Gigi Ibrahim as featured on PBS’s Frontline. (PBS Frontline) Her family is part of the Egyptian elite, but 24-year-old Gigi Ibrahim says she’s fighting for her country’s future. With thousands following her Twitter feed, Gigi has become something of a celebrity in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. In this video, we see her attempts to convince her family of the righteousness of her cause. But will they come around? Frontline airs their special “Revolution in Cairo” on Tuesday night (Feb 22). Gigi Ibrahim and other Egyptian youth are on this week’s Time magazine cover . Her twitter account is @GSquare86 . enlarge
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NATO forces say they have secured control of the south of Afghanistan. But just 30 minutes by car from Kandahar city, Taliban fighters have set up camps. Al Jazeera’s Sue Turton reports from one such camp in Zharay district, where commanders tell her they will expand their operations in the summer.
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African mercenaries are gunning down civilians in Libya, say Egyptians crossing the border
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It’s not only in the Middle East that the balance of power is moving. The old neoliberal order has also been shaken In the late 1940s, Simone de Beauvoir was already bemoaning our tendency to “think that we are not the master of our destiny; we no longer hope to help make history, we are resigned to submitting to it”. By the late 70s such regret, repackaged as celebration, had become the stuff of a growing consensus. By the late 80s, we were told that history itself had come to an end. The sort of history that ordinary people might make was to fade away within a “new world order”, a world in which a narrow set of elites would control all the main levers of power. Sure enough, for much of the last 30 years, these elites have waged a relentless assault on the people they exploit. Trade unions have been decimated, real wages cut, public services privatised, public resources plundered. For many of these years, during which “there was no alternative”, resistance in most places was either marginal or symbolic. In one guise or another, resigned submission remained the prevailing order of the day. Not any more. In different ways in different places (including most dramatically some places that until very recently were often taken for granted as among the most “docile” and “stable” countries around), people all over the world are rediscovering a principle at work in every revolutionary sequence: if we are willing to act in sufficient numbers and with sufficient determination, we already have all the power we need to devise and impose our own alternative. If we are determined to pursue it, we now have an opportunity to help change the world. This isn’t to say that either the neoliberal order or the imperial power that protects it are in any imminent danger of collapse. An opportunity is nothing more, or less, than an opportunity. The governments led by people like David Cameron and Barack Obama continue to press an agenda of “reform” that amounts to little less than a form of class warfare. In the UK, current government plans for education and public services are far more aggressive than anything Margaret Thatcher could have proposed. Nevertheless, in the last few years, and most obviously in the last few months, the general balance of power has begun to shift in three far-reaching ways, which together may well transform not just the Middle East but also the world as a whole. First of all, of course, after demonstrating more clearly than ever before what the unrestricted pursuit of profit involves, in 2008 neoliberal credit mechanisms imploded in spectacular style, and the credibility of the capitalist world system itself took an unprecedented hit. The costs associated with what many have declared the ” financial coup d’état ” have now exposed the current rule of political accounting for all to see: privatise the profits, socialise the losses. This is the kind of rule that tends to suffer from publicity. We have always been told that we cannot afford to pursue utopian projects that might reduce social inequalities, or prevent the millions of avoidable deaths that take place each year as a result of disease or starvation. Our governments and central banks, however, have now spent many trillions of dollars – thousands of times more money than what is required to end global hunger – to bail out some of the most blatantly corrupt institutions the world has ever seen. This public money was spent, just as blatantly, to avoid change rather than implement it. The underlying contradictions in the economy haven’t been addressed, and the banking sector has been left to carry on more or less as before. As the consequences of this monumental failure start to hit more and more people over the coming months, class-polarising austerity may well become a difficult political position to defend, especially since measures once justified in terms of economic necessity are now so visibly a matter of deliberate choice and priority. At the same time, the imperial power that only a few years ago insisted on ” full-spectrum dominance ” has encountered significant limits to its deployment, both at home and abroad. Washington hawks may still dream of attacking Iran, but it’s perhaps more difficult now to imagine a new US war of aggression than at any time since 1945. Rarely has so dominant, so large and so expensive an army looked so powerless. Rarely, too, has so much diplomatic power looked so hollow, fractured and hypocritical. As it has done so often in previous decades, the US is still free to use its UN veto to thwart justice in the Middle East, but it now finds itself obliged to veto its own policy along with it, at a cost that has already endangered its most essential goal in the region: an end to the Palestine liberation movement . The US and its