mainly targeted at institutional buyers, but in March 2010 Barings unveiled a MENA fund for small investors, where the minimum investment was £2,500. Its initial portfolio comprised a 29% investment in Egypt, with the manager optimistic about the country’s prospects. Barings said: “It is important to emphasise that changes like this can be positive for investors as well as society.” “We would highlight South Africa post-Apartheid, Indonesia post-President Suharto and much of Latin America … Given renewed tensions in the region, however, and the importance of the Suez Canal to the transportation of oil, we believe it’s important to ensure that we are positioned for potential strength in the oil price across equity portfolios.” But Mark Dampier, of Hargreaves Lansdown, the biggest UK investment funds seller, said: “The number one thing about these sorts of funds is political risk. When things go wrong, you can’t get your money out. These are very immature markets and often quite closed economies.” Other fund managers to hold Egyptian stocks in their funds include BlackRock, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, Investec and Schroders. Investments Investment funds Investing Financial sector Egypt Middle East Patrick Collinson guardian.co.uk

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