allies have been discovering that it’s a lot harder, these days, to lie about what this and other deceitful political processes involve – a difficulty that may soon also have consequences for the ongoing missions to stabilise Haiti , pacify Iraq, conquer Afghanistan, demonise Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, and so on. This is the second factor at issue here, dramatised most obviously in al-Jazeera’s publication of the Palestine papers last month, following the WikiLeaks revelations last year. A combination of new technologies, new social media and new sources of information (not least al-Jazeera itself ), enabling new forms of association and deliberation, are starting to make it more difficult for political elites to rely on a compliant press to set and limit the political agenda. These new means of accessing and sharing information are also starting to have a transformative impact on the third and most important development: the extraordinary resurgence of popular mobilisation and solidarity – a renewal that began with the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela and indigenous movements in Bolivia and Ecuador (and at work more recently, among other places, in Puerto Rico and Guadeloupe, in Iran, in China, across Europe), but that has now crossed a new threshold in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain and Libya. As one Egyptian protester put it, very concisely: “I used to watch television, now television watches me.” On the other side of the world, the tens of thousands of protesters who are mobilising to protect their unions in Wisconsin are among the many millions who have been watching and learning, and who see some similarities between their state governor and Egypt’s deposed president. In the UK, students and workers gearing up for another round of direct confrontation with Cameron’s government have been watching, too. Diplomats and pundits rush to assure us that what we’re really seeing in north Africa is just an oriental variation on the east European uprisings of 1989, or the subsequent ” colour revolutions ” – uprisings that served mainly to consolidate rather than challenge the global status quo. Of course, no one can say how the north African mobilisations will develop, or how far they will spread. Like earlier revolutions in France, Haiti and Russia, these are mobilisations whose spatial and temporal (let alone ethnic or religious) dimensions are quite emphatically not fixed in advance. But we do know that they have already changed the course of history, and that they will continue to change it. In each new confrontation, they have demonstrated anew the truth of an old conviction that will always be more powerful than any amount of violent repression or scornful dismissal: the people, united, will never be defeated. Whatever happens next, the people of north Africa and the Middle East have already won victories that will never be erased. The clashes in Tunis on 11-12 January, the capitulation of riot police in Cairo and Alexandria on 28 January, the retaking of Manama’s Pearl Square on 19 February, the liberation of Benghazi on 20 February – in the annals of revolutionary history, events of the 2011 Arab spring may one day invite comparison more readily with the summer of 1789 or the autumn of 1917 than with the winter of 1989. In each case, what’s been at stake first and foremost is less a specific demand for objective change than a subjective process of self-empowerment. Every revolutionary sequence applies in practice a principle that every counter-revolutionary theory seeks to deny or disguise: there is indeed no deeper source of legitimacy than the active will of the people . A revolutionary sequence is one in which those people who set out to transform their situation find a way to clarify and mobilise the will of its people as a whole. Where it exists, the will of the people is sustained through the practice of those who compose and impose it in the collective interest – and who thereby invariably risk, at the hands of those few who oppose this interest, misrepresentation as criminals or outsiders. As the philosopher Alain Badiou points out in a recent editorial, “once they cross a certain threshold of determination, persistence and courage, the people can indeed concentrate their existence in a public square or avenue, in a few factories, or in a university. In the wake of a transformative event, the people are composed of those who are able to resolve the problems posed by this event” – for instance, the problems involved in defending a square, or sustaining a strike, or confronting an army. Buoyed by the assertion of their hard-won power, the people of north Africa and the Middle East are currently inventing means of solving such problems at a rate that already defies any sort of historical comparison at all. Their priority now is clearly to consolidate and organise this power in the face of the many new and more daunting problems they will soon have to confront. Needless to say, the struggle to come will again play out in different ways in different places. The consequences of even the most resounding victory are always uncertain, and it may take a long time for those of us who live in the more sheltered parts of the world to learn our own lessons from north Africa’s example. The old neoliberal assault remains set to continue. Now everyone knows, however, that it will only prevail if we allow it to. Arab and Middle East protests Protest Egypt Tunisia Libya Yemen Middle East Peter Hallward guardian.co.uk
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The burning of a train in the Indian village of Godhra in 2002 killed 59 Hindu pilgrims. Right-wing politicians blamed Muslims for the fire and it led to Indian’s worst sectarian violence in years, killing about 2000 people. After a trial going on for almost nine years, 59 people were found guilty over the attack. Al Jazeera’s Prerna Suri reports from Ghodra.
Continue reading …Bernie Goldberg Rips ‘Supposed Journalist’ Fareed Zakaria for Not Challenging Fox-smearing Soros
February 22, 2011 No Comment
As NewsBusters reported Sunday, while George Soros likened Rupert Murdoch and Fox News to Nazis on CNN's “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” the host never once challenged the far-left billionaire on any of his wild accusations. On Monday's “O'Reilly Factor,” former CBS Newsman Bernie Goldberg blasted “supposed journalist” Zakaria for sitting there “like a bump on a log when somebody is making crazy statements like that” (video follows with partial transcript and commentary): BILL O'REILLY, HOST: Thanks for staying with us. I'm Bill O'Reilly,reporting tonight from Southern California. And in the “Weekdays with Bernie” segment, far-left zealot George Soros,a billionaire who funds many radical left concerns, is very angry with FOX News. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GEORGE SOROS, BILLIONAIRE: FOX News makes a habit. It has imported the methods of George Orwell, you know, Newspeak, where you can tell the people falsehoods and deceive them. And you wouldn't believe that an open society and a democracy these matters can succeed, but actually, they did succeed. They succeeded in Germany where the Weimar Republic collapsed, and you had the Nazi regime follow it. (END VIDEO CLIP) O'REILLY: Now, you may remember that a group of left-wing rabbis, the Jewish Funds for Justice group, took out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal recently, criticizing FOX News for referencing Nazi Germany. So, of course, we expect to see another ad from the rabbis shortly, hammering Soros. Joining us now to react from Miami, the purveyor of BernardGoldberg.com, Mr. Goldberg. Here's what I don't understand. Every once in a while Soros comes down from his plush board room, or his private jet lands near CNN headquarters; and he gets out, and he says this dopey stuff. Why? He is not changing anybody's mind, is he? BERNIE GOLDBERG, FOX NEWS CONTRIBUTOR: No, I don't think that's what motivates him. I think he, honest to God, believes every syllable of what he said. I think if you hooked Mr. Soros up to a lie detector while he made that statement, I don't think the needle would dance one bit. But I will tell you it takes two to tango, and he did that interview with a supposed journalist for CNN, a supposedly middle-of-the-road news organization, named Fareed Zakaria. And when he said those things, Zakaria didn't ask him one challenging question. When Soros said that FOX is basically inherently dishonest, Zakaria didn't say, “Well, aside from your dispute with Mr. Beck, Glenn Beck, can you give me an example or two of this dishonest?” When he made the insane statement that FOX's supposed dishonesty might open the way for an American fascist dictatorship — I mean, think about that — Zakaria never said, “Really? Really, Mr. Soros?” So Soros says these things because he believes them. He's a man of the left. We shouldn't expect anything different. But Zakaria is supposedly a journalist, and a journalist doesn't just sit there like a bump on a log when somebody is making crazy statements like that. Indeed. As I noted concerning this interview Sunday: Rupert Murdoch is like a Nazi using his media outlet Fox News to “tell the people falsehoods and deceive them.” And Zakaria sat there eating it up like a sheep. Clearly enjoying the conservative bashing, the CNN host moved in another predictable direction asking his guest, “What do you think of this broader movement of the Tea Party, of — of what's going on on the right?” Honestly, what did Zakaria think Soros was going to say? SOROS: Look, I think the people in the Tea Party are very decent people, hard-working. They've been hit by a force that — that comes from somewhere which they can't fully understand, and — and they are being misled. And they are misled by people who are using it for their selfish purposes, namely to remove regulations and — and reduce taxation. So reduce taxation and regulation, and they are being used and deceived. So the Tea Partiers are all idiots being misled into thinking loosened regulations and lower taxes are bad. Meanwhile, Soros funds organizations dishonestly trying to convince people that more regulations and higher taxes are good. Not surprisingly, Zakaria missed both the hypocrisy and the irony. I guess that makes him easily deceived and misled. At the end of Goldberg's discussion about Soros, the subject of the Wisconsin union battle was raised: O'REILLY: Now, “Talking Points Memo,” I think we laid out a pretty persuasive case based on facts, not emotion, that the news coverage of the Wisconsin battle has not been honest. GOLDBERG: Right. Well, let me give you a couple of examples to back that up. First, do you remember during the tea party demonstrations there were lots of references to the crowds as being overwhelmingly white. I was never quite sure what the relevance of that was. But the New York Times, for example, thought it was relevant, because they would write stuff like that. These crowds are beyond overwhelmingly white. These crowds are almost 100 percent white. And there's no reference to race. Jeez, isn't that strange? The reason is the mainstream media or so-called mainstream media only brings race into things when conservatives are involved and they want to smear them. So, that's one thing. Excellent point. This was a common media meme about the Tea Party since it emerged as a powerful force in April 2009. Yet I don't recall any so-called journalists in the past few days talking about the lack of minorities in the crowd at Madison's Capitol. But that wasn't the only thing bothering Goldberg about the Wisconsin coverage: GOLDBERG: The second one, the easy second one are the signs. One crazy person at a Tea Party rally with a Nazi sign and it's big news. O'REILLY: Right. GOLDBERG: The media isn't as passionate about these signs that compare the governor to Hitler, Mubarak, and the Taliban. Not nearly as passionate in covering them. No, they certainly aren't, proving once again how totally corrupt they are. (H/T Mediaite )
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enlarge As Mel Brooks sang in The Producers , “If you got it, flaunt it”. The radical right wing of the Republican Party (which these days is most of the Republican Party) did that over and over in two hearings on HR #3 and HR #358, which attack reproductive rights. In their usual way, they were all smarmily singing loudly and from the same page. What did they flaunt? They revealed how they plan to undo Roe v. Wade . They made it clear what weapon they plan to use and in what arena, which we, the pro-choice movement, have for too long abandoned. All the weapons they need are there, and we left them there for the right to pick up and use to beat us up. The visible weapons are THE HYDE AMENDMENT. LEGISLATION REMOVING FEDERAL FUNDS. The “hiding in plain sight” weapons are THE “LET WOMEN DIE” PROVISIONS; THE ENFORCEMENT MECHANISMS; LAWSUITS; INJUNCTIONS STOPPING ANY AND ALL FEDERAL FUNDS TO ANY AND ALL STATES, CITIES PROGRAMS OR AGENCIES. What are they hiding in plain sight ? How they plan to use the enforcement mechanisms in these bills and any future bills to destroy women’s reproductive freedom. They will attempt to first eliminate every women’s access to abortion while also beginning their assault on all Americans’ access to birth control. Yes indeedy, birth control is now in the crosshairs!! Certainly, that is what the Pence bill defunding Planned Parenthood is all about . Title X funding disburses money for women’s health in general – pap smears, mammograms. And yes, that includes birth control or family planning, something that is now bizarrely controversial. Basically, health care for millions and millions of women. But they do not plan on stopping there. The theory is throw as many bills against the wall as possible, with a lot of similar and dangerous elements. Then watch which elements they attach to which bill as they try through a variety of legislative maneuvers to paint the Senate into a corner, while the President keeps silent. To these extremists Republicans , his present silence means consent. That is certainly how they will propagandize it. HR #3, NO TAXPAYER FUNDING FOR ABORTION AND HR #358, PROTECT LIFE ACT, aka LET WOMEN DIE ACT Those were two subcommittee hearings in the House. On Tuesday the 9th, the Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee with Chair Trent Franks convened on HR #3. The hearing for HR #358 was held on Wednesday the 10th in the Health Subcommittee of Energy and Commerce with Joe Pitts, Chair. At each hearing, two anti-choice witnesses were invited but only one pro-choice witness. Sara Rosenbaum of GW University was the pro-choice witness for both hearings. She testified on the impact this legislation would have on the subsequent availability of health insurance with abortion. To be precise: there would be NONE. If passed, HR #3 eliminates private and employer provided insurance for abortion coverage. 87% of all employer plans cover abortion. 90% of all insurance access to abortion coverage would be eliminated. Tens of millions of women and families would lose access to abortion. Who needs the public’s boomerang reaction to overturning Roe, when you can eliminate abortion quietly while people don’t yet notice? HR #3 codifies Hyde One of the many awful provisions in HR #3 is turning the various Hyde restrictions in the numerous appropriations bills into permanent law that will reach far beyond where it gets now. Presently, the Hyde restrictions have to be passed via the appropriations process – from poor women in HHS to military and veteran women to Federal employees and even into Medicare for disabled women. Codification would not only make it permanent but extend its reach – to the tax code in their view of the world. Unfortunately, the Democrats have spent 30 years not fighting the Hyde amendment. 30 years of quiet acquiescence, with often only a one sentence demurral by those of us who oppose Hyde. Silence can mean consent in many minds. Anti-Choice witnesses Richard Doerflinger of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Cathy Ruse with the Family Research Council at HR #3 hearing and Helen Alvere of George Mason University and Douglas Johnson with National Right to Life at the HR #358 hearing repeatedly touted the “universal” agreement that Hyde is correct. Even Democrats who purportedly call themselves pro-choice, they asserted, agree with the policy that there should be no federal funds for abortion. Silence can mean consent. In an excruciating display of fakery, the four of them lauded President Obama’s support for, in the President’s own words, the ‘federal tradition” behind Hyde. One of the congressmen, Michael Burgess (R-TX), even said that this bill was doing the President a favor by putting forward a bill ( HR #358) to make doubly sure that there would be no taxpayer money going for abortions !!! Do not underestimate the political value of invoking a Democratic president. It will loom large as the battle progresses. At the Democratic press conferences about the two bills, Democrats boldly stated that in no way would the President sign either bill. Apparently, their strategy was hoping such statements would make the President make it clear how repugnant these bills are. Unfortunately when David Axelrod was asked by Chris Bowers about these bills, rather than a strong statement condemning them, Axelrod acted like he wanted this to just evaporate into the air. To this day, we try to protect ourselves from one assault after another by only dealing with the technicalities, with little success. The right has now found a vein of attack that they can mine over and over. They can use funding issues and the tax code to launch one after another. If this one doesn’t work, they can find another. It is a very rich vein….a veritable Silver City lode of potential attacks. As David Waldman writes, “H.R. 3 hides even bigger dangers than redefinition of rape” . ” Take the rape provisions out, and you’re left with a bill that paves the way for using the tax code to select every American’s health care options for them, direct from Washington. ” So what is hiding in plain sight? The remedies sections of both bills are a veritable cornucopia of ways to control women’s access to all reproductive rights – from abortion to birth control. Ironically, the right’s anathema to lawsuits stops when they can use them to have a veto over everyone else’s rights. Both bills have sections entitled Non-Discrimination and Remedies. Doerflinger and Johnson kept coming back to what they euphemistically call “conscience provisions” in their testimonies. They were very wedded to them. WHY? Because without them, they could not get what they wanted: the most draconian, onerous and sweeping anti-choice legislation in forty years. It’s been coming, in bits and pieces, all over the country. For example, the recent South Dakota bill that effectively made legal the intent to kill abortion providers or bills which redefined rape to the bruised, battered and bloody standard. Their radicalism knows no bounds, but under some level of mainstream outrage these bills have then been dialed back . But most outrageously, they have not dialed back the segment of HR #358. That bill was marked up on Friday the 12th, but they kept the section that effectively lets women die in emergency rooms . A bit of backstory: currently, all hospitals in America that receive Medicare or Medicaid funding are bound by a 1986 law known as EMTALA to provide emergency care to all comers, regardless of their ability to pay or other factors. Hospitals do not have to provide free care to everyone that arrives at their doorstep under EMTALA — but they do have to stabilize them and provide them with emergency care without factoring in their ability to pay for it or not. If a hospital can’t provide the care a patient needs, it is required to transfer that patient to a hospital that can, and the receiving hospital is required to accept that patient. In the case of an anti-abortion hospital with a patient requiring an emergency abortion, ETMALA would require that hospital to perform it or transfer the patient to someone who can. (The nature of how that procedure works exactly is up in the air, with the ACLU calling on the federal government to state clearly that unwillingness to perform an abortion doesn’t qualify as inability under EMTALA. That argument is ongoing, and the government has yet to weigh in.) http://crooksandliars.com/node/44077/edit Pitts’ new bill would free hospitals from any abortion requirement under EMTALA, meaning that medical providers who aren’t willing to terminate pregnancies wouldn’t have to — nor would they have to facilitate a transfer. The hospital could literally do nothing at all, pro-choice critics of Pitts’ bill say. They kept that exemption. As awful as it sounds to refuse to save a woman’s life, it’s still there, as is a similar provision in HR #3. Why? Because it allows any anti-choice zealot to launch one lawsuit after another to claim discrimination. Pay close attention to these wording below that give the anti-choice activists a wide berth to control women’s reproductive health: HEALTH CARE ENTITY – note how vague and broadly defined that is. A disgruntled nurse, or receptionist, hospital bookkeeper, it is so broadly written. There must be thousands of such anti-choice health care “entities”. ACTUAL OR THREATENED – Threatened????? What could the word “threatened” possibly encompass? A policy, a mailer on hospital emergency procedures making reference to EMTALA? A training schedule for interns or residents on abortion procedures and many more? Would there even need to be actual instance of supposedly forcing someone to do a procedure or hand out birth control they disapprove of? No, it may be quite sufficient to apply for a job where abortions are done, announce you are anti-choice and then bring a lawsuit when you don’t get hired. George Bush’s last executive order (which was just rescinded), actually had just such provisions. PRIVATE PARTY RIGHT OF ACTION This is the BIGGIE. The Non Discrimination and Remedies sections in both bills (I use HR #3 below) have enforcement mechanisms ranging from utilizing the HHS to the US Attorney General. Those would require anti-choice presidents to direct the agencies. However, both bills have private party right of action. The National Right to Life Committee, or Focus on the Family or the Live Action folks who have long targeted Planned Parenthood clinics are just waiting to spring into action. They can plant themselves into situations in which they are” threatened” with discrimination because they are anti-choice, let thousands of lawsuits bloom while they shop for the right anti-choice judge(s) ENJOINING ALL FEDERAL FUNDS. Their biggest weapon of all. Draconian. If a judge finds for the plaintiff, the anti-choice fanatic, then that judge can, with only one violation enjoin all federal funds . The injunction would not be limited to health care funds. They could stop education funds or transportation funds or law enforcement funds> To whom? To anybody and everybody, basically. That’s how vague the bill has been written. They could, with the cagiest plaintiffs attorneys work to enjoin all federal funds for the state of New York, the City of New York, the NYPD or all the school districts in NY State over a single lawsuit over a single woman’s reproductive requirements. . Likely? Perhaps not, but these are activists committed to ensuring that not one woman in this country gets an abortion and their actions over the last forty years have certainly shown that the ends justify all means. …preventing the disbursement of all or a portion of Federal financial assistance to a State or local government, or to a specific offending agency or program of a State or local government To say that would be chilling would be an understatement. Sub-zero would be more like it. What state government could stand on a woman’s right to an abortion with Medicaid or at a hospital if ALL federal funds could be stopped? What hospital would keep training doctors if all federal funds from Medicaid to Medicare would be withheld? Funding has become the dangerous back door that will de facto overturn Roe v. Wade HR #3 ENFORCEMENT SECTIONS: SEC. 311. NO GOVERNMENT DISCRIMINATION AGAINST CERTAIN HEALTH CARE ENTITIES. `(a) Nondiscrimination- A Federal agency or program, and any State or local government that receives Federal financial assistance (either directly or indirectly), may not subject any individual or institutional health care entity to discrimination on the basis that the health care entity does not provide, pay for, provide coverage of, or refer for abortions. `(b) Health Care Entity Defined- For purposes of this section, the term `health care entity’ includes an individual physician or other health care professional, a hospital, a provider-sponsored organization, a health maintenance organization, a health insurance plan, or any other kind of health care facility, organization, or plan. ` (c) Remedies- `(1) IN GENERAL- The courts of the United States shall have jurisdiction to prevent and redress actual or threatened violations of this section by issuing any form of legal or equitable relief, including– ` (A) injunctions prohibiting conduct that violates this section; and `(B) orders preventing the disbursement of all or a portion of Federal financial assistance to a State or local government, or to a specific offending agency or program of a State or local government, until such time as the conduct prohibited by this section has ceased. `(2) COMMENCEMENT OF ACTION- An action under this subsection may be instituted by– `(A) any health care entity that has standing to complain of an actual or threatened violation of this section; or `(B) the Attorney General of the United States.
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Al Jazeera’s Jamal Elshayyal reaches the Egyptian side of the border with Libya and begins to receive reports from those fleeing the country in revolt. Civilians have rushed to the Al Jazeera team with memory sticks, telling him they contain images of “horrific scenes”: planes and helicopter gunships firing indiscriminately, and mercenaries breaking into homes and “slaughtering” people.
Continue reading …Middle East unrest adds to pressure on world food prices | Jonathan Watts
February 22, 2011 No Comment
If the revolts in Egypt and Libya spread further, we can expect spikes not just in oil prices – but in the cost of food as well The fate of Colonel Gaddafi in Libya and the price of a loaf of bread in Europe may not at first glance have an awful lot to do with one another. Similarly, not many people would link the fall of Hosni Mubarak with the cost of a bowl of rice in China. But the revolts in Libya and Egypt are not just driving regime change in the Middle East, they may well add to the already intense pressure on global food prices. The missing link is oil, which hit a has new two-and-a-half year high and today topped $108 (£67) a barrel due to the instability in Libya – which has Africa’s biggest crude reserves. The price is moving closer to the record levels of more than $147 (£91) , reached just before the financial crash in 2008. That will be of little surprise to car drivers, who in recent decades have grown used to the correlation between peace and conflict in the Arab world and the troughs and peaks of the price they pay at the pumps. But in the longer term, the impact may also be evident on the dinner table because the zigs and zags of oil prices are increasingly being followed by grain . Two links are apparent. First, modern agriculture is massively dependent on fossil fuels, which are used for farm machinery, fertiliser production and crop transportation. Secondly, the rise of biofuels means that many food crops are in direct competition for land with ethanol plantations. The relationship is not necessarily one-way, particularly when other climate factors are at play. The recent surge in wheat, corn and soy prices – which prompted UN warnings of approaching danger levels – was also due to last year’s dry spell in Russia and floods in Australia. The most recent increase was attributed to a drought in China that threatens the winter wheat crop. But whether it is climate change or social protest that shakes the commodity markets, the jolts appear to affect the values of both kilowatts and calories – albeit sometimes with a slight lag. Different forms of energy consumption are converging – as well as growing – thanks to a rising global population and the increasing affluence of emerging economies like China and India. That should prove food for thought as we watch the compelling spectacle of change in the Middle East. Egypt nudged prices upwards (due more to the importance of the Suez canal to tanker traffic than its own oil output). Libya, the world’s 12th biggest oil exporter at 1.1m barrels per day, adds momentum. If these countries stabilise, the impact may be limited. If the unrest spreads to bigger oil producers, such as Saudi Arabia or Iran, expect further spikes not just of oil but of food. Food Oil Energy Fossil fuels Oil Commodities Arab and Middle East protests Egypt Libya Middle East Jonathan Watts guardian.co.uk
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As protests spread across the country, Seif al-Islam Gaddafi vowed that the regime would “fight to the last bullet”.
